From the Wall Street Journal….

“We are seeing more stress in churches than we have in modern history,” says Mark G. Holbrook, president and chief executive of the Evangelical Christian Credit Union of Brea, Calif., which specializes in lending to churches. The credit union has moved to foreclose on seven of its 2,000 member churches this year, and Mr. Holbrook says he expects to take similar action against two more next year. Before now, it had foreclosed on only two churches in its 45-year history.

Church Mortgage & Loan Corp. of Maitland, Fla., another church lender, foreclosed on 10 church properties in the past couple of years. Unable to sell any of them, the company didn’t have the funds to pay more than 400 bondholders the estimated $18 million it owes, says company lawyer Elizabeth Green. Church Mortgage filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March.

Strongtower Financial of Fresno, Calif., says two of its 300 evangelical church borrowers are in default, compared with only one in the previous 15 years.

One of the most disgusting things about the modern Christian scene is the amount of money that gets spent on church buildings. Even the ones that don’t go into debt to build still spend the majority of their budget on upkeep and expansion.

One of the reasons that this country is messed up is that we have this cultural notion that that the Government should take care of the poor and that churches should build infrastructure.