Until non-church groups can provide the sort of social support network that churches can in the US they are not going to be able to compete. Given the lack of a social safety net in the US, the fact is a lot of people depend on churches to help with everything from child care to bringing over casseroles when someone gets too sick to cook to organizing holiday and charity events. Our neighborhood association uses a local church as its home base for meetings and events. One of our rival astronomy clubs uses a Lutheran church as its venue for their annual Expo. It's a powerful incentive to stay in the network even for people who've lost enough faith to be apathetic/dissatisfied but not enough to be actively repelled (and risk cutting off all that).
Secular groups have to offer something more than a monthly bitch session or they will never be able to provide the role of doing good in the lives of people who need a playgroup for the kids and a hot meal when they can't make one for themselves.
I mean, shit, Hezbollah offers critical social services to people. They're not serving up ideology in a vacuum, either.
I went to that French-Canadian holiday thing at a Catholic church two weeks ago. It was organized through Meetup historical society that I've been in for a while. There was a major backlash in the Meetup over the fact that we were going to a church for a Mass as an event, and the organizers had to basically give everyone a Francophone Culture 101 lesson explaining why the Church was so essential to the French-speaking community identity. Again, I don't believe that god exists and I generally feel about Christianity like tumblr feels about yt ppl, but I was able to look at the event, say "Oh that sounds neat," sit through the bilingual mass, admire the architecture, browse the parish newsletter, and think it was a very nice event that should happen again next year. I felt damn embarrassed by the people who threw a fit.
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Date: 2015-12-19 06:31 pm (UTC)Secular groups have to offer something more than a monthly bitch session or they will never be able to provide the role of doing good in the lives of people who need a playgroup for the kids and a hot meal when they can't make one for themselves.
I mean, shit, Hezbollah offers critical social services to people. They're not serving up ideology in a vacuum, either.
I went to that French-Canadian holiday thing at a Catholic church two weeks ago. It was organized through Meetup historical society that I've been in for a while. There was a major backlash in the Meetup over the fact that we were going to a church for a Mass as an event, and the organizers had to basically give everyone a Francophone Culture 101 lesson explaining why the Church was so essential to the French-speaking community identity. Again, I don't believe that god exists and I generally feel about Christianity like tumblr feels about yt ppl, but I was able to look at the event, say "Oh that sounds neat," sit through the bilingual mass, admire the architecture, browse the parish newsletter, and think it was a very nice event that should happen again next year. I felt damn embarrassed by the people who threw a fit.