America’s empty church pews are now on sale

Are we headed for a godless future? Plus: Millennial job-switchers, US gun exports and more. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a godless future of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - People's faith in God may [sway](, - Millennials [switch jobs]( more today. - US guns [exported](, a price to pay, - The bond [bull market]( fades away. Are You There God? It's Me, [Jessica](. One thing you might not know about me is that I love Facebook Marketplace. And I’ve noticed something cropping up there more lately: church pews. Like, rows and rows and rows of them. Pew pew pew pew I have so many questions. If I buy a pew from a religious organization, is it considered tax deductible? And if I do buy one, do I need a church of my own? Or can I just put it in the backyard and use it as a bench? And finally: Why oh why are churches selling their pews? Perhaps [this chart]( answers that last question: “If religion in America were bought and sold like a stock, now might be a good time to short it in a big way,” Stepen Mihm writes. (The [whole thing]( — you asked, I listened! — is free and outside the paywall.) When pandemic lockdowns forced churchgoers to pack their prayer books and say their psalms at home, organized religion — and Christianity in particular — became a bit disorganized. Priests learned how to “do YouTube'' so that people could watch church on the TV. But some just stopped saying their prayers altogether. The decline in faith-based gatherings has some people wondering whether America is headed for a godless future. That’s probably not the case, Stephen writes. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean, religion is cyclical, and faith in it tends to oscillate. Perhaps in elementary school you learned about the first European settlers who came to America to escape “religious persecution.” While that’s true-ish, it leaves out the part about how God was kinda on the outs at the time: “Many of the first settlers spent more time worshipping [Mammon]( than the Christian God,” Stephen says. Even the Hester Prynne-hating Puritans grew less jazzed by the idea of religion over time. “By the 1690s, church membership in the region had [plummeted]( to 15%,” he writes, with [one clergyman]( calling Maryland a place in which “the Lord’s day is profaned, religion despised, and all notorious vices committed.” The “vacillation between piety and skepticism” has prevailed throughout America’s history, Stephen writes, and will probably continue into its future. Beyond that, any polls or surveys that attempt to declare a religious renaissance — or lack thereof — should be taken with [a wee grain of salt](. Studies have found that a lot of people who claim they go to church [do not](. (Which, I know: Lying … about going to church? What happened to thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor??) Alas. At least there’s nothing in the Bible that says thou shalt not sell thy neighbor’s pew on Facebook Marketplace. Otherwise, we’d have a lot of sin on our hands. [Flight Risk]( Let’s take a time machine back to 2013, shall we? Macklemore’s “[Thrift Shop](” is playing on the radio. Paula Deen is in the doghouse for using a [racial slur](. And [millennials]( are staying at their jobs for a total of 0.5 seconds before hopping to the next one: Except, that last one’s not really the case. For more than a decade, we were told that millennials were “[a flight risk](,” a danger to Corporate America’s longstanding tradition of company loyalty. But “like a lot of other things said about millennials in those days, this was mostly nonsense,” Justin Fox [says](. The thing is, younger workers have always swapped jobs much more frequently than older ones. Not until 2021 did we start to see a significant uptick in the data: Although that jump in job flippery is worth paying attention to, it’s nothing to worry about on its own. For the most part, “the statistics seem to indicate that job turnover is less a character trait of a particular generation than a product of the labor market into which young adults come of age,” Justin writes. So before you go sharing some [article]( you read on LinkedIn proclaiming “job hopping is the Gen Z way,” think twice about the rumor you’re about to spread. American Guns Coffee and bananas: Those are two of Guatemala’s [biggest exports]( to America. But what if I told you the coffee and bananas from Guatemala could kill you? You’d probably steer clear of your morning brew and fruit smoothie, just as a precautionary measure. And you’d expect that Guatemala would stop selling you its coffee and bananas. Because nobody wants to die from an export, right? Right. But if that’s the case, then why on earth is this happening: Pistols and rifles. Those are two of America’s [big exports]( to Guatemala. And over the past three years, there’s been an uptick in murders in Guatemala after 11 years of decline. More than 80% have involved firearms — an astounding number of which were legally imported from the US. Sales of US-made semi-automatic firearms in Guatemala have almost doubled in just two years, and the US government has played a starring role in that rise. “It is short-sighted in the extreme to think that mass sales of guns to troubled foreign nations is good for Americans,” [writes]( Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP. In 2020, former President Donald Trump stopped allowing the State Department to review gun export applications, instead giving that authority to the Commerce Department. The NRA was tickled pink by this decision, calling it “among the most important pro-gun initiatives by the Trump administration to date.” And Guatemala is hardly alone in its rise in murders, Bloomberg writes: “Mexico has long complained about the flow of US firearms to drug traffickers, and across Central America and far beyond, countries are suffering from an influx of US guns.” “It’s hard to think of a greater perversion of this country’s national interest, or a more morally grotesque public policy, than the murderous chain of corruption” that the US is facilitating, Francis Wilkinson [says](. The same people who rally to “build the wall” and [condemn]( asylum seekers are the ones building the guns that force them to seek asylum in the first place. But to gun manufacturers, it’s all good, as long as the profits allow them to afford a cup of coffee every morning. Make it with skim milk, so it can be guilt-free. Crash Course "I would buy [Depression Barbie]( who just wants to sit in her sweats and watch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice." Emma Gray Writer and co-host of the podcast Love to See It On the latest episode of Crash Course, Timothy L. O’Brien [dives headfirst]( into the colorful world of Barbie, the summer blockbuster that has generated more than $1 billion in global box office sales. Listen to [the whole thing](. Warner Bros. Pictures Telltale Charts There may be plenty of headlines in praise of Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser’s [Zoom-free Fridays]( and [empathy-driven work ethic](, but “investors bruised by years of disappointments [aren’t buying her vision]( until they see the results,” Paul J. Davies writes. For years, Citi has lagged behind JPMorgan and Bank of America on many fronts, including annual returns and net revenue per employee. At the same time, costs are catching up with the bank: Fraser’s attempts to reshape and modernize have cost the bank $10 billion in the past four years. There’s still hope that her gambit will pay off, “but the company still has a long way to travel to realize it,” Paul says. In June, Bill Dudley [predicted]( that rising yields and falling prices will wreak more havoc before they come down, and this chart offers a strong indication that he was right. “I strongly suspect that the bond bull market that began in the early 1980s is over,” he says, [arguing that]( “the paradigm has shifted, and higher yields are back.” Jonathan Levin, for his part, [disagrees with that declaration]( a smidge: “There’s a glass-half-full interpretation that may have been lost in the histrionics: Perhaps the jump in longer-term yields is just what the Federal Reserve needs to complete the proverbial last mile in its inflation fight,” he writes, arguing that rising yields are “a necessary but ultimately temporary part of the disinflation process.” Further Reading Hosting the [Science Fair]( with China will make the US stronger. — Bloomberg’s editorial board China is finding out how [to lose friends]( and influence in Asia. — Karishma Vaswani Chris Christie can save us all. OK, no. But he [can save Republicans](. — Jonathan Bernstein Unlike humans, AI investors do not [emotionally overreact]( to new data. — Matt Levine Microsoft’s reworked [Activision deal]( just might do the trick. — Chris Hughes India’s [shadow-bank business]( is booming despite China’s liquidity crunch. — Andy Mukherjee [Boycott COP28](? That’s only going to hurt Africa and the Global South. — Ndileka Mandela ICYMI A [cocaine warlord]( is saving the Amazon. JPMorgan’s prolific spoofer gets [jail time](. Goldman Sachs is [cracking down]( on RTO. The [BRICS]( meeting is [buzzing](. A [cable-car rescue]( mission in Pakistan. Kickers Our homes are [shrinking](. NYC to Paris in 90 minutes? Sure, [that’d be nice](. What if TikTok can [revive]( the dead? Do you [eat your way]( through the [grocery store](? Scooter Braun’s [empire]( is [collapsing](. Notes: Please send unwanted church pews and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](