BF2S Forums Religions of the world Thread

Ok, the economist tried to put the Catholic church's finances together and figure out how big they are in the U.S. According to them, they spend $172 billion a year in the U.S.

The Economist estimates that annual spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010 (the church does not release such figures). We think 57% of this goes on health-care networks, followed by 28% on colleges, with parish and diocesan day-to-day operations accounting for just 6% and national charitable activities just 2.7% (see chart). In total, Catholic institutions employ over 1m people, reckons Fred Gluck, a former McKinsey managing partner and co-founder of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, a lay organisation seeking to improve the way the church is run. For purposes of secular comparison, in 2010 General Electric’s revenue was $150 billion and Walmart employed roughly 2m people.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat … 0-in-2010/


I am really not sure how useful it is putting their spending on colleges and hospitals into the equation. You could argue that those things are just filling in a gap in the market even if they are doing it for non-commercial reasons. Those two things shouldn't be commercial enterprises anyway.

I know we were originally discussing third world countries but Shathar brought up how useful the church is to people living in the developed world

Muslims are just misunderstood and oppressed

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-1 … uld-be-bea

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Zero Hedge is a stupid website. They are like the finance equivalent of Info Wars. 

The author of the article posted under the name Tyler Durden for Christ sake. Please find a more reputable source and provide us with an update when you do.

I wish you didn't choose to grace us with your stupidity every day. It's a real downer and detriment to this site.

Jay wrote:

Muslims are just misunderstood and oppressed

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-1 … uld-be-bea

herp derp Christians are so benevolent

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 … usual.html

It's so easy to find instances of people behaving badly and attribute it to the whole population.  Exceptions don't make the rule dude.  You're smarter than that.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Jay wrote:

Muslims are just misunderstood and oppressed

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-1 … uld-be-bea

herp derp Christians are so benevolent

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 … usual.html

It's so easy to find instances of people behaving badly and attribute it to the whole population.  Exceptions don't make the rule dude.  You're smarter than that.

Christians have their own shit, but you don't hear about them having conferences to debate whether wives should be beaten or not. That's heinous.

If the Muslims killed the pope in NYC, will there be a crusade? I want to go on a crusade

I hope they accept gays

All that education and they still rape children, pray to statues and believe in magic.

not sure about america's protestants but european protestants have plenty of theology, philosophy and learning. there's a whole alternative tradition from luther onwards. plenty of working-class communities in western europe lean on a strong baptist/methodist tradition for their ethical teachings, coupled with a very impressive rhetorical repertoire. lots of the best progressive politicians come from this chapel background. it is definitely different from evangelicals and pentecostals, though. agree with your point about catholic seminaries and scholastic philosophy being a pretty deeply rooted educational system. but american protestantism had this too in the days when harvard was a divinity school and most of its students took latin and ancient greek tot read the classics and hebrew bible. and you had people like the transcendentalists kicking around, which produced a pretty unique american philosophy in figures like emerson. lots of high-level theological learning and erudition.

maybe the 'problem with christianity' in america is that it has become too deeply inured to capitalism in certain forms. the whole bible belt and television churches thing is kinda gross.

Last edited by uziq (2015-12-16 15:50:44)

Mother Teresa is going to be canonized. Everyone is now posting Christopher Hitchens essays about her. Has Hitchens been dead long enough that we can talk about what a nasty, privileged, and problematic writer he was? The whole new atheism thing is pretty stupid and Hitchens was one of the worst. I am an atheist.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Would anyone like to discuss an article from Jacobin magazine that is getting passed around in reference to Chris H? I know Jacobin is an openly radical and socialist publication but this post is well thought out and discusses New Atheism and its problems. Most of it has to do with Atheist vs Islam.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/new- … ld-empire/
"New Atheism, Old Empire
The “New Atheists” have gained traction because they give intellectual cover to Western imperialism."



I will give +1 to any and all post relating to the article.

I'm not joking at all, but I lived with Luke Savage (the author) for 2 years. He's been catching shit from academics for this one for a while now. Works for Broadbent Institute now, which is basically a socialist think-tank. Cool to see people actually read his stuff.

But more to the point of your post, I've talked to Luke about this article a few times, and really I think the motive and underlying philosophy is driven by a very deep seated shame for having blindly followed Chris Hitichens and Dawkins down the new-atheist path for the better part of his adolescence. He thought harder and realized how it was shaping his view of the world, and wrote a series of pieces about it. This is the best one by far, and captures most of his thought nicely.

Last edited by Pocshy2.0 (2015-12-18 18:29:56)

uziq wrote:

jacobin (and the new inquiry) are great sites for people who have read a little bit of theory or materialism. all the essays are pretty decent but they're also so fucking predictable. it's the same 5 source texts. it's where young academics go to die.

I completely agree. Talking to Luke or his group of like-minded socialist friends is actually rather boring the 5th time around. Over beers we'd have the same conversations on a 3 topic rotation. The need to relate everything to class struggles and wealth inequality is just really tiring.

He wrote most of these kind of low-level political theory pieces while in grad school, and I think mostly gave up on being a pure academic. Now he's just guns for hire to any socialist publication that will have him.