ALMOST 200 US churches have had their properties seized by lenders since 2008 – compared to eight in the two previous years. And many more foreclosures are on the cards.
New Harvest Church in Socastee, South Carolina, went into foreclosure last year owing $77,000. The building was auctioned off
According to this report, religious leaders were just as swept up by the property boom and bust as their parishioners.
A survey by the CoStar Group revealed that during the years of plenty, religious leaders took advantage of easy credit to build bigger churches and cater to bigger, richer congregations. Now the years of famine mean smaller, poorer congregations while still facing the bills for the larger houses of worship they built.
Foreclosure proceedings against US churches have more than tripled since 2007, when the recession took hold. All religious denominations have suffered as donations have declined.
But the financial crisis has hit independent churches hardest because they lack well-funded governing bodies capable of bailing them out.
Last year Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the biggest churches in the US, ran into trouble with its lenders. Banks demanded the church cut expenses as it struggled to make its mortgage payments.
An investigation by a Tennessee television station found hundreds of churches in the city are fighting foreclosure. There are 200 churches in Atlanta alone facing foreclosure, according to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder of civil rights organisation Rainbow/Push.
Jackson said African American and Latino communities had been hit particularly hard.
It’s communities, not just churches, that are in foreclosure. We have paid more for less, churches and their members are being dragged down by debt.
CoStar analyst Chris Macke said the boom in foreclosures was due to the financial squeeze on parishioners and overly aggressive projections of future income from churches.
Churches had fallen victim to ”recency bias”, he said.
Whatever happened most recently is what will happen in perpetuity, which is ironic considering that churches deal in issues of perpetuity.
We shouldn’t be too surprised if many of these debt-ridden churches wind up as mosques.
According to a new report from the Pew Forum, the Muslim population in the US will more than double from its current level of 0.8 percent to 1.7 percent by 2030, meaning there would be nearly as many Muslims as Jews and Episcopalians currently live in the United States. In two decades, there will be 6.2 million US Muslims – more than in any European nation except Russia and France.
Meanwhile, the Muslim population in the UK will almost double to 5.5million within 20 years, it is claimed.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
January 28th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Hurray!!!
January 28th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Anyone else see a workable solution that can easily be put in place?
January 28th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
You sure could fit a lot of homeless people into those foreclosed churches…
January 28th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
lol
January 28th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Smirk.
January 28th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
You would have thought the omnipotent man upstairs would have stepped in and stopped this from happening.
January 28th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
The CofE church opposite rents the vicarage out for over a thousand pounds a month and with the help of it’s masonic friends recently managed to build a new church hall. Bunch of hypocrites, following the footsteps of the vicar, who never did anything – the new hall is a wasted resource with no benefits to the community.
January 28th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Now is the time for all worthy imaginary friends to come to to aid of those that worship them…..seems quite simple to me …if Ben Bernanke can conjure billions …why can’t the sky daddy “create” a few bucks…????
January 28th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Didn’t these people read their bible? 7 years of feasting followed by 7 years of famine.
January 28th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Sorry, but I can’t feel any pity for them. They buy up prime real estate and saddle the rest of us with their tax burden. Then they turn around and prey on the gullible, and in turn use those people to spread their hatred.
January 28th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
This story has also been covered at the Pharyngula blog. The comment thread generated quite a few suggestions for, as well as real life examples of, churches being put to better use.
January 28th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Should we hold a coffee morning for the poor dears?
January 28th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Seems to me they have not been praying hard enough. If they really, really prayed with enough belief then god would see them OK. On the other hand are they being punished for something. Might there be a secret fornicator, or – surely not – a clandestine gay in the congregations. We know that storms were visted on New Orleans because of offenses against god. And the Tsunami was the consequence of half naked women disporting themselves on the beaches.
Have some of them been working on Sundays, wearing spectacles, playing away marriage-wise. They need to take a long hard look at the rules of the game – as the good book provides – to get out of this mess.
January 28th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Wonderful – best news I’ve heard for ages!
You can only hope that more and more of them end up going the same way.
January 28th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
I think Jesse Jackson may well be right – this could have a devastating effect on some of the poorest communities in America (what a surprise!). And if they are being turned into mosques that’s a BIG step forward!!
January 29th, 2011 at 1:45 am
Jessie Jackson, who loves to remind everyone of his junior association with Martin Luther King, always has an insight that never fails to disappoint. As stated above, where was the all knowing god? He could not see the impending downturn in the economy???
Also, a good point, that those churches with a board thinking on their feet can save their churches by turning them into homeless shelters, shelters for battered women, or military veteran aid. A hospice, or an assisted living facility. If they turn non-denominational, they can recieve substantial public money, enough to keep the wolves at bay, and actually do a unselfish human service during their pathetic hypocritical existence.
But, I have to call bullshit on the muslim statistics. I saw this crap on a couple of Youtube videos as well. The assumption is that every child of every muslim will be a muslim, as will all their children. And the men will continue to have multiple wives and have them all on welfare. Ridiculous.
Pakistan and Iran are probably the nastiest cesspools of fundamentalist islam on the planet. But, let’s just take a look at Iran. Even at this point in time, the young generation of Iranians is so western leaning as to actually threaten the stability of the government. In their own homeland.
If I wanted to hear the doomsday scenario, I’d read a mayan callendar.
NeoWolfe
January 29th, 2011 at 5:03 am
I know what it is! A church, concerned with declining bums on seats, decided to enhance their Sunday morning menu offering. They added prawns to the crackers with red wine. Also on offer, some mayo to hold it all together. Gawd heard about this and sent some of those angelly things, you know, the ones with wings, and was horrified to learn of this because the christian and muzzy guide books prohibit the consumption of shellfish. So, foreclosure it is. See, gawd is really on our side.