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  • ChairmanSpongebob [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    10000-com we were trying to set up a soup kitchen, and asked to use their basement and they kicked us out once they learned that we were “political”. I guess that’s more important than feeding people huh?

    • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      11 months ago

      amerikkka

      Fuuuuuuuuck me. Every single accusation made about communist countries is an admission of guilt by the accuser and everyone would realize this if they just talked to vulnerable people. I don’t have words to describe it

    • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      11 months ago

      A local church nearby spent a shit ton of money on a luxury gym. And they will be all for helping the poor if you come to Bible study or some shit, so essentially they’re gatekeeping assistance

      Learning some good things about the Catholic Church in this thread though 🙏🙏

    • ChairmanSpongebob [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Oh and the same church (Catholics) built a fence because people using a safe consumption site nearby, the homeless, etc “made parishioners feel unsafe” and then they fought the city when they told them to take it down.

      The church won, so it’s still up

      I read the article where they interviewed parishioners about it, and one of them said something like “the fence will prevent the homeless from dirtying the lawn” among other things. Just makes my blood boil

  • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Christians will often brag that the data shows that people who go to church akshully are the most charitable. And - on a very superficial level - they are correct. But the reality is that most of that “charitable giving” is paying for the pastor’s salary, church upkeep, denominational support, sending the youth group on a “mission trip” to Belize, etc. In the data that’s all lumped in with “charitable giving”. Their levels of giving to help the unhoused, feed the poor, help out single moms with new babies… it’s basically zero. At least for your typical white evangelical, certainly other religions are better on this than others.

  • boog [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    going to church is a fucking meme, especially when you talk to people there after it ends and you hear some of the most incredibly vile shit you’ve ever heard that directly contradicts basically everything christianity supposedly stands for

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Local catholic church offered to allow local orgs who were building onsulated shacks in parks and creating programs to house people in them who were living in tents to move to church properties when the city decided this was no longer a grassroots effort in their benefit as covid lockdowns ended and they wanted tourism again. The city wouldn’t allow that either and was threatening to fine the church $10k a day per shelter. Now we just have tent cities everywhere

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    That hasn’t been my experience at all. Protestant churches, sure. But the Catholic church is pretty ingrained and tends to do a lot for the poor. Most leftists are involved with the church in some way.

    • Smeagolicious [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Protestant church my family went to in my (small) hometown had a program partially organized by my grandparents for free weekly community meals and a food bank. Was never religious even as a kid but I volunteered there for 10 years or so; they had hundreds of people through there every week…it was pretty cool ngl. Definitely not the rule from what I’ve experienced though.

      • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        The Catholic Church is neck and neck with the friends of Jeffrey Epstein for the title of “World’s largest and most powerful child sex abuse ring”

      • anonochronomus [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        Where are you hearing that? Because not only is it a lie, it’s also insane. Catholic church has the largest land holdings and gold stockpile in the world, they’re responsible for the deaths of probably millions in the past 2000 years, and the Catholic church was instrumental in setting up rat lines to help high ranking Nazis flee Europe and get away with their crimes. I can keep going with this, like how the killed thousands of orphans in Ireland and buried them in mass graves for the sake of profit. The Catholic church is literally the devil.

        • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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          11 months ago

          It sounds like the bar is on the floor

          Idk how to see it morally, but if you are a local Catholic Church helping out locally, it makes you much better than the Protestants who don’t

          I almost look at like individual Catholic churches can be good but the Catholic church as an institution is evil.

    • janny [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      yeah the local mainline protestant churches are actually not only helpful to the poor but allies with local organizing. under the dicprole it’d probably be more productive to expropriate evangelical churches and give them to mainline protestants than it would be to outright ban protestantism.

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        protestantism isn’t really a singular movement after all all you have to do to be protestant is offshoot from Catholicism

        I think a rule that if a church is over 100 people you should split it into 2 churches would help

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      megachurches are obscene but it’s worth noting that they are not how the median churchgoing american christian worships, at least in the parts of the country i’ve lived. the more usual kind of church has its own problems of course, but the thing where you’re essentially watching a sporting event or a stadium rock concert is the exception.

  • ExtraordinaryJoe@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    There’s nothing like walking into one of those mega churches and wonder how many families could be fed for a year with their expensive decor.

      • windowlicker [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        i always question why they even need all of that equipment. i’ve seen churches totally decked out with top-of-the-line mixers, huge PA systems, etc. and it leaves me wondering what the purpose even is. aren’t churches built to have pretty good acoustics? they’re just doing soft rock and sermons, it’s not a fucking metallica concert. just get up there and sing with your acoustic guitar and get down.

        • There are accessibility reasons why you’d want a mic, especially with churches dominated by older people who are more likely to have hearing problems. But I loved the setup one of my old churches had. There was a room in the back behind windows that had a speaker on the ceiling. There was a single knob that turned it up and down and there was a little radio transmitter with ear piece receivers if anybody wanted that. And then there was a 4 channel mixer up front that plugged into the feed to the back. So for most of the congregation, they’d sit up front and hear everything acoustically. In the back, they’d hear it mostly over the speaker and someone would just sit there and turn the knob up and down as needed. Was it ideal? No. But it was a setup that worked for 30 years straight with only one or two points of failure which rarely failed and were relatively cheap and easy to repair.

  • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    churches fed my family when we couldn’t buy groceries and paid our rent when we were about to be kicked out. church i’m a part of now is one of a few in the area that actively feed and house people and have been involved in getting tenant unions set up.

    never once did a megachurch do shit for me but take my parents money. in material terms, these are small churches that acted like community hubs where folks could do direct action and were our only options in the face of 0 safety nets.