As an ex-Mormon, very few of them WANT to go every week, but the conditioning and social stigma are very real.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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More than you'd think. Many people base their entire social lives around their church. All of their friends go to the church. They spend a lot of time doing church activities and church events.
And in this very lonely world, even though I'm an atheist, I can't really blame them.
Let’s just make a nice atheist church. “The Church of the Holy Nothing” or whatever.
R'amen!
Why don't we just call it idk.. a community center???
We do already. It's called the gym. Get. Swole. Save. Soul.
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I'm not convinced, sounds very much like when they say if you don't follow religious morality, how can you have any morality at all.
There can be, and in many places there is, community, social life, sense of belonging and all that stuff outside of groups of lunatic happy clappers.
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Yeah, the high school I went to required at least one semester of religious studies each year, but we had some very cool classes (like a class on cults that included looking at early Christianity through the lens of a cult), and the sociological aspects were massive. In fact, the journals relating to religion with the highest impact factor are all sociological based.
The social component of religion is an underappreciated factor and influential over even the beliefs usually.
All that said, I can't fathom ever obligating myself to a pre-noon social gathering on my weekends by choice. Even Sunday 'brunch' was only ever attended if around 1pm.
If rewriting the rules for church anyways, let's at least add mimosas and have it start way later than it does.
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Old Mormon joke:
What’s the fastest way to go though a case of beer?
- Invite a Mormon fishing.
What’s the best way to keep that case of beer to yourself?
- invite two Mormons fishing
Also an exmo. I don't believe 67% attend weekly. That is massively overstated. I've read estimates from John Dehlin maybe? It's been a while) of 33% activity rate, which means attending once a month.
This is 67% of people who self identified as mormon in their poll. I would believe that number, as most who don't attend wouldn't say they're mormon.
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So, are they lying for the Lord, or maybe the poll is flawed, or the Church reports membership differently than the poll respondents did? Could be any or all, LOL.
For the poll being flawed, it was a telephone poll, and while they've tried to capture more cell phone numbers, you still have to answer and be willing to engage:
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews from combined surveys conducted in 2021-2023, with an aggregate random sample of 32,445 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
Phone interviews are highly skewed towards older people. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the correct number for older generations.
I think the flaw is that "attendance" is self reported. Mormons know they are supposed to attend, and there's no harm is saying that they do to a pollster. There's no way for the pollster to validate that.
I'm not religious now, but I was raised in a Methodist household and know the dogma and culture.
Church membership and attendance is kind of an interesting phenomenon to me. It's a form of community that I think has ancient roots and satisfies a social need that we don't have many other good structures for. A church is a tribe. You don't have to like everyone in your tribe but they're your tribe and people enjoy a psychological benefit from clearly distinguishing their 'us' and 'them'. This structure has some modern analogies- sports teams, clubs, professional groups, etc, but a church also has a larger connection to a denomination and a religion. This extends the 'tribe' out such that even if you leave your city and have to find an entirely new tribe- you can find a church that will more-or-less treat you as a local member of the tribe.
That's pretty comforting and helps a lot of people define their life- having a group of people they know will accept you as 'one of them'. Other modern social structures don't really have this assumed tribal acceptance feature. Coming into a new team or club from the outside doesn't share the connection that churches have with other denominations. Granted a lot of that is ceremonial and not reality- churches have in\out groups and even the most polite congregations will quietly ostracize people, but it's all within the framework of the church\tribe. Not many people ever really get tossed out of the tribe.
I wish we could recapture some of the positive aspects for community building without the dogma, but I'm afraid it's two sides of the same coin and you really can't separate the positive community aspects from the dangers of dogma.
There have been a lot of community groups that have dwindled in popularity as work hours and commute times increased just to cover the cost of living. Rotary clubs, Shriners, 4H, and a bunch of others were all over the place when I was a kid, but nobody from my generation kept them going because we were too busy just trying to make ends meet.
It is hard to get something like that going again when scheduling is difficult. Plus finding out on social media that other members have horrible opinions they never brought up at the club doesn't help....
Social places away from home and work are known as "third spaces" and their decline in the US is becoming more widely-known.
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I too wish we could recapture some of the positive aspects for community building without the dogma. Maybe it takes dogma to trigger the bonding of the tribe? Something about shared viewpoint/perspective of the world that speaks to our ancient instincts? I dunno.
There are completely secular community centers in many municipalities. But most of the ones I've been to are generally empty.
The thing with third-places is that you need something to do. Even if its getting a pint with friends at a regular time, pick-up games of some flavor of sportsball, or, throwing dice at nerds over little toy armies, you have to plan something.
As much as I dont want to give religion any credit... They got that part right. The part that I take issue with is how they keep people coming back, fear of being thrown out of the community.
Community centers like what your describing require coordinators or someone to plan things, and they dont exactly get the same benifits that religous organizations do.
Part of the problem though is that out-group exclusion is baked in, and if you wrap that up in anything important, it gets toxic even if the dogma is kinda loose. I mean, why aren't UU churches absolutely bursting at the seams? In part, it's because they refuse to reject anyone.
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I want to go every week. I miss it. I love the music, the tradition, the community, and being part of something bigger than myself.
I do not want to be associated with the kind of people who scream at "sinners" entering abortion clinics but don't actually do anything to solve the reason they go there. Nor with heriarchies that shuffle pedophiles around to avoid punishment instead of throwing the book at the. Nor with the mega churches who refuse to help flood or hurricane victims, but instead locked their doors. Nor with the cult of idolatry that venerates a fraudulent, adulterous, pathological lying narcissist.
Being associated with Christians made me stop wanting to go to church. I'm fucking pissed.
I left the Church when I realized that my Christian values were no longer welcomed.
Find some volunteering group, you'll get tradition, community and being part of something bigger, prolly not the music though. Where I am we are big into Emergency services, they are mostly run by volunteers but really you can find whatever works for you from animal shelters to helping people with personal finance if that's your niche. , No need to waste time idolatring an imaginary friend that doesn't reciprocate, you can do some actual good and feel good!
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While I'm not a church person at all, I've definitely heard from progressive church goers (even non-religious ones that like the social aspects) that there's certainly options and denominations available that aren't that.
If it's something you actually miss or feel like would make your life more full, it might be worth church shopping for places that have a different attitude or approach from the churches that turned you off.
I think there's even non-denominational offerings mirroring the social setup but with no religious beliefs incorporated.
Episcopal churches are generally inclusive, while going hard on tradition/ritual. If you like classical music and structure, that’s a good place to start. If you live near a university, you’re likely to see some students and faculty there.
United Methodist churches can be very welcoming and inclusive in the US, but there’s a schism going on over LGBT marriage/ordination, so it can vary by area/congregation. You’ll know pretty quickly what kind of place it is. In a few years, the “Global Methodist Church” will be conservative, and United Methodists should be reliably inclusive. You may even see gay and trans pastors at some UMCs.
Anything with Baptist in the name is most likely going to be terrible. There are some rare exceptions though. If they’re politically conservative, you’ll hear about it 5 minutes into the sermon. If you like “contemporary” Christian music then they’re more likely to do that better than others.
Since COVID, you can church shop online lol. Don’t need to wake up early or go travel. You can see the sermon and music any time from home. If a church hasn’t invested in streaming their services at this point, they probably skipped COVID guidelines and killed a bunch of their people, so it’s a decent filter.
The MAGA led culture wars have exposed many churches and many christian’s as insufferable bigots who are far more obsessed with making sure everyone in their group agrees on who to hate than they are with sharing such concepts as grace or love. The Methodist split has been especially damning. It is insane to me to see so many otherwise normal people frothing at the mouth with hate and anger because the main denomination dared to even consider being more accepting of homosexuality.
I was recently told about a woman who was glad her church disaffiliated from United Methodist because she didn’t want to have to find another church. I thought, but bit my tongue, “woman, had your church stayed it would still be the exact same church it always was, it changed by leaving…” these people have been manipulated into thinking any church that stays somehow becomes a satanic cult… because maybe, one day in the future, the main governing body might allow gay preachers… it’s so stupid…
because maybe, one day in the future, the main governing body might allow gay preachers…
Maybe that's a reason people give, but it's 100% not an actual reason. They don't want gay people to exist anywhere in public life.
They've been insufferable since at least the 80's with the Moral Majority and all that other shit.
I lost my religion over the pandemic. Watching Christians respond to Trump in the most unchristian way possible didn't leave me much of a choice.
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Good.
Organized religion eventually ruins everything it is involved with.
The sooner it dies out, the better.
30℅ regular church attendance is still crazy, blows my European mind. I personally don't think I have ever met a person who attends it even once a year nor I ever knew of such people through friends.
I'm guessing you're German, Nordic or Slav? The more towards Portugal/Italy you go, the more religious the population is. Even the most religious European country is still far less religious than the US, however.
In Netherlands church attendance has gone down, but it should still be relatively easy to find someone who goes to church. The attendance isn't divided equally across the Netherlands though. Meaning, it is way higher in small villages than in a city. Which is sometimes easy to see by seeing what political party people have voted for.
For NL apparently 12% regularly goes to church. And 43% is "aligned" with a church, don't know what they exactly meant. See https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/longread/statistische-trends/2023/religieuze-betrokkenheid-in-nederland for a Dutch source.
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I used to go like 3x weekly. Never again.
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Let's start taxing them too
Sadly irrational thinking takes other forms. Look at MAGA, or QAnon or any other weird belief system. They all share traits with religions or cults in one sense or another.
Who needs to go to church when you can read the $60 Trump Bible at home? Complete with Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance!!!
Wait... there are no ads? I'm surprised!
A.k.a. "Many idiots are dead from performatively coughing into each other's mouths until they died from COVID."
I stopped going YEARS ago, but even my mom and dad broke the habit once the pandemic happened.
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