Lately, I've seen a lot of the non-religious rejoicing over the fact that religion, particularly the more conservative Evangelical types of Christianity are on the decline. Now, I personally have not seen much evidence of this. Then again I live in the Bible belt where Jesus and cornbread go hand in hand and the chances of people deconverting from religion are extremely low. I also live in a state where, if religion continues to go into more of a decline, there may be a serious vacuum left behind when it comes to social justice and services for the needy. Where I live almost every area of care is dominated by religion. Foster care, adoption, soup kitchens, battered women's shelters, halfway houses, pregnancy care for the impoverished. If the groups are not run directly by a church or religious organization, then it is guaranteed that the volunteers within them are religious. At our local soup kitchen, churches and religious small groups take up the majority of slots for volunteers. I've seen the list. Such and such Methodist church is serving breakfast (10 volunteers), First Baptist Church youth ministries for lunch (14 volunteers), Main Street Lutheran Church for dinner (8 volunteers). Our local homeless shelter is run by a Christian family and they consider it a ministry. They have a shelter, soup kitchen, battered women's shelter, employment help. You name it, they are doing it. They have several thrift stores as well. Both Goodwill and Salvation Army are also religion based. The Salvation Army requires their employees to sign statements of faith. I just met, for the first time in four years, another foster/adoptive parent who isn't religious. That's rather telling I should think. Let's also not forget the various churches who do things like feed the homeless at a local park every Monday night or the ones who do coat drives for the school down the road. Several churches in my area have clothing and food pantries as well as help to pay bills for their parishioners in need. (we'll ignore the fact that many come with strings attached)
Now, I'm sure you are wondering about one of my earlier posts when I spoke about how many of the churches in my area could shut down and it wouldn't affect anyone. This is still true. There is such a glut of churches in the Bible belt and so many are insular to the point that their presence makes absolutely no impact on the community around them. However, within that glut there are a handful of churches that are really living out the calling to take care of the "least of these". Their contribution is considerable and cannot be scoffed at or ignored, even if they may have ulterior motives (evangelism) at their core. The truth is, if Christians go into the decline, we still need people to step up and take over these much needed organizations. We still need volunteers. And here's where I am going to be really honest. I do not see enough people doing that outside of a church. My work used to organize regular volunteering events, but once the woman who organized them left, they disappeared. There was no mandate by the company or any kind of religious/moral reason to do it, and so it just stopped. No one wondered or seemed to care if a vacuum was left if we stopped. Only 2% of the US population adopts children. The vast majority of the people who do are religious and say that they are adopting not only because they want children, but because it is important to their religion. I fear that the current foster care crisis will only grow larger if there are less Christians working in it. Do I think we would be better off without a whole bunch of Christians doing "orphan" care that is really just extreme evangelizing and indoctrination? Sure. But kids deserve families and I don't exactly see people in the atheist community stepping up here. I can't name a single soup kitchen in my Tri-city area that isn't run by a church or religious organization and I do NOT see non-believers making their own. Here's what I do see. I see a bunch of social justice warriors pulling down statues because statues of dead white southerners offend people. I see people stopping traffic over the fact that the big university nearby isn't diverse enough, completely ignoring the homeless man on the corner. I see people so concerned about gender politics and putting people's pronouns in their emails, but don't help out the LGBTQ kid who is homeless down the street because they look dirty. I understand we can't all care about everything. I know we can't champion every cause. What I have noticed though (and done some research too) is that the things the Christians are doing for their community are very different from what matters to those outside of it. If religion continues to decline, someone has to pick up the slack. And frankly, I doubt someone who flees in the middle of the night from their abusive spouse with three kids in tow gives a damn whether you use their proper pronouns or if the statue down the street is of confederate general. And while we are all busy talking about whatever hashtag social justice trend is in the news at the moment, there are real people in crisis now. It very much seems like the non-religious community is happy to allow the Christians and inter-faith ministries to worry over things like the homeless and poor. This is going to bite us all in the ass in the future if we can't figure out ways to shift that load off the churches. We can't rely on the government either, because anyone can see that our leadership cares more about staying in power then they do about the least of these in our nation. Disclaimer: I absolutely think that things like confederate general statues belong in museums. I also think that if I had to choose between two things to be outraged over, I'm going to go with the increased homelessness in my city hands down. I can care about both, but I'm not putting all my energy or anger into an inanimate object.
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AuthorThis is a personal, but secret, blog archiving my deconversion from a Christian to a non-believer. Archives
December 2020
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