Feedback from April 15 and Beyond 

click to enlarge

Decline in Churchgoers Not a Tragedy
Sometimes I think the only reason City Weekly runs nonlocal submissions like the April 8 letter "America Unchurched" is so the staff can warm their hands over the flame war they imagine will erupt on Facebook, but I'll bite.

Thomas Knapp spends the first half of his letter pointing out that church attendance is declining. Then comes this: "As a libertarian, I'm inclined to see the hoary hand of the state behind all bad things, and I can make a case for that here." See the trick there? With this sentence the writer simply takes it as a given that the decline in church attendance is in fact a bad thing. Yet, he offers no evidence or perspective to justify such a conclusion.

Earlier, he attributes the decline to two phenomena. First, the social needs that church participation used to fill are satisfied by other means, such as civic institutions and internet communities of interest. Second, people who aren't raised as churchgoers as kids are unlikely to adopt the habit of their own choosing as adults. Neither of these phenomena make it seem like the decline in church attendance is necessarily a tragedy unfolding.

(I mean, if I told you "People don't do activity X so much anymore since other options fit the need more effectively and unless you're indoctrinated into it as a kid, it just doesn't appeal that much as an adult," would you think activity X was so precious?) Instead, it just sounds like a normal outgrowth of people preferring to do other things with their lives. As a libertarian, Knapp should try harder to appreciate the primacy of such individual informed choices.

Knapp worries about how internet communities of interest will lead to echo chambers and more extreme, isolated views. That is a legitimate point. But the letter could have provided useful context by mentioning that for most of our country's history, this is the same effect that organized religion itself has had on us, both through institutional practices and the very same self-selection that Knapp decries when it happens online. Knapp would do well to remember the old MLK adage about the most segregated hour in American life being 11 o'clock on Sunday morning.
Keith Alleman
Salt Lake City

"Fool Me Twice" April 15 Private Eye Column
John Saltas wrote the American dream ended when millions refused to take a vaccine. I believe the reciprocal: The dream ended when a majority of Americans blindly donned masks when there was no scientific backing to do so.

Saltas also singled out Pierre Delecto as the only member of Utah's congressional delegation who had integrity. I believe that Pierre Delecto [Mitt Romney's since-discarded Twitter handle] is a politician sans political character.

But, what prompted this note was Saltas' throwaway that dumping meds in your toilet killed fish.

Mike Luers, head of Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District in Summit County, has been working with Baylor University to test the impact of birth control pill residue in treated wastewater flowing downstream. It appears that the downstream fish population is becoming androgynous as a result.

There is a fix for this problem—very expensive—that is now being contemplated.
Steve Taylor
Park City

Correction: In the April 15 Essentials entertainment listings, several local female playwrights were as mentioned as performing monologues of historical characters for a Pygmalion Productions' video as part of If This Wall Could Talk. Unfortunately, local playwright Elaine Jarvik was misidentified; we regret our error.