The Church FAQ
whatever.scalzi.com
whatever.scalzi.com
But yeah, I too was reading without noticing, until I came to the sentence "None of the Scalzis are particularly religious", and thought "wait, Scalzi like John Scalzi? It's not... It is?!"
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765389190/theshatteringpe...
that's the guy. he's got a new book coming out this month, and is a fun follow on social media too (now on bluesky). i feel like he would be flattered by your description.
Well, THAT just made me feel like an old man.
Growing up in Sweden, it was mostly immigrants and nazis who used the Swedish flag. Now I live in Norway, which is a lot more nationalistic (just an observation, not a judgement), and there are flags everywhere.
> A whole new roof, to start; now the building has a 50-year roof, which means it will almost certainly outlive me. The electricity was knob and tube and had to be redone. There was an outside retaining wall that had to be torn out and redone. The aforementioned balcony was actually not safe to be on; it was cantilevered out into space with no support and had a shin-high barrier that wouldn’t stop anyone from going over the side. That was fixed, and new floors and custom bookcases by a local artisan built in so I could have my library. The basement floor was redone; the kitchen space down there gutted and remodeled. We pulled up high-traffic industrial carpet glued to the sanctuary floor and reconditioned the hardwood floors underneath. New HVAC, and improved drainage for the maintenance room. The office and Sunday school room in the basement was turned into a guest suite. The structure was sealed against moisture and the walls were all replastered and repainted.
I live in a reasonably large city, and it took me much more than two years just to get some unsatisfactory work done on a couple of rooms. (Much of that time being trying to get the contractor to come finish up the work so I could finally give him money, an inducement which seemed to have startlingly little power.) I'd always thought that was just because I started peri- and post-pandemic, but Scalzi says that this work, too, was done during the pandemic, so that can't be it. I guess I'm just really bad at picking contractors.
Oh right, "scalzi" means 'barefoot' (mpl) in Italian!
Given the Methodist's reputation for being dour, I'm surprised how nice it looks inside.
Generally speaking, non-religious people understand church to be a building. Whereas religious people understand that the people are the church, the building is just a building.
Now granted some of them are really nice buildings, and some are really old, and you can be both religious and really like the building, but the two concepts are still separate.
In other words, to the religious, the use of the building for non-religious purposes is "shrug".
Whereas to the non-religious the idea of turning a church building into something else is some kind of desecration. (Obviously this isn't the case for this article, but I noted the first question as him getting that response, and also the immediate rebuttal that he's starting a cult.)
Anyway, I thought it an interesting, if tangentially observation. And as with all generalizations there will be lots of exceptions.
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/massachusetts-church-protest-11...
Many (most?) religions invest enormous amounts in those buildings, some with staggering displays of wealth. Even in many/most towns, the religious institution is the nicest building around.
This isn’t accurate except for perhaps certain parts of Protestantism. To Catholics, Orthodox, probably portions of the Church of England etc, ie a majority of Christianity church buildings are holy and specially blessed. They hold the Eucharist in the Tabernacle which these Churches believe is the body and blood of Jesus under the guise of bread which is the most holy thing for them. In order for these buildings to be used for any other purpose all the holy things would need to be removed and the building specifically deconsecrated.
Anyway, there are in fact many christians who view churches as sacred in themselves. Good luck painting christianity with any such a wide brush.
Notre Dame Cathedral is a church, but you could burn it to the ground tomorrow and it wouldn’t have hardly any impact at all on the persistence of The Church.
I recommend you look at (as an example), what the Catholic Church did since around the conversion of the Romans through to Vatican II. Even when I was a kid (some decades after Vatican II), attending Catholic school and regularly attending mass, the Catholic Church building was considered an incredibly special place by the congregations.
In my school, the chapel (which held a tabernacle), was once used by some well-meaning but incredibly ill-educated pupils to hold a palm reading booth for a school fete fundraiser. When the more traditional Catholics in the faculty found out, they burst in, soaking the pupils and chapel with holy water and latin prayer (first time used in the school since Vatican II! Showed their colours that day!), claiming that to engage in the occult near a tabernacle was an incredibly offensive thing to do, because the space held a tabernacle, end of.
The whole thing about Protestantism is to remove mystery. Research the early history from Luther through the English Tudors and the King James Bible, all the way through to the Mayflower and the reason why they were fleeing Europe to the New World, and you'll see that big and plain. It doesn't mean that a sense of mystery in terms of rituals and rites held in special designated spaces died and went away though, it just means it's less present than it once was.
For many, many people (billions on Earth today), "holy spaces" remain exactly that: consecrated spaces that are in themselves holy regardless of whether a human congregation is present or not. And this is not limited to Christianity either.
As this was a Methodist Church, I suspect most people who used it would consider it "just a building", albeit one with sentimental memories (weddings, funerals, weekly worship), but sure, it's bricks and mortar and balconies and pews and a broken organ. shrug.
It's just that's actually quite an unusual viewpoint on a global scale, for most denominations.
There are vast numbers of repurposed churches in Catholic countries. Just walk the streets in an Italian city.
I'm not familiar with the specifics for catholics, but it is conceptually not too different from how protestants do it.
With the caveat, best repeated in every post under this article, that of course very strong sentimental feelings can be attached to a church building. You could put a religious dimension on the morality of hurting peoples feelings by destroying or changing a beautiful thing I guess. But, it is not the house itself that is holy in a holy house.
The Lutheran churches where I'm from do a similar thing.
The reaction you're talking about with the palm reading seems like it could have mostly been because of the presence of a loaded tabernacle? I mean I doubt they would have been pleased about this without it but lay catholics I know take the tabernacle extremely seriously.
I don't particularly, aesthetically, like to see churches used for secular purposes but if they've been properly desacralized I don't have any strong religious objections.
> "holy spaces" remain exactly that: consecrated spaces that are in themselves holy regardless of whether a human congregation is present or not
This is true but it implies a causality that is backwards I think. Spaces aren't holy because of the consecration, they're holy because of the people that come there to worship together regularly over many years. If they stop doing that the church doesn't immediately "lose its holiness" or whatever but it does change: it becomes a shrine or a relic or maybe just a building.
Yes, I think the tabernacle was the crux of the issue here.
> Spaces aren't holy because of the consecration, they're holy because of the people that come there to worship together regularly over many years.
That's a more modern, and dare I say, Methodist view of the church. If a space has a tabernacle in it with the body of Christ in it, within the Catholic tradition, that space is holy and consecrated even when there isn't a human soul in the place, because by definition there is a belief that the soul of Christ is in that space.
You can deconsecrate that space and remove that blessed sacrament and then it's just a building, but in the eyes of most Catholics the space itself has a mystery even in the absence of worshipping congregations.
I think you'd get interesting answers if you polled lay catholics with a question like "which is more holy, a consecrated but never-used church, or a parish recently desacralized after centuries of regular use."
There's definitely one "correct" answer if you asked a bishop or a catholic theologian. But I have noticed that there is often a big difference between lay religious experience and hierarchically controlled official dogma. A poll a few years ago had less than half of american catholics believing in transubstantiation, for example.
[1] https://www.wandererscompass.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/...
Even us atheists should hope that the building would get a little more love and respect than that.
A church is not a building
A church is not a steeple
A church is not a resting place
A church is a people
I am the church
You are the church
We are the church together
All who follow Jesus
All around the world
Yes were the church to-clap!-gether.
I don’t believe in any of it anymore, but it’s still a nice sentiment - the only thing I really miss about Christianity is the community.
OP is correct here by saying that the Church is the people. It’s just that the word has two meanings, the church building and the Church of Christ.
It’s also why sometimes you hear Christians say things like “your family is also your Church”
[0] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/when-a-church-is-de...
https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-the-church.html
False teaching that contradicts God's Word often tries to elevate specific people or buildings while the Word elevates Christ. Over time, more religions started focusing a lot on their buildings. They identified as Christian even though their practices were getting further and further from Biblical examples. This caused much confusion.
Our church would just call it an old building that used to house a church (group of people). Hopefully, the members are still gathering to worship God, read the Word, share Christ, and love each other. Those are what's important.
For example, in Christianity, they only venerate God and pray to God through Jesus alone. Peter and Hebrews says we are all priests who have direct access to God, coming boldly, as His adopted sons and daughters. Jesus also represents us before God with nobody else really needed.
Whereas, Catholicism taught people to venerate and pray to mere humans. They pray to Mary hoping she will represent them, too. That's idolatry in God's Word. It's also something we don't see Apostles or believers doing.
I noted below numerous such reasons that Catholicism is a different religion which Jesus and the Apostles call false teaching. That is, anything that contradicts their Gospel of justification by faith in Christ alone worshiping God alone.
https://www.gethisword.com/catholic
Deuteronomy requires testing any person or claim that allegedly comes from God. They had to have supernatural power and never contradict God's Word. The Pope's fail that test while Apostles passed it. To be obedient, I tested it myself above.
Try that in a mosque please.
Also, a couple of years ago a French (Benjamin Ledig) youtuber/tiktoker/whatever was fined for filming himself dancing in a parisian catholic church.
As you said:
> And as with all generalizations there will be lots of exceptions.
The word "church" itself is used to refer to the building in several languages; some of the buildings get some fancier word like "cathedral" or "dom church" or just "dom", like the Kölnerdom or Nidarosdomen. It's a type of building the same way that you expect certain things of a Rathaus or office building or detached house.
Of course, it is also used to refer to what in secular contexts would be called a club or organization, like "the church of $country". E.g. if you want Norwegian waffles abroad, Sjømannskirken (literally "The seamen's church") is very likely to have them. Norwegian churches-as-organizations run partially on coffee & waffles.
The only other group I can think of off the top of my head that get called the same as a building is parliament? While with churches it's kind of as if we used just one word to describe a football field, the football team, and that football team's supporters. Homonyms can trip people up.
So for people who aren't in the organization, but know that people associated with that kind of organization take umbrage at a lot of things that they can't easily predict, it's no wonder that churches-the-buildings have mental priority because that's what they actually experience in their daily lives: Buildings that exist in their vicinity, that often represent a sizable investment, and that they might even get invited to for some rituals like marriages and funerals. The … Jesus club is about as visible to them as a local role-playing club, or indoor sports club.
Including English, for that matter.
1. church meaning a building 2. church meaning an organisation - e.g. "Roman Catholic Church" 3. church militant - all Christians on earth 4. church triumphant - all of redeemed humanity. If you are a universalist (someone who believes all of humanity is saved) this would be synonymous with all of humanity.
I am sure I have missed things out, and there are lots of shades of meaning and different levels with regard to organisations.
First, everyone (faithful or not) understands that "church" could mean physical structure or the body of people who attend. The word was frequently used both ways in my Southern Baptist youth, for example, and I'm familiar with similar use patterns from the Catholics I've known.
HOWEVER it IS true that some flavors of Christianity DO see the physical building as blessed, consecrated, or whatever, and somehow important in and of itself. It varies WIDELY by faith; neither position is universal at all.
My sense is that GENERALLY this distinction maps to the adherence to/belief in actual sacraments -- ie, rituals written out and led by specific clergy that lead to desirable spiritual goals.
The Roman church, for example, has a number of these that are considered important to your spiritual life. For a faithful Catholic, Communion involves actual transubstantiation, and requires the priest. You're probably not truly married unless you're married in a Catholic ceremony by a priest in a church. Confession matters. Etc.
By contrast, most mainline protestant churches don't really have any of these. Your relationship to God is between you and God; the pastor leads the church, but is not seen as someone with a hotline to the almighty.
Many or most of them DO things that look like Communion, but it's entirely symbolic; the act itself has no special spiritual power, and there is no expectation of transubstantiation. It's done maybe quarterly largely because the Gospels say Jesus said to "do this in remembrance of me."
Most protestant sects don't think a church wedding has any additional spiritual weight, and certainly don't require one. Marriage is between you, your spouse, and God. I went to a Baptist wedding on a golf course last fall where the officiant was the groom's nonclergy (but devout) uncle. That's normal.
"Church" is equivocal [0]. It can mean "a church" as in a building used for liturgical worship (and specifically, the sacrifice of the mass). It can mean the institution founded by Christ, a divine and universal (hence "catholic" [1]) society, in which case we tend to capitalize it in English. In this latter case, theologically, we can speak of the human and divine elements, where the human (here on earth, the so-called Ecclesia militans or "Church Militant") is afflicted by the ravages of sin, while the divine dimension remains indefectible. The totality of the Church also includes the Ecclesia poenitens ("Church Penitent", "Church Expectant", or "Church Suffering") and the Ecclesia triumphans ("Church Triumphant").
(As a footnote, people in countries with a Christian heritage sometimes commit fallacies of equivocation with respect to these two meanings. This leads to some absurd inferences. For example, proponents of secularism have sometimes called for the separation of "mosque and state" in Muslim countries in an attempt to mirror the liberal exaggeration of the Christian distinction between Church and State, but this is nonsensical. "Mosque" has only one meaning, namely, the building. There is no institutional "Mosque". Islam does not make a distinction between religious and secular authority (which has its roots in Matthew 22:21 [2]). In the Islamic worldview, there is only Islam - "submission" [3] - and the unconquered world of the infidels. Liberalism is, genealogically and as a matter of substance, a Christian heresy - something it shares with Islam - but one that is alien to the Islamic worldview. The secular/Islamic divide in the traditionally Islamic world is rather a result of Western geopolitical influence, an arrangement merely tolerated, for the time being at least, by devout Muslims.)
> to the religious, the use of the building for non-religious purposes is "shrug".
Perhaps for some Protestants, but Catholic churches are not simply meeting houses, but the successors of the Temple of Jerusalem where the perfect sacrifice of the mass is offered (the liturgy itself has the structure of the liturgy used in the Temple). It is most certainly not a "shrug".
> Whereas to the non-religious the idea of turning a church building into something else is some kind of desecration.
I don't understand. To non-religious people who do not recognize a religion's truth claims, it appears that there is nothing to desecrate. Catholics/Orthodox most certainly would consider the illicit use of a church as desecration (example: the man who recently climbed onto the main altar in St. Peter's Basilica).
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03744a.htm
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/catholic
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022%3A...
> I want to recondition the old pastor’s study, get the organ functional again, and we want to make the sanctuary level more easily accessible via ramps and such
I mean, he _claims_ not to want to start a cult, but I feel like, if starting a cult, these are exactly the sort of facilities one would be recommissioning. Especially the organ.
Granted, for a moment I thought this was Charles Stross (the other Very Online sci-fi author), which would be _far_ more worrying, considering.
Pretty jealous to be honest, the building itself looks beautiful.
(Most cults probably don't have pipe organs, but I feel like it is unquestionably a _plus_ for your cult if you happen to have access to one.)
This may be related to Netflix movie/series adaptation of "Old Man's War" ?
https://reactormag.com/netflixs-adaptation-of-john-scalzis-o...
Oh, baskets of mostly dollar coins, quarters, some dimes, ...
If you work remotely, this seems a good example of why you might consider moving away from a major city.
That's hardly the middle of nowhere.
Honestly, Americans are probably more tolerant and accepting of long distances compared to most peer countries. 45 minutes of driving to hit some kind of city is very far most of the time in Japan or most of Europe, where the population density is higher than the states.
However, the proportion of people who live like that is not very high. People mostly live where other people live.
It’s amazing how perspective changes. If you haven’t experienced it I suspect it’s impossible to understand, because this feels crazy to write. It’s true though.
* No transport links means total dependence on car,
* No natural features of any note, in particular no rivers or hills,
* Unknown to people outside of the very small population that lives there,
* Hard to convince people to come and visit you and when they do they're disappointed.
In particular it doesn't seem to have public transport at _all_, at least per Google Maps; I'd consider anywhere where your only option to get to a city was to drive to be serious middle of nowhere, though I gather that this is a more common condition in the US.
(I live in Michigan, so I'm assuming project costs would be similar to where I am)
"I just want to share my learnings with the good people of Ohio..."
Isn't that the basic essential of designing tech - the narrower your specs the less expensive your solution, so articulate them very specifically.
I don't know that I buy "almost always" though. If your spec is world-class _____, you probably need to be in one of a few cities.
* Politically blue or at least purple
* Reasonably dense/transitable by something other than a car (public transit and/or bike)
* Wide variety of restaurants/groceries (mostly in terms of ethnicities/cultures), especially Asian food
* Low(-ish) crime rate
The third one is maybe the hardest, because it basically requires a substantial population, though number 2 is pretty hard in the US as well.
People live in expensive places not because they are required to, but because they find these places appealing. There are much more arts, culture, food, smart people, better schools, etc. Look at the prices people are willing to pay to live in NYC, parts of the Bay Area, etc. That is supply and demand.
They are getting a lot more (of what they want) for their money. Others live in Aspen for the same reason - though they want different things. I hope you are fortunate enough to want things that aren't in quite so high demand.
“Hacking” this by figuring out exactly what you want and finding it in a less in-demand place is a great move if you work remotely.
Isn't that the "culture" of the city? People want to live there because they want to be near the other cool people who live there. Culture means much more than if it has an art gallery.
Sure, absolutely larger cities have more cultural events going on, but in my experience most people aren’t analyzing the different options and aren’t utilizing all of those amenities when they actually live there.
New York is a classic example. A lot of people say they move there to be closer to museums, but most only end up visiting them once or twice a year, at most. This is because they like the idea, the perception, of being a person that lives in a city with the MET and MoMa, etc.
I really like NYC, for reference, so I’m not putting down the city or other large cities. But there is also a ton of hype and imitative behavior that makes people focus exclusively on the coastal cities. There are plenty of cities across America which have hip arts districts, coffee shops, great museums, nice architecture, etc. etc. but they tend to be glossed over.
Most people aren't going to continue to put up with the costs and challenges of big city life if they actually don't care all that much and could be just as happy in whatever places you're suggesting.
Beyond that key point, you’re making an error of assuming there is one fungible “culture experience” that can be had anywhere there’s a gallery and a coffee shop on the same street.
The gap between the cultural opportunities in NYC and a second tier US city is as vast as the difference between cutting edge research at Alphabet and a small web shop putting together wordpress sites for the local businesses.
The benefit of being in the city is not that you visit the MoMa every weekend - the rotating exhibits aren’t going to align with my interests that frequently. It’s that enough people around you are operating on a level where they could conceivably care about such things.
There are lots of people in smaller cities who say, 'we have ____ just like NY!' But it's not just like NY. There's a big difference between the innovation, skill, production, investment, etc. in those things. If you want world-class music, where will you live? Even if you just want regular opera, there are only a few US cities to live in.
> there is also a ton of hype and imitative behavior that makes people focus exclusively on the coastal cities
The same people also say NY is crazy, too liberal (i.e., too socially innovative), things are too odd and strange there. Where the 'crazy', innovative ideas - so far out that they are strange to most people - are accepted and encouraged and loved are in cities like NY. It's not the same.
> “Hacking” this by figuring out exactly what you want and finding it in a less in-demand place is a great move if you work remotely.
I referenced that in my GP comment - absolutely, don't imitate others, find what you want!
That's easier in places like NY and SF, where people are receptive to that and they don't enforce conformity or think you are too outside the pale with some wild idea or behavior. You're startup idea might not get much support in much of the world.
Not that they're always terrible or anything, but there's often certain things missing that I'd rather have around. But maybe someday.
Of course, the weak yen probably has something to do with that, and also the relatively smaller home sizes in Japan, but still, kinda crazy.
I was raised in a tiny village, I hate the countryside, it's so utterly boring, I want a short commute to all the activities the city offers and I love public transport.
I often describe the town I was raised in as "a great place to raise children and an awful place to be a teenager".
I COULD live in $cheaperCity, but then I’m paying tons of money to go somewhere I actually want to be, not to mention needing to plan a whole trip for many of these things, which gets way harder when you’re one of millions trying to get to the city for that event.
Sadly that only goes if you don't intend to leave your house for anything but grocery shopping.
If you'd rather hang out with friends at a concert and a pub after, you're stuck with the wanted and expensive places.
Because I would have to spend a lot of my money to not be miserable, and ultimately still be worse off.
Places that are cheap to live are cheap for a reason.
I noticed that there you have more masonic temples than churches in every city.
Your statement of "mostly" is an extreme (10x) overstatement.
The text above was from memory. I just looked it up and I was pretty accurate: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/
I take umbrage at another aspect of your statement: "culturally Christian atheists". I've heard this pointed specifically at me by people saying things like, "You are Christian, you just don't know it." That say that because I tend to be sensitive/kind/helpful/low ego. Yes, good Christians should be those things, but that doesn't mean that Christianity owns those traits or that those traits didn't exist and weren't valued before Christianity came along.
... Eh?
The US probably has more churches, as in physical buildings, per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Freemasonry isn't a religion, though it has vague religious trappings, but in any case it's fairly absurd to suggest that there are more masonic buildings than churches in the US.
This is nonsense. I doubt you've even been to the US if you're making claims like this.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/churches+in+Boone/@36.206...
https://www.google.com/maps/search/masons+in+Boone/@36.20686...
One Masonic Lodge vs 18 churches. Repeat that experiment with a bunch of random cities and you'll find that outside of the very high population cities (NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.) there are rarely more than one or two lodges, if they even have one at all.
There is a much higher likelihood of a child being within walking distance of a church than they are to be within walking distance of a school.