The Great Dechurching, a forthcoming book analyzing surveys of more than 7,000 Americans conducted by two political scientists, attempts to figure out why so many Americans have left churches in recent years. The authors find that religious abuse and corruption do play roles in pushing attendees away, but that a much larger share of the people surveyed indicated that they left the church “for more banal reasons,” as Meador puts it:

The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children.

As Meador notes, part of the problem is the unusual role that religion has come to play in some Americans’ lives. The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson coined the term workism in 2019—and diagnosed himself as a worker under its thrall. “The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production,” Thompson wrote then. “They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community.”

Workism doesn’t deliver on these promises, Thompson noted: “Our jobs were never meant to shoulder the burdens of a faith, and they are buckling under the weight. A staggering 87 percent of employees are not engaged at their job, according to Gallup. That number is rising by the year.” Even so, for those who have come to view work as the guiding principle of life, other priorities can quickly fall by the wayside. “The underlying challenge for many is that their lives are stretched like a rubber band about to snap—and church attendance ends up feeling like an item on a checklist that’s already too long,” Meador writes.

Meador, for his part, arrived at an ambitious way for churches to bring Americans back into the fold after reading The Great Dechurching. Maybe churches could better serve their members by asking more of them, he argues:

A vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our career, to prioritize prayer and time reading noscripture over accomplishment … Churches could model better, truer sorts of communities, ones in which the hungry are fed, the weak are lifted up, and the proud are cast down.

Creating an environment where people can ask more of one another, and give more in turn, seems like a wise rule of thumb for any community. If only American life didn’t make such a prospect feel so daunting.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/08/why-church-religion-attendance-decline/674916/

Pope Francis is dead. I am conscious that this channel is numerically irrelevant, and even more that since abandoning leftist groups on Telegram, I'm mostly using it as a space for myself, and thus right now I'm mostly speaking to myself. Nevertheless, as a person who has struggled and is struggling a lot with faith, I'd like to say that Francis was one of the main reasons as to why I decided to reconvert again to Christianity (with a lot of unresolved questions). He offered a look into a Christianity that was a response to the Christofascism that's become the norm in political life. He promoted peace (the only global leader to do so in good faith, frankly), was deeply conscious of the perverse nature of capitalism, and brought attention back to the poor and those struggling as well as the environment.
I'm now terrified they'll elect a disgusting reactionary in his place. If that were to happen, I don't think I'll stay in the Catholic Church much longer.
He'll be sorely missed.

A stunning article written by a friend

https://www.legauche.net/movimento-socialista/papa-francesco-lavoro-migranti-ambiente-e-movimenti-un-bilancio-di-un-pontificato-anomalo/

"In recent weeks, polls have shown Republican voters becoming far more skeptical of cutting taxes for the rich. Reflecting that shift, GOP lawmakers are now trial-ballooning proposals to increase some levies on the wealthy. Some MAGA voices are attempting to articulate a Republican-leaning, tax-cut version of Democrats’ traditional redistributionist rhetoric, arguing that higher taxes on millionaires should finance bigger tax cuts for the working class.

Whereas more than half of Americans approved of Reagan’s first major high-income tax cut proposal, only about a third of Americans approved of Bush’s similar tax proposal at the same time in his presidency. By the time Trump assumed office for his first term, less than a third of Americans supported his high-income tax cut initiative, knowing that such policies have failed to benefit them personally or boost the macroeconomy."

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/gop-tax-revolt-collapse-trump/

Brundtland’s report replaced quantitative assessments with a qualitative vision. It proposed new criteria of success: “human development criteria,” to be achieved within the framework of “sustainable development.” Here the benchmarks for evaluating government action changed. They still produced a ranking of the different nations’ performance, but these were no longer based on growth and GDP.

The quantitative dimension had to take a step back, in favor of an assessment of the qualitative progress in the human condition. Of course, it is now well understood that this discourse has limits of its own. But it did mark a step forward in the mental universe of politics. In my own case, it prompted a break with a whole way of thinking — and offered an alternative to the traditional, entirely quantitative focus of the wing of the Left to which I had belonged.

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/melenchon-virtue-universalism-humanity-creolization/

There is no doubt that the “worker-to-worker organizing” model outlined by Eric Blanc in his new book, We Are the Union, is key to union organizing success. [...] Blanc writes, “Three things in particular define the new model: 1) Workers have a decisive say on strategy, and 2) Workers begin organizing before receiving guidance from a parent union, and/or 3) Workers train and guide other workers in organizing methods.” At times, this definition seems not only expansive but also paradoxical, encompassing everything from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)–affiliated Burgerville campaign in the Pacific Northwest to the new leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW), who came to power through the efforts of a reform movement within the union.

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/worker-organizing-starbucks-democracy-blanc/

open corruption part 1

https://readsludge.com/2025/04/21/trumps-top-inaugural-donor-is-poultry-company-fined-for-price-fixing-and-antitrust-violations/

open corruption part 2:

The article reveals that the Trump administration’s new tariff policy, while sweeping and publicly framed as tough on imports, includes a list of over 1,000 product exemptions—many of which appear to have been made without clear criteria or transparency. One such exempted item is PET resin, a plastic used in bottles. Its inclusion has baffled industry members since it doesn’t obviously fit into the White House’s stated exempt categories (pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, energy, etc.).

The exemption benefited Reyes Holdings, a major Coca-Cola bottler owned by politically connected billionaire donors to Republican causes. Reyes had recently hired a powerful lobbying firm with deep Trump ties, suggesting a possible influence on the exemption decision. However, there's no direct evidence linking the lobbying to the carve-out, and both Reyes and the administration declined to comment.

The process contrasts sharply with Trump’s first term, when tariff exemption requests were submitted through a public, formal procedure. Now, companies lobby behind closed doors, raising concerns among trade experts about favoritism or corruption. Other oddly exempt items include asbestos, sucralose, and cuttlebone—suggesting arbitrary decision-making or heavy political influence. Meanwhile, industries like agriculture also successfully lobbied for exemptions.

https://truthout.org/articles/politically-connected-firms-benefit-from-trump-tariff-exemptions/

open corruption 3

An analysis released Monday in the wake of new Federal Election Commission filings shows that the Trump administration has dropped or paused federal enforcement cases against at least 17 corporations that donated to the president’s inaugural fund, an indication that companies’ attempts to buy favor with the White House are already paying off.

“Apple donated $1M. Trump exempted most of Apple’s imports from tariffs,” Reich added. “Coinbase donated $1M. Trump’s SEC dropped a major lawsuit against them. See how this works?”

Bank of America, Capital One, Coinbase, DuPont, and JPMorgan are among the corporations that donated to Trump’s inauguration and subsequently had federal enforcement cases dismissed.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-drops-or-pauses-cases-against-17-corporations-that-funded-his-inauguration/

Open corruption part 4

The Trump administration's decision to halt enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) has severely undermined the U.S.'s efforts to combat money laundering and illicit finance. The CTA, aimed at requiring companies to disclose their beneficial owners, was a major step toward closing regulatory loopholes that have long allowed criminals to hide behind anonymous shell companies. However, with the enforcement provisions effectively suspended, the law's purpose is now in jeopardy, allowing criminal actors to continue exploiting the U.S. financial system with little accountability.

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/money-laundering-corruption-financial-crime/

"I define the worker-to-worker model as one in which organizing is relatively lightly staffed, and therefore scalable, because “1) Workers have a decisive say on strategy, and 2) Workers begin organizing before receiving guidance from a parent union, and/or 3) Workers train and guide other workers in organizing methods.” Unfortunately, this cluster of attributes has been exceedingly rare from the 1950s onward, contrary to Fong’s suggestion that a staff-intensive approach was limited to the 1990s.

Even after the post-pandemic uptick, exceptionally few unions have anything resembling the rigorous worker-to-worker training and structures of the NewsGuild’s national Member Organizer Program, which trains up worker leaders in all the responsibilities that in other unions are typically carried out by staff. It would be a game changer for the labor movement if most unions began to organize like the Guild.

In order to help make that happen, my book sought to clarify the urgency of adopting a new model and to specify the practices unions could adopt, including big online organizing training programs; worker coaching of new drives; small nationwide “pods” of worker leaders to pass on encouragement and expertise; elaborate online systems for worker leaders to keep track of the organizing skills and the campaign benchmarks; and mass seeding of new drives through worker outreach, digital tools, and the distribution of materials to support self-organized drives."

"Finally, even though the idea of putting workers in the drivers’ seat is not new, I do think my case for doing so is unique. Rather than fall into a common labor-leftist trap of treating militancy as a silver bullet, or downplaying the importance of resources, experienced staff, and systematic organizing training, I argue that these need to be deployed in a way that’s scalable.

I remain unconvinced of her skepticism. Services now make up over 75 percent of the United States’ GDP, while manufacturing contributes about 10 percent. And the overwhelming majority of our workforce is also now employed in services. Don’t these economic shifts from a century ago oblige us to adjust our unionization (and electoral) strategies accordingly?"

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/blanc-response-worker-organizing-unions/