13
votes
What should America do with its empty church buildings?
Link information
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- Title
- America's Epidemic of Empty Churches
- Authors
- Jonathan Merritt
- Published
- Nov 25 2018
- Word count
- 1450 words
I have some ideas:
IMO, it ought to be legalized, sex workers should have their own union, and all brothels should be worker-owned cooperatives.
Incels can go to Nevada and get their itch scratched in one of the state's legal brothels right now. They refuse to do so, because they don't think it counts if you pay cash up front.
But it doesn't count for them, does it? They are buried deep in the belief that they can not attract anybody, and their mythology includes rich womanizers as an evil breed of humans (as far as I learned from the ContraPoints video posted here recently). So it's sort of adding insult to injury for them.
It probably wouldn't help current incels (as in, people with a deep-seated incel mentality) too much unless they were willing to try it, which is unlikely because of the reasons you mentioned.
However, it would help prevent that mentality from growing in the first place, in my opinion. There's a hell of a lot to be said for the confidence that comes from getting some experience in that area.
That would certainly make a dent in the number of horrible internet comments.
Churches don't lend themselves well to housing. Remodeling costs would be very high. Libraries are a great idea.
I think homeless people wouldn’t complain.
I love the idea of low income housing. It would take too much money, time, or effort to convert most churches.
Is dynamite really that expensive?
In my hometown an old church got remodeled into the local library a decade ago; as a result we kept a nice looking historical building from being potentially destroyed, it revitalized the neighborhood and our library got bigger. Definitely a great idea!
Community centers? Local meeting halls?
I went to see a rock concert in a neo-gothic church (still functioning, but they rent out the space when there isn't something else going on). Needless to say the acoustics were incredible, and it was a memorable show just for the venue.
My suggestion would be secular community culture spaces: music, art, pop-up shops, day camp, etc.
This is what they do at the Magdalene in Paris. My wife and I attended a performance by a string quartet led by Frédèric Moreau there in 2017, as well as a performance of Mozart's Requiem.
There's a gorgeous old church in Denver that was bought by a couple and converted into an Airbnb - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/8800911
Some churches make fantastic recording spaces for music. It would be nice to see them turned into a venue for performing/recording/rehearsing/etc. for musicians.