Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Attending Church via Twitch | Citizenship Revoked | A Trillion Dollar Book Empire - Daily Pnut

Attending Church via Twitch | Citizenship Revoked | A Trillion Dollar Book Empire - Daily Pnut

Attending Church via Twitch | Citizenship Revoked | A Trillion Dollar Book Empire

"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." – Ibid.

All the Empty Churches: In 1534 French navigator Jacques Cartier was the first European explorer to discover the St. Lawrence river in present day Quebec, Canada. The founding of Quebec City in 1608 by French explorer Samuel de Champlain marked the beginning of a string of French colonies along the St. Lawrence River. Today Quebec is the second most populous province of Canada, and the only one to have a predominantly French-speaking populous. Catholicism has been the dominant religion in Quebec for over 400 years, so it is no surprise that there are beautiful old churches still found in the province. In the 1950s 95 percent of Quebec's population attended Mass; today that number is only 5 percent. The sharp drop in attendance, along with high maintenance costs, forced heritage groups, architects and the church itself to think of creative ways to preserve historic buildings. Naturally not all buildings could be saved; by April, 547 churches in Quebec had been closed, sold or transformed.

The Notre-Dame-du-Perpetuel-Secours is an imposing Catholic Church in Montreal that has undergone a $3 million renovation, transforming it into the Theatre Paradoxe. It hosts comedic routines, filmed inside a confessional booth, musical events, Zumba lessons, and fetish parties. Some years ago the owners of a local church in Sainte-Elizabeth-de-Warwick transformed it into an upmarket cheese company, but decided to keep a small part of the structure as a functioning chapel for the community. Unfortunately, some residents refused to attend Sunday Mass because they weren't okay with the former nave having been repurposed into a place to store and ripen cheese.

Then there are people who simply prefer to livestream church. Matt Souza is the 27-year-old Richmond, Va. founder of GodSquard Church, a nonprofit organization under the evangelical Assemblies of God denomination. He also happens to be one of 2.6 billion video game players worldwide. From behind a monitor on a desk in his gaming studio, which also serves as his pulpit, Reverend Matt broadcasts a 30-minute sermon on Saturday nights to his scattered congregation via the live-streaming platform Twitch. GodSquad Church is very likely the world's first online-only church for video gamers.



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