Under the headline, "Lots of Americans Are Losing Their Religion. Are You?" Times newsletter writer Jessica Grose reports:
In their forthcoming book, "Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society," the sociologists Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman and Ryan Cragun describe a change in the built environment of St. Louis that is "emblematic" of the ebb of organized religious observance in America. What was once a Gothic-style beauty of a Catholic church built in the 19th century by German immigrants had been turned into a skateboard park.
"In the United States," the authors tell us, "somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close down every year, either to be repurposed as apartments, laundries, laser-tag arenas, or skate parks, or to simply be demolished."
What Grose doesn't say is that thousands more churches are started each year, so that the net picture is much less negative than she portrays. A 2019 study of 34 Protestant denominations, for example, found "4,500 churches closed in 2019, while about 3,000 new congregations were started." By mentioning just the church closings and not the church openings, the Times gives its readers a misleading, distorted, exaggerated view of reality.