The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
Must be the work hours and not that people are realizing the truth 🤷♂️
Also, the vast majority of organized religions are just a front for grifting. “Collection plate” my ass, let me see those books.
Religion is first and foremost a set of practices and second a set of beliefs. In terms of religious practices, most Christian denominations are completely boring. What do you do in the vast majority of denominations? You wear a bunch of formal uncomfortable clothes, you sit on uncomfortable wooden pews while some possible sexual predator praddle on about random nonsense, closing your eyes every once in a while to pray. Speaking in tongues at some giant megachurch might be some freaky cultish shit to many people, but at least it’s something.
The complete sterility of Western Christianity in general and mainstream Protestant denominations in particular can be seen if you compare it with other religious faiths and even compared with Eastern Christianity. Take the Fujianese goddess Mazu that is worshiped in Fujian and Taiwan. The Taiwanese set of religious practices involve a yearly possession except the possession officially doesn’t have a charted path, meaning the people hoisting the statue of the goddess are literally just making up where to go as they’re carrying the statue. And the possession isn’t just taking some quick detour. The randomness of the possession is on the level of days. You might a possession in one year that lasts for a week but another possession in another year that lasts for almost two weeks.
At the end of the day, no one really knows whether these paths that differed each year are actually random and not preplanned, but who fucking cares. It’s festive and it’s fun. For the faithful, there’s a huge physical and emotional investment in constantly tracking where the semi-random possession will go next. For the unfaithful, it’s wacky shit that’s still fun and funny to talk about. Nothing in Western Christianity comes close, so there’s no surprise people will quietly check out of the religion. And add to the historic and modern role Christianity plays in upholding reactionary politics and it shouldn’t be a surprise that the only parts of Western Christianity that aren’t completely sterile like speaking in tongues is completely controlled by reactionaries.
The modern Western replacement for religion is not science, a methodology for uncovering truths related to the material world, but music subcultures and sports fandom because at least you do stuff in music subcultures and sports fandom.
my mom stopped going because she found out they were
spoiler
you know what they were doing.
Church is boring as fuck and I’m hungover?
Probably because it’s boring as fuck. What sense of community do most churches promote? You’re expected to sit on your ass for an hour and listen to some lame guy in a weird outfit blabber. Most people never liked church, but now there’s less of a cultural pressure to be as devoted to the religion you believe in
Some churches are cool and communal, especially black churches, which is probably why black Americans are more likely to still attend than any other race
What sense of community do most churches promote?
A lot of churches offer a sort of “community in a community”. For example, if you are a reactionary, white, married couple (ideally with kids), some evangelical churches can plug you right in to a group of like 5-10 other couples who are basically identical to you. And if you’re in that demographic, doing social things only with people pretty much just like you is what you are looking for.
