Six step tutorial for dechurching yourself

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Diederik Willemsen has put up a page outlining how to get rid of being labelled a church member. Apparently, it’s not as easy as one would think. You need to convince the following organisations to stop counting you as a church member:

  • Local municipality
  • National church body
  • SILA (register for all churches)
  • Local parish
  • Baptism register (also local parish)
  • Bishopric (if you’re a Roman Catholic)

Willemsen believes it’s important that the number of registered members reflects the actual number of members, because churches apparently enjoy certain benefits for having many members.

Recently, 23,000 people have cancelled their membership to the Roman Catholic church in protest of its child abuse practices, NOS Headlines reports. Statistics Netherlands shows that in recent years the number of people that call themselves religious is in decline. This appears to be a function of age—the older age groups are more religious, and as their members die the percentage of religious people decreases.

(Photo by Johan Wieland, some rights reserved)

6 Comments »

  1. eko says:

    God forbid someone be tagged a church member! Yes, be sure to get off the list – so as churches DO NOT receive any residual benefits of your being listed. NOT that any of those churches worked tirelessly to retain the sciences, arts and literature. What a bunch of knuckleheads — put your brains to better use! Save someone’s life – run a soup kitchen — make a REAL difference…

  2. eko says:

    Oh – and how does one get off a roster of individuals (countries) that supported – say, genocide, the Nazis and abortions?

  3. Orangemaster says:

    Churches have also worked tirelessly to molest small children for decades and a whole bunch of other things that are illegal in the real world. Nobody needs to be religious to help anybody with anything.

  4. Orangemaster says:

    Abortion is legal here and in many other Western countries and not an issue.

  5. […] is not what he’s doing, by asking his congregation to pray for people who have decided to dechurch themselves. Schilder also calls these people up, a bit like a marketeer does, to find out why they decided to […]

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