{"id":64557,"date":"2017-10-19T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T11:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64557"},"modified":"2017-10-19T06:54:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T10:54:19","slug":"pew-almost-half-of-phillys-839-sacred-spaces-have-new-congregations-or-none","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64557","title":{"rendered":"(Inquirer) Pew: Almost half of Philadelphia&#8217;s 839 sacred spaces have new congregations &#8211; or none"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Philadelphia has 839 historic sacred spaces \u2014 churches, temples, and mosques \u2014 or one for every 1,900 residents. That\u2019s a lot of big, beautiful buildings facing uncertain futures.<\/p>\n<p>The Pew Charitable Trusts decided to inventory the city\u2019s current and former houses of worship, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewtrusts.org\/en\/research-and-analysis\/reports\/2017\/10\/philadelphias-historic-sacred-places\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">released a report Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0on the lay of the laity\u2019s land, looking at the vulnerabilities these structures face \u2014 from physical deterioration to changing neighborhoods and\u00a0shrinking attendance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou hear a lot of anecdotes but we didn\u2019t know how many were still standing, what condition they were in, how they were being used, and their impact on civic life,\u201d\u00a0said Larry Eichel, director of the Philadelphia research initiative at Pew.<\/p>\n<p>Despite\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/phil-zuckerman\/religion-declining-secula_b_9889398.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dwindling religious participation<\/a>, most of the city\u2019s sacred spaces \u2014 83 percent \u2014 are still used for religious purposes. Nearly half are no longer used by the building\u2019s original congregation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/philly\/news\/pew-839-churches-temples-mosques-empty-repurposed-20171018.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Philadelphia has 839 historic sacred spaces \u2014 churches, temples, and mosques \u2014 or one for every 1,900 residents. That\u2019s a lot of big, beautiful buildings facing uncertain futures. The Pew Charitable Trusts decided to inventory the city\u2019s current and former<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=64557\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,184,108,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americau-s-a","category-parish-ministry","category-religion-culture","category-urbancity-life-and-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64561,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64557\/revisions\/64561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}