CBC News has examined 33 Canadian churches that burned to the ground since May 2021. Just two were ruled accidental.
Investigators have determined that 24 were deliberately set while others are still under investigation. Some researchers and community leaders suggest Canada’s colonial history and recent discoveries of potential burial sites at former residential schools may have lit the fuse.
Nature is healing ✨🌱
The vast majority of churches are positive influences on their community and don’t deserve to be incinerated. I’m saying this as an atheist.
Edit: I guess I should specify my experience is with Canadian churches. I’ve been to several near me over the years, I can remember a few that even had pride flags in the windows.
Hmm are you thinking of libraries? Because libraries and books should definitely not be burned and are a monumentally positive influence on their communities. I would highly recommend checking one out near you and researching the historical relationship between the indigenous people and “the church” so you better understand the context here.
I didn’t realize that modern churches had time machines that allowed their congregations to go back in time and inflict horrors upon indigenous peoples
If your modern congregation starts in about how residential schools were a not so bad actually when another bunch of childrens graves is discovered there is admittedly a temptation to burn everything to the ground because God isn’t getting around to it fast enough.
[Citation Needed]
I understand why you say that, and I’d like to believe it too. I still wish there were stats on that…
Especially considering they don’t pay taxes. If the value of their social efforts don’t reach the amount of money they’d be paying in taxes, then they’re actually a net negative.
The programs these churches run are typically filling in gaps in social programs that the government doesn’t have the political mandate to enact.
If these churches were taxed you’d see their charities diminished while the funding went to some pork belly spending project, or at the very least not related to what services the church is suddenly not providing.
Not all government spending is a net positive.
Like I said, I wish there were stats on that.
You say “typically”. I think you mean “ideally”, or maybe even “traditionally”.
I think churches should be required to prove their charity like other non-taxable organizations, or they should be taxed like businesses.
Make no mistake, religion has no place in our society. I don’t give a shit how they appear on the outside, they are hateful places that harbor hateful people. They can all get fucked.
I’m saying this as an atheist.
Maybe Canadian churches are just nicer places idk
Yeeeeaaaahhh no. The reason the churches are burning is because Canada is in the midst of coming to terms with a massive genocide that didn’t end until the 1990’s that was spearheaded by a joint effort of the Catholic Church and the Canadian government to rip Indigenous children from their families, remove them from their cultures and languages, forcefully indoctrinate them with the idea they were dirty barbaric and sinful while abusing them and then covering up the deaths of thousands of children many of whom were buried in unmarked graves and downplaying the intergenerational trauma caused to individuals and families.
For more than a few years there have been a lot of memorials with very small shoes and a lot of people who are depressed when another grave site near a church run residential school is discovered with another couple hundred little bodies. It’s kind of a reap what you sow situation for Canadian churches at present. Some are completely unapologetic for the role they played and when there’s this much resentment and anger about how we were all made complict via our ignorance some are likely to feel that matches are more effective than arguements.
The cultural genocide aspect of residential schools ended well before the 1990s, every uneducated virtue signaller like yourself should do some deeper reading into what the last school was actually like in its final years
It isn’t about the last, it’s about the whole cultural impact since the beginning. The last gasp is just the final shameful icing on the cake. The effect of the schools is still very real and present in our modern day society and the rolling damages did not end with the closures.
But then I don’t expect callous intolerance signallers who read history only to find ways to excuse themselves from personal responsibility in making anything better to care. You are too busy drowning in doxastic anxiety and attempting to self-soothe by lying to yourself that nobody is actually deeply perturbed by this, they just are pretending to care for appearance sake.
Being precise about the dates when cultural genocide ended vs when the last residential school shut down does not imply that I think it was a non issue or that I think I shouldn’t care about what happened.
You should calm down and reflect on why you decided to automatically ascribe such extreme and awful viewpoints to a stranger in the internet who never mentioned them.
They’re not
As one of the over 700,000 children that was sexual abused as a child at church, you are clearly living in a fantasy world.
Also, as one Canadian to another; go kick rocks, bud.
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If you don’t like churches burning, then you should target the leadership of the church which is being less than 1,000 million percent cooperative with any investigation into anybody in their institutions history that ever enabled or covered up for this shit. Either we hang some church officials for their inhumanity or the churches need to be burned to the ground to make sure nobody has to look at that shit anymore and be reminded of what they got away with.
Somehow when you kidnap children, murder them in the backyard, bury them without funerals, And then hide all this information from the police, people seem to think that if you get away with it long enough the police shouldn’t investigate you and punish you the way that we would any other child murdering psychopaths. It’s probably best that Canada doesn’t have a death penalty, but then why not punish these people by locking them up?
Do you have a list of specific people you think should be prosecuted?
Your comment history has gone from normal, to advocating cruelty to animals, racism, genocide denial, and blatant false information.
We have free mental health services available in Canada. Use them.
I’ve lived on the same block as two Canadian churches and can assure you they are terrible neighbours and a terrible influence.
Not hating gay people should be the default; no one gets points for that.
[X] Doubt
if it was not for a church near me i would have starved to death. in the usa
If not for a humanist charity near me I would have starved. Didn’t get anything other than food shoved down my throat.
I won’t argue with any of the points you’ve tried to make. I’ll simply pointy out that you’re all over this thread, apologizing for churches. All fucking over.
Christianity might not be very useful and a waste of money, but we shouldn’t defend dumbasses that go around burning buildings for fun.
They’re doing it because of the genocide but ok
This won’t help to give them reparations from the church, it only antagonizes them further.
This might be a bit of a mindblow for you, but some people don’t accept weregilds or, like, care about antagonizing criminal organizations.
What do you call 24 burned down churches?
A good start.
How many children do you think were buried under these churches? Didn’t it all start when the one was discovered to have remains?
They don’t generally bury people under churches and I doubt they were breaking through and digging up church floors to hide the dead children when there’s soft dirt right next to the church. But they were usually buried outside the residential school anyway.
I am not the person to speak with any authority on the subject but you should really look into the history of white imperialism in Canada. It’s as awful as it sounds.
What an awful thing to say
HARD disagree. Churches are a blight – a failure of government and community.
But what about all the missed taxes?
Treat indigenous people like shit for centuries? Don’t be surprised if one day they decide to fight back.
2 were accidents, so 31 were… Acts of God?
I’ll see myself out.
When enough people stop believing in religion, churches will automatically self combust. Apparently Canada is doing well!
Maybe they should look under residential schools for the culprit, I’m sure they’re hiding down there wink wink.
I got banned from Reddit for commenting this on a similar post:
“MOAR”
Yep! It’s good work! We should burn the rest. All of them. Religion is cancer.
Seems like a good way to radicalize religious folks; surely wanton cruelty to those you disagree with has no downsides
Like I get hating religion, there’s a lot there that’s understandable to hate, but its worth considering if being vindictive towards people who’s worldview you don’t like is actually a practical strategy to improving the world. You’re just gonna get new churches that are more dogmatic and convinced of their ‘righteousness in the face of unknown evil’
Taking your anger out on the world is actually kinda bad for the world, who could have guessed
“recent discoveries of potential burial sites at former residential schools may have lit the fuse” npi
What’s wrong with this? Isn’t it “you’ll burn for your sins against gods creation”
Seems fitting to me idk
On a different topic: how’s the Norwegian-inspired black metal scene in Canada doing these days?
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The lord works in mysterious ways
Church burnings in Norway was a thing in the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Norwegian_black_metal_scene#Church_arsons_and_attempts
