Interesting Links for 20-08-2023

[andrewducker]

1. 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression - but now the people are fighting back

(tags:Iran history USA UK revolution Islam religion )

2. Hundreds of churches will have to close, says Church of Scotland

(tags:Scotland religion )

Comments

[ckd]

My headcanon for the "no US support for deposing Mosaddegh" timeline is something like this:

• No Iranian Revolution, or at the very least a less anti-American-focused one
• No Iranian seizure of the US embassy in Tehran (even if there was an Islamic revolution, not having the Shah protected by the US makes this less likely)
• No Iran-Iraq War - or if there is one, no reflexive US support for Saddam Hussein as "the enemy of my enemy"

This gets us to the later 1980s, where the second-order divergences begin. (These could potentially be even larger if Carter is re-elected in 1980, but I think that was still unlikely.)

• Saddam Hussein doesn't expect US acquiescence to an invasion of Kuwait, so he doesn't
• No Operation Desert Shield / Desert Storm
• No US troops in Saudi Arabia for years
• Osama bin Laden loses a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda

Again, maybe a US presidential election flips - 2000's was much closer than 1980's. :-D

If al-Qaeda is weakened enough and/or President Gore actually reads his daily briefings, perhaps there isn't a September 11th attack at all.

Even if the attack does happen, invading Iraq is no longer quite so easily justified without the previous history and the US and allies can concentrate on Afghanistan. This seems likely to still fail in the long run (Afghanistan has a long history in that department), but lacking the larger distraction of Iraq is unlikely to make it a worse failure....

[andrewducker]

That all seems at least semi-reasonable to me. Things are certainly unlikely to be worse!

[armiphlage]

With respect to #2 : 60,000 attendees out of a population of about 5.5 million? That's barely 1% of the population of Scotland; I would not have thought it would be so low.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, there's been a big push by the humanist and secular orgs around the census to basically say "You don't go to church, you don't give to the church, you don't actually believe, stop putting yourself down as a Christian on the census!"

[bens_dad]

... "but, I do believe that turning the other cheek is a good thing ..."

[andrewducker]

Oh absolutely. But the point is that you can be a good person, who happens to agree with a few lines in The Bible, without giving credibility and clout to an organisation that believes a bunch of things you don't.

[danieldwilliam]

The church that my wife sings at has recently merged with 2 other local churches. It was itself the result of a merger with another local church a few decades before. I doubt the latest merger is the only one going on at the momment in the city we live in.

The trend of reducing participation in organised religion in Scotland has been going on for while and I think will probably accelerate this decade as the church-going population ages.

It will leave quite a few large, oddly shaped buildings in the country.

[andrewducker]

Yes, with an average age of 62 I don't see how it can help but accelerate.

I have some sympathy with people who are caught up in what must seem like some very fast changes happening all around them.

I do wonder how economically feasible the Church of Scotland *is* at this point. If it was to go from a standing start, how many buildings it would be using, etc. Basically, are they cutting back as far as they should be, to make themselves stable for a decade, or will they be in a constant cost-cutting mode for the next couple of decades until they reach that level.

[danieldwilliam]

Very crude back of the spreadsheet calc.

Say 70,000 active members of a congregation in the Church of Scotland. Assume 300 is minimal viable size of a congregation (I am guessing a lot here). That implies something like 230 CoS churches in Scotland. Let's round that up to 250 to cover isolated island and highlands communities.

Per capita Scotland that's one CoS church per 21,000 or 22,0000 people, or between 20-25 Church of Scotland churches in Edinburgh. You could perhaps be more efficient in the cities and have 10 in Edinburgh but larger church congregations.

The wikipedia page for the Church of Scotland says they have about 1,350 congregations. I think that is crudely 5 times as many congregations as I think they need.

[andrewducker]

That makes sense. 300 seems like quite a lot of people, but actually it makes sense from a "number of people you'd need to be paying towards upkeep to sustain a church" point of view.

Being over-churched by 5x doesn't seem very sustainable. Indicates that they think they can sustain a church with 60 congregants. Which sounds expensive per congregant.

[danieldwilliam]

St Giles Cathedral says it has 314 seats as a music venue - but there is plenty of space not occupied by seats. St George and St Andrews on George Street has a capacity of 250. So 300 seems like it would fill a large church.

Say a Church of Scotland minister costs £40k a year, then each of the 300 people in the congregation need to be chipping in about £150 a year just for staffing one minister.

I suppose the sustainability depends on how much of an endowment the church has. If I'm reading the latest accounts correctly they have about £50m in income from investments.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, that's going to help a lot.

Checking, it seems like there are around 70 CoS churches in Edinburgh:
https://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/church-finder/

[danieldwilliam]

70 feels like about 3 times as many as my very crude calculations suggest would be more sustainable.

You and I should join.

[andrewducker]

I hear they have £50million they need help spending!

[danieldwilliam]

There's a question about what happens to the funds under management when the church shrinks. The Church of Scotland might have a billion quid invested plus lots of property.

[andrewducker]

They should probably sell some of it off, as they go along, so that it's not "Last Christian Standing".

Not that I think it'll get *that* low. And also, they will have a bunch of pension liabilities and suchlike.

[danieldwilliam]

I could get right behind Christianity if I thought I was going to be the Last Christian Standing.

[andrewducker]

Like Highlander. But with nails.

[jducoeur]

Yes, with an average age of 62 I don't see how it can help but accelerate.

The most interesting question is less the average age, and more the rate of change of the average age.

This was driven home to me many years ago, when I was still active in Freemasonry. There was a study run by the Scottish Rite Masons, showing that the average age of Masons was rising at a rate of eight months per year. You don't need to know math deeply to recognize the demographic deathtrap that implies, and it forever altered the way I thought about organizations, recruitment, and long-term viability...

[andrewducker]

The largest increase in median age between 2011 and 2021 was for those who identified as “Buddhist” or “Christian” (with an increase of six years for both)

.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/articles/religionbyageandsexenglandandwales/census2021#religion-by-age