Tbh having been living near some very powerful churches for a while now, there are PARTS of their mutual aid that effective. They foster actual connections between their members, net enough money to have people on staff who’s permanent jobs are to orchestrate aid efforts, and run long-running second hand stores and shit like that which employ lots of down on their luck people. There’s stuff to learn from there.
That said, the spend huge amounts of the money to stuff that does not directly go into helping others. Lots of it goes into glorifying the church, evangelizing missions of no material benefit, and paying higher-ups lots of money.
I...uh...what?
Tbh having been living near some very powerful churches for a while now, there are PARTS of their mutual aid that effective. They foster actual connections between their members, net enough money to have people on staff who’s permanent jobs are to orchestrate aid efforts, and run long-running second hand stores and shit like that which employ lots of down on their luck people. There’s stuff to learn from there.
That said, the spend huge amounts of the money to stuff that does not directly go into helping others. Lots of it goes into glorifying the church, evangelizing missions of no material benefit, and paying higher-ups lots of money.