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We used to call this going to church. When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches, going to a church potluck was basically being

We used to call this going to church. When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches, going to a church potluck was basically being paired randomly. However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. We are reaping the rewards. I realized yesterday reading about cornel west, that even though I disagree with his politics, I see from his Christianity we have the same concerns, and values. I can't honestly say that about other people

edmundsauto 5y ago
This is a rosy view of religion, although I accept that is your experience and perspective, and thank you for sharing it. To me, church attendance is about making the in/out group very clear. You may feel close to different political views based on your single church or flavor of Christianity, but that's still a pretty limited group. I think church membership has become undesirable because 1) fewer people believe in the supernatural and 2) the stated positions of many major religions on issues of abortion and inclusion.
- nine_k 5y ago
  It's not about religion per se, but about a common religion which has rituals that make people meet each other more, piercing their bubble of like-mindedness (smaller than the religion). It's like going to a supermarket makes you see people more varied than your family circle and your chosen TV show characters. (It does not nudge you to talk to these people, though.)
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    I am not a religious person or church goer, but are the perspectives really that different? To me, it looks like a church is a self selected group of geographically proximate people who tend to look alike and dress alike. You don't usually see much ethnic diversity in a church photo. It's more diverse than sitting at home, but I think exposure to a few TV shows has more diversity of thought, ethnicity, sexuality, etc., compared to going to church. I'm not saying its bad for people to get together and talk. I see that church was an important mechanism for this in the past. However, I can't get past the negatives (supernatural belief, child abuse, kowtowing to authority, shame, ostracism) to believe it will continue to be a net positive. What we need is more of what I think the Unitarians are after - non denominational community.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      The Catholic Church is probably the single most ethnically diverse organization on the face of the earth. https://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population/ https://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-popu...
      - edmundsauto 5y ago
        Right, but the context here is in people attending their local church. Your point is like saying that America is so diverse - it is, but how much do the different ethnicities actually interact?
        iammisc 5y ago
        Catholic churches are the most integrated denomination. And Catholics are the group most likely to intermarry between ethnicities. Speaking of my own family, my brother and I are both married to women of different ethnicities (and differing ethnicities at that). Sources: [1] https://www.jbhe.com/2018/07/americas-churches-are-becoming-more-racially-integrated-but-have-a-long-way-to-go/ https://www.jbhe.com/2018/07/americas-churches-are-becoming-... [2] http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-not-bind-race-religion-and-marriage/ http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-no... > The only exceptions were Catholics. Catholics were almost twice as likely to be in an intermarriage and Catholics who attended services more frequently were slightly more likely to be in an intermarriage, the researchers found. It's more than just your local parish though. When I visited Hungary, it was amazing to go to a church where I didn't speak the language, but still be able to feel totally 'at home', because it was a church, and they were saying mass. Even though it was in Hungarian, I understood exactly what was going on. Then when I visited India, which couldn't be further from Hungary, I had the same experience.
        edmundsauto 5y ago
        The takeaway from those articles seems to be that even the most integrated churches are still trailing average neighborhood integration numbers (which are broadly considered problematic). There has been progress, but there is still a ways to go: > Despite progress in church integration, congregations remain far more segregated than the society in general. Dr. Dougherty, an associate professor of sociology at Baylor University, states that “congregations are looking more like their neighborhoods racially and ethnically, but they still lag behind. The average congregation was eight times less diverse racially than its neighborhood in 1998 and four times less diverse in 2012.” The context here is whether churches are a good way for people of diverse backgrounds to engage and interact. I contend that they have unnecessary elements that make them worse than a non-religious community event (supernatural beliefs, explicit conformity of dress and thought, protecting predators, etc.)
  - watwut 5y ago
    The church I went in as kid was pretty tight socially and people in it were wery like minded. And by all I heard or read about, it is pretty much standard.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > To me, church attendance is about making the in/out group very clear. You may feel close to different political views based on your single church or flavor of Christianity, but that's still a pretty limited group. It's not really though. I mean, being Catholic (and honestly, I know so little about Protestantism that I don't really feel qualified to speak to it), there are a lot of politics in the church. In 'the Big Sort', the author Bill Bishop talks about how Americans are dividing themselves up by geography, religion (or lack thereof), jobs, education, etc. It's like we're splitting in to two different worlds. I've noticed it at church too. Frankly, the left-leaning Catholics have all left. We chock it up to things like abortion and sexual ethics but I don't buy it. Many right-leaning Catholics have severe disagreements with church preaching, especially on the topics of aid to foreigners, the responsibility of society with regards to health care, views on death penalty's usefulness, etc. The only difference to me, is that conservatives tend to value authority and order more, and thus remain catholic even when the church preaches things they don't like. > 2) the stated positions of many major religions on issues of abortion and inclusion. I guess, but man you should see my conservative friends after the priest gives a homily on immigration. If they left the church because of this, I'd accuse them of idolatry -- placing their views on immigration as more important than God. I accuse my leftist friends who leave because of abortion of the same. Independent of the religious and spiritual aspects, it seems to me to be abandoning your community, that has supported you for many years, simply because of one issue we disagree on. That's like leaving your wife because you can't agree on which style of house to buy -- at some point you need to compromise. It's weird because my left-leaning friend's parents are often still Catholic and have the same view as my family does on remaining part of the church even if what they preach is hard. Whereas my younger friends all left. The sad thing though is that I feel there is a lot of missed out opportunities for shared understanding. Despite classifying these parents as 'left-leaning' and myself being more 'right-leaning', I'd consider these people to be intelligent, thoughtful, and friends. Whereas with my own generation, if you label yourself a leftist, all of a sudden right-wingers are supposed to hate you, and vice versa. It just seems dehumanizing. I'd rather chat about politics in a friendly manner with a shared set of concerns over a doughnut on Sunday morning, than in an angry social media screed. But it seems like my generation prefers the latter. And frankly, from my perspective, it feels like my left-leaning friends simply left while we stayed behind to talk.
teachrdan 5y ago
> However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. This comment appears to be a dog whistle, so please do correct me if I'm totally wrong here. But this reads like "Democrats / the left have demonized belonging to a church / Christianity," which is a common right wing talking point. Is that what you're saying here?
- kian 5y ago
  There is no need to violate the principle of charity or HN norms. Whether or not the gp meant Democrats, do you really think that atheists, agnosts, members of all other religions, scientists, artists, spiritualists, conspiracy theorists, and rationalists of all stripes form a monolithic political faction?
- iammisc 5y ago
  I don't mean just the democrats no. It seems to me to be a large faction of people, including certain elements of the 'alt-right'. But yes, you're right in that I perceive the left as having demonized belonging to a church. This explains the growing disconnect between the democratic party and minorities, and why the GOP has started to make gains with them. The democratic party ignores religion at its own peril. It's especially weird since the democratic party used to be really into religion. This is hardly a 'right wing talking point'. My own parents left the democratic party because of this, well before they had ever tuned in to Fox, Limbaugh, or whatever. Labeling something as a 'right wing talking point' is just a democratic dog whistle to ignore real phenomena.
ssully 5y ago
Yeah, I too long for the days past when the US had less cultural problems/conflicts due to high church attendance numbers.
- wavefunction 5y ago
  There was a time in the US when good god fearin' church folk could gather together for traditional cultural expressions like extra-judicial lynchings of wrongly accused black men. You have to think America's lost something over the years. Thankfully.
  - dang 5y ago
    We ban accounts that take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Oh please. It's not like only whites were part of churches. Blacks are more likely to be part of a church anyway. As usual, this is white people's faults.
    - dang 5y ago
      We ban accounts that take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  I know right? What happened to the good old days when the big mainstream church organizations like the SBC were fighting the good fight against evils such as interracial marriage and civil rights?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    > I know right? What happened to the good old days when the big mainstream church organizations like the SBC were fighting the good fight against evils such as interracial marriage and civil rights? You're just picking and choosing. In reality, religious organizations, like the Catholic church for example, were fighting the opposite fight. Perez v Sharp in California was orchestrated by the church: http://ccgaction.org/node/1011 http://ccgaction.org/node/1011 Of course, if we encourage community involvement, there will be good organizations and bad ones. For example, we provide 501(c)3 status to both Planned Parenthood as well as a pro-life organization.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches The mere act of belonging to any given religion pre-selected certain ideas about how the world works and should work. Hardly "all political stripes".
- iammisc 5y ago
  Okay but if everyone attended church, as it used to be in this country, then by definition, essentially all political stripes of any import would be represented in them, and people would have to confront people who disagree with them physically.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    It sounds a lot like what you're saying is "only christians matter", or worse "everyone should either be christian or pretend to be", because I can't see that working any other way. If jews go to temple and christians go to church, and muslims go to mosques, then they don't have to be exposed to each other's opinions. If jews and muslims pretend to be christian and go to church then they can't expose any opinions that go against christian worldview.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      I think this is a valid criticism, but seeing as that we've replaced church with ... nothing, I still find it difficult to imagine that my vision of society would be worse than the one we're living in. The truth is that despite decades of trying, the secular regular get-together groups for people without any unifying interests or socioeconomic status have utterly failed. For most people, church is the only place they're going to be exposed to others that may share absolutely no interests with them and be of widely different socioeconomic status and yet still be acquaintances. Our neighborhoods are segregated by socioeconomic class and increasingly, by profession. Our 'clubs' are non-existent, and where they do exist, cater to special interests and hobbies. We need something that works, not something that is perfect. I still maintain that church, temple, mosque, etc is the best thing.
bsanr2 5y ago
"At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation." It's difficult for me to justify buying into the idea of Christian social life as the source of American unity when 10 years ago participating would have seen me bombarded with the reasons why my homosexuality would see me burn in hell for all eternity, or when 200 years ago it would have seen me bombarded with all the point of scripture that justified my being treated as property. This is as someone whose grandfather was a deacon; I can't imagine what people whose families don't have a church tradition at all must think of this suggestion. I do think that the segregation of social life is at the heart of much of this country's ills. However, perhaps that has more to do with things like, say, Bill and Sally's frankly hysterical fear of sharing a street with the Freemans. How to reduce social division in America in the long-term: ban private schools, fund public schools at the national level, and do it quickly, utterly, and irrevocably. I don't know if you would end up with a single, continental American nation, but the part left still known as "The United States of America" would be profoundly united. Even if you disagree, you must understand that the notion that everyone must attend church for America to achieve some measure of unity is about as radical. The focus must be on the bringing together of disparate communities, secularly.
- war1025 5y ago
  > How to reduce social division in America in the long-term: ban private schools, fund public schools at the national level, and do it quickly, utterly, and irrevocably. We tried this to tame the savages [1], and I don't think people really look back kindly or positively on that choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_sch...
- iammisc 5y ago
  > The focus must be on the bringing together of disparate communities, secularly. Except the 'United' states of America has never been about that kind of community. That's more of the fraternite of the French revolution than the spirit of America. American unity has been due to the result of multiple different organizations and factions all participating in a common undertaking, rather than one centralized organization doing the planning and execution (as would be the case if we 'nationalized' education and did away with private schooling). My view of America as one in which everyone can belong to different organizations, but still work together is the historical norm. In de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America', written at the founding of the USA, de Tocqueville (an outside french observer) writes: > Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types—religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. > > Americans combine to give fetes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way... In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. By asking the government to 'fund public schools at the national level' you are making America like France or England rather than what it historically has been, which is highly decentralized and disjointed, but still unified. This in my opinion is the great disconnect between 'progressives' and 'conservatives' (for lack of better terms). There's a certain type of person that, when they see a problem, immediately asks how government can be leveraged to solve it. Whereas, for me, personally, and others I know, my response would be ... how could I get my local church men's club to help out. Because I can't control the government, and by the time I lobby and campaign, the problem will still have affected a bunch of other people. Whereas it's pretty easy to gather a group of guys to fix it. One obvious example of this is -- as you mentioned -- schools. Before public schools were a thing, catholic communities all across the country pooled together parish money to start affordable schools, with great academic results. In response, the government started the public school system so people wouldn't have to deal with the church. That's fine and dandy, but we need to accept the fact that private organizations worked better than the government to immediately provide the service of education. The same is true of hospitals. Go to any US city of any import, and you'll be sure to find a Catholic hospital. Where is the government if it's so useful. Even in Europe, where the healthcare systems are nationalized, half the hospitals used to be ones run by the Church. It remains to be seen how these nationalized healthcare systems will play out over the long-term (thousands of years), but we know how it works when the Church runs them... they stay around for a long time.
munificent 5y ago
I think church is great for mixing up people who differ professionally and socioeconomically. But at least in the US it has also very much deepened the racial and (obviously) religious lines between people.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > But at least in the US it has also very much deepened the racial and (obviously) religious lines between people. Not clear at all. Catholics for example are the most likely group to marry interracially. Religiously, I don't see the christian sects as very divided, despite their many differences. There seems to be a large set of common ground. Even amongst religions, there is a lot of good will. I can't think of any widespread religious riot in the US (I could totally be wrong though).
  - munificent 5y ago
    > Not clear at all. Catholics for example are the most likely group to marry interracially. Catholicism is an outlier here: About half of people who attend church once a year or never said they had dated interracially; just 27 percent of respondents who attend weekly or more reported dating a person of another race, according to a study using data from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey. http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-not-bind-race-religion-and-marriage/ http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-no... > Religiously, I don't see the christian sects as very divided, despite their many differences. It matters less how you personally see this than it does how church-goers in aggregate feel and behave. Certainly, growing up in the South, it was abundantly clear that there were black churches and white churches and that the two very rarely mixed. The KKK is an explicitly anti-Black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, pro-Protestant Christianity organization. Its self-stated reason for existence is to push down members of other religions and races. You can argue that these members aren't "real Christians", but they are sure as hell going to church and their fellow church-goers think they are. *> I can't think of any widespread religious riot in the US (I could totally be wrong though). It has a Wikipedia category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Religiously_motivated_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Religiously_motivated...
nicoburns 5y ago
It's religion not politics that makes church-attendance undesirable for most non-church-goers. Having said that, I agree that we are missing something that modern secular society is missing something that used to take place in churches. I'm not so convinced as you that the religious aspect is required to make it work. Shared purpose maybe, but there are lots of ways of creating that. In another comment you mentioned "might as well be a community centre", which I think is interesting because community centres are one of the other places I've this sense of well... community. One thing that churches have other than religion which I think often gets overlooked is money (in particular they generally own the building they use). I've seen more than one excellent community centre closed down because they ran out of funding and couldn't afford to keep paying the rent. I would love to see a concerted effort at government funded secular churches designed to serve a parish-sized community.
- iammisc 5y ago
  I doubt I'd participate in a secular community center, so I'd be interested in seeing this as an outside observer. But honestly, I doubt it'd work. Without any common values, it'll be hard to get a diverse set of people. In my experience, when secular people start this, it ends up being a club for other secular people 'like them'. In America the starkest examples of this are when these community clubs founded by whites end up being essentially white only, or black-only if founded by a black. Not due to any racism on part of the founder but simply that, without an explicit shared value system, no one quite knows what to believe except those 'already in the know'. I notice this with my own in-laws, who are white WASPy types. I am a Catholic obviously, and not white. Sometimes, they'll talk in ways that make me feel out of place and that I can't relate to. On the other hand, when white Catholics talk about Catholicism, I feel we're on the same wave length. > I would love to see a concerted effort at government funded secular churches designed to serve a parish-sized community. I think it's sad we have to replace grassroots decentralized community efforts with centralized government funded ones in this day and age. It's like we've regressed. That's my observation. I'd be interested in seeing this thing come around, and i'll continue to watch from the sidelines with interest. Maybe I'll even show up after church.
  - 5y ago
socialist_coder 5y ago
Totally. As a devout Anti-theist I really wish I could join some kind of secular group that was identical to a church but without the religion. Go every Sunday with my family, socialize with the folks, have potlucks and events, help people out when they need it, etc. We need to bring back this sense of community.
- munificent 5y ago
  You could take a look at Unitarian Universalism or fraternal organizations.
- machinehermiter 5y ago
  Isn't the problem though that this doesn't work without a fiction that we all believe to be non-fiction? You need to create a fiction that is believed in more than any individual differences but it doesn't work if we know it is fiction. The group will not be able to put aside differences for very long without it. There is very clever aspect to what the church has done that is very hard to replicate. I really think team sports are the closest you can get. This guy putting the ball over the goal line is the most important thing in the world and you can gel 90,000 drunk people to watch it without it becoming complete chaos. It is the same process at work.
  - alentist 5y ago
    Why "fiction"?
wonderwonder 5y ago
Plenty of people still go to church but attendance is declining as the popularity of the churches morals, biases and lessons fall out of favor. One could probably argue that as the larger Christian sects have become associated with politics that decline has accelerated. It does not make sense for people who don't believe in god or hold different views on what is moral or not to attend . With that said I am sure you are quite right that having something in common such as church attendance, etc. leads to community building but only as far as between those already in the same community, Catholicism, southern Baptist, etc. I do think that people would be well served to get involved in large organized groups but optimally ones that are not bent on separating people into us and them. I don't think that a decline in church attendance is in any way the driver of societies ills as church attendance was sky high in the 40's and 50's and did not go so great for everyone. My personal opinion is that social media, echo chambers and the ability to isolate oneself by having most of ones superficial needs met via technology is the cause.
amelius 5y ago
> We used to call this going to church. Elementary school was the same. Military service with enforced conscription is also similar.
jdavis703 5y ago
> However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. I personally stopped going to church because of the politics coming from the pulpit. The last sermon I heard was the preacher saying Barack Obama was “demonic” because his weak foreign policy made it harder to spread Christianity throughout the world, therefore forestalling the end times. Of course it wasn’t just that one sermon: the homophobia, the sexism, the anti-science attitudes had all been bothering me for years before I finally quit.
princeb 5y ago
> When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning" -MLK

edmundsauto 5y ago

This is a rosy view of religion, although I accept that is your experience and perspective, and thank you for sharing it. To me, church attendance is about making the in/out group very clear. You may feel close to different political views based on your single church or flavor of Christianity, but that's still a pretty limited group. I think church membership has become undesirable because 1) fewer people believe in the supernatural and 2) the stated positions of many major religions on issues of abortion and inclusion.

nine_k 5y ago
It's not about religion per se, but about a common religion which has rituals that make people meet each other more, piercing their bubble of like-mindedness (smaller than the religion). It's like going to a supermarket makes you see people more varied than your family circle and your chosen TV show characters. (It does not nudge you to talk to these people, though.)
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  I am not a religious person or church goer, but are the perspectives really that different? To me, it looks like a church is a self selected group of geographically proximate people who tend to look alike and dress alike. You don't usually see much ethnic diversity in a church photo. It's more diverse than sitting at home, but I think exposure to a few TV shows has more diversity of thought, ethnicity, sexuality, etc., compared to going to church. I'm not saying its bad for people to get together and talk. I see that church was an important mechanism for this in the past. However, I can't get past the negatives (supernatural belief, child abuse, kowtowing to authority, shame, ostracism) to believe it will continue to be a net positive. What we need is more of what I think the Unitarians are after - non denominational community.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    The Catholic Church is probably the single most ethnically diverse organization on the face of the earth. https://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population/ https://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-popu...
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      Right, but the context here is in people attending their local church. Your point is like saying that America is so diverse - it is, but how much do the different ethnicities actually interact?
      - iammisc 5y ago
        Catholic churches are the most integrated denomination. And Catholics are the group most likely to intermarry between ethnicities. Speaking of my own family, my brother and I are both married to women of different ethnicities (and differing ethnicities at that). Sources: [1] https://www.jbhe.com/2018/07/americas-churches-are-becoming-more-racially-integrated-but-have-a-long-way-to-go/ https://www.jbhe.com/2018/07/americas-churches-are-becoming-... [2] http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-not-bind-race-religion-and-marriage/ http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-no... > The only exceptions were Catholics. Catholics were almost twice as likely to be in an intermarriage and Catholics who attended services more frequently were slightly more likely to be in an intermarriage, the researchers found. It's more than just your local parish though. When I visited Hungary, it was amazing to go to a church where I didn't speak the language, but still be able to feel totally 'at home', because it was a church, and they were saying mass. Even though it was in Hungarian, I understood exactly what was going on. Then when I visited India, which couldn't be further from Hungary, I had the same experience.
        edmundsauto 5y ago
        The takeaway from those articles seems to be that even the most integrated churches are still trailing average neighborhood integration numbers (which are broadly considered problematic). There has been progress, but there is still a ways to go: > Despite progress in church integration, congregations remain far more segregated than the society in general. Dr. Dougherty, an associate professor of sociology at Baylor University, states that “congregations are looking more like their neighborhoods racially and ethnically, but they still lag behind. The average congregation was eight times less diverse racially than its neighborhood in 1998 and four times less diverse in 2012.” The context here is whether churches are a good way for people of diverse backgrounds to engage and interact. I contend that they have unnecessary elements that make them worse than a non-religious community event (supernatural beliefs, explicit conformity of dress and thought, protecting predators, etc.)
- watwut 5y ago
  The church I went in as kid was pretty tight socially and people in it were wery like minded. And by all I heard or read about, it is pretty much standard.
iammisc 5y ago
> To me, church attendance is about making the in/out group very clear. You may feel close to different political views based on your single church or flavor of Christianity, but that's still a pretty limited group. It's not really though. I mean, being Catholic (and honestly, I know so little about Protestantism that I don't really feel qualified to speak to it), there are a lot of politics in the church. In 'the Big Sort', the author Bill Bishop talks about how Americans are dividing themselves up by geography, religion (or lack thereof), jobs, education, etc. It's like we're splitting in to two different worlds. I've noticed it at church too. Frankly, the left-leaning Catholics have all left. We chock it up to things like abortion and sexual ethics but I don't buy it. Many right-leaning Catholics have severe disagreements with church preaching, especially on the topics of aid to foreigners, the responsibility of society with regards to health care, views on death penalty's usefulness, etc. The only difference to me, is that conservatives tend to value authority and order more, and thus remain catholic even when the church preaches things they don't like. > 2) the stated positions of many major religions on issues of abortion and inclusion. I guess, but man you should see my conservative friends after the priest gives a homily on immigration. If they left the church because of this, I'd accuse them of idolatry -- placing their views on immigration as more important than God. I accuse my leftist friends who leave because of abortion of the same. Independent of the religious and spiritual aspects, it seems to me to be abandoning your community, that has supported you for many years, simply because of one issue we disagree on. That's like leaving your wife because you can't agree on which style of house to buy -- at some point you need to compromise. It's weird because my left-leaning friend's parents are often still Catholic and have the same view as my family does on remaining part of the church even if what they preach is hard. Whereas my younger friends all left. The sad thing though is that I feel there is a lot of missed out opportunities for shared understanding. Despite classifying these parents as 'left-leaning' and myself being more 'right-leaning', I'd consider these people to be intelligent, thoughtful, and friends. Whereas with my own generation, if you label yourself a leftist, all of a sudden right-wingers are supposed to hate you, and vice versa. It just seems dehumanizing. I'd rather chat about politics in a friendly manner with a shared set of concerns over a doughnut on Sunday morning, than in an angry social media screed. But it seems like my generation prefers the latter. And frankly, from my perspective, it feels like my left-leaning friends simply left while we stayed behind to talk.

teachrdan 5y ago

> However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. This comment appears to be a dog whistle, so please do correct me if I'm totally wrong here. But this reads like "Democrats / the left have demonized belonging to a church / Christianity," which is a common right wing talking point. Is that what you're saying here?

kian 5y ago
There is no need to violate the principle of charity or HN norms. Whether or not the gp meant Democrats, do you really think that atheists, agnosts, members of all other religions, scientists, artists, spiritualists, conspiracy theorists, and rationalists of all stripes form a monolithic political faction?
iammisc 5y ago
I don't mean just the democrats no. It seems to me to be a large faction of people, including certain elements of the 'alt-right'. But yes, you're right in that I perceive the left as having demonized belonging to a church. This explains the growing disconnect between the democratic party and minorities, and why the GOP has started to make gains with them. The democratic party ignores religion at its own peril. It's especially weird since the democratic party used to be really into religion. This is hardly a 'right wing talking point'. My own parents left the democratic party because of this, well before they had ever tuned in to Fox, Limbaugh, or whatever. Labeling something as a 'right wing talking point' is just a democratic dog whistle to ignore real phenomena.

ssully 5y ago

Yeah, I too long for the days past when the US had less cultural problems/conflicts due to high church attendance numbers.

wavefunction 5y ago
There was a time in the US when good god fearin' church folk could gather together for traditional cultural expressions like extra-judicial lynchings of wrongly accused black men. You have to think America's lost something over the years. Thankfully.
- dang 5y ago
  We ban accounts that take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- iammisc 5y ago
  Oh please. It's not like only whites were part of churches. Blacks are more likely to be part of a church anyway. As usual, this is white people's faults.
  - dang 5y ago
    We ban accounts that take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nate_meurer 5y ago
I know right? What happened to the good old days when the big mainstream church organizations like the SBC were fighting the good fight against evils such as interracial marriage and civil rights?
- iammisc 5y ago
  > I know right? What happened to the good old days when the big mainstream church organizations like the SBC were fighting the good fight against evils such as interracial marriage and civil rights? You're just picking and choosing. In reality, religious organizations, like the Catholic church for example, were fighting the opposite fight. Perez v Sharp in California was orchestrated by the church: http://ccgaction.org/node/1011 http://ccgaction.org/node/1011 Of course, if we encourage community involvement, there will be good organizations and bad ones. For example, we provide 501(c)3 status to both Planned Parenthood as well as a pro-life organization.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches The mere act of belonging to any given religion pre-selected certain ideas about how the world works and should work. Hardly "all political stripes".

iammisc 5y ago
Okay but if everyone attended church, as it used to be in this country, then by definition, essentially all political stripes of any import would be represented in them, and people would have to confront people who disagree with them physically.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  It sounds a lot like what you're saying is "only christians matter", or worse "everyone should either be christian or pretend to be", because I can't see that working any other way. If jews go to temple and christians go to church, and muslims go to mosques, then they don't have to be exposed to each other's opinions. If jews and muslims pretend to be christian and go to church then they can't expose any opinions that go against christian worldview.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I think this is a valid criticism, but seeing as that we've replaced church with ... nothing, I still find it difficult to imagine that my vision of society would be worse than the one we're living in. The truth is that despite decades of trying, the secular regular get-together groups for people without any unifying interests or socioeconomic status have utterly failed. For most people, church is the only place they're going to be exposed to others that may share absolutely no interests with them and be of widely different socioeconomic status and yet still be acquaintances. Our neighborhoods are segregated by socioeconomic class and increasingly, by profession. Our 'clubs' are non-existent, and where they do exist, cater to special interests and hobbies. We need something that works, not something that is perfect. I still maintain that church, temple, mosque, etc is the best thing.

bsanr2 5y ago

"At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation." It's difficult for me to justify buying into the idea of Christian social life as the source of American unity when 10 years ago participating would have seen me bombarded with the reasons why my homosexuality would see me burn in hell for all eternity, or when 200 years ago it would have seen me bombarded with all the point of scripture that justified my being treated as property. This is as someone whose grandfather was a deacon; I can't imagine what people whose families don't have a church tradition at all must think of this suggestion. I do think that the segregation of social life is at the heart of much of this country's ills. However, perhaps that has more to do with things like, say, Bill and Sally's frankly hysterical fear of sharing a street with the Freemans. How to reduce social division in America in the long-term: ban private schools, fund public schools at the national level, and do it quickly, utterly, and irrevocably. I don't know if you would end up with a single, continental American nation, but the part left still known as "The United States of America" would be profoundly united. Even if you disagree, you must understand that the notion that everyone must attend church for America to achieve some measure of unity is about as radical. The focus must be on the bringing together of disparate communities, secularly.

war1025 5y ago
> How to reduce social division in America in the long-term: ban private schools, fund public schools at the national level, and do it quickly, utterly, and irrevocably. We tried this to tame the savages [1], and I don't think people really look back kindly or positively on that choice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_sch...
iammisc 5y ago
> The focus must be on the bringing together of disparate communities, secularly. Except the 'United' states of America has never been about that kind of community. That's more of the fraternite of the French revolution than the spirit of America. American unity has been due to the result of multiple different organizations and factions all participating in a common undertaking, rather than one centralized organization doing the planning and execution (as would be the case if we 'nationalized' education and did away with private schooling). My view of America as one in which everyone can belong to different organizations, but still work together is the historical norm. In de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America', written at the founding of the USA, de Tocqueville (an outside french observer) writes: > Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types—religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. > > Americans combine to give fetes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way... In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. By asking the government to 'fund public schools at the national level' you are making America like France or England rather than what it historically has been, which is highly decentralized and disjointed, but still unified. This in my opinion is the great disconnect between 'progressives' and 'conservatives' (for lack of better terms). There's a certain type of person that, when they see a problem, immediately asks how government can be leveraged to solve it. Whereas, for me, personally, and others I know, my response would be ... how could I get my local church men's club to help out. Because I can't control the government, and by the time I lobby and campaign, the problem will still have affected a bunch of other people. Whereas it's pretty easy to gather a group of guys to fix it. One obvious example of this is -- as you mentioned -- schools. Before public schools were a thing, catholic communities all across the country pooled together parish money to start affordable schools, with great academic results. In response, the government started the public school system so people wouldn't have to deal with the church. That's fine and dandy, but we need to accept the fact that private organizations worked better than the government to immediately provide the service of education. The same is true of hospitals. Go to any US city of any import, and you'll be sure to find a Catholic hospital. Where is the government if it's so useful. Even in Europe, where the healthcare systems are nationalized, half the hospitals used to be ones run by the Church. It remains to be seen how these nationalized healthcare systems will play out over the long-term (thousands of years), but we know how it works when the Church runs them... they stay around for a long time.

munificent 5y ago

I think church is great for mixing up people who differ professionally and socioeconomically. But at least in the US it has also very much deepened the racial and (obviously) religious lines between people.

iammisc 5y ago
> But at least in the US it has also very much deepened the racial and (obviously) religious lines between people. Not clear at all. Catholics for example are the most likely group to marry interracially. Religiously, I don't see the christian sects as very divided, despite their many differences. There seems to be a large set of common ground. Even amongst religions, there is a lot of good will. I can't think of any widespread religious riot in the US (I could totally be wrong though).
- munificent 5y ago
  > Not clear at all. Catholics for example are the most likely group to marry interracially. Catholicism is an outlier here: About half of people who attend church once a year or never said they had dated interracially; just 27 percent of respondents who attend weekly or more reported dating a person of another race, according to a study using data from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey. http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-not-bind-race-religion-and-marriage/ http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/the-ties-that-may-no... > Religiously, I don't see the christian sects as very divided, despite their many differences. It matters less how you personally see this than it does how church-goers in aggregate feel and behave. Certainly, growing up in the South, it was abundantly clear that there were black churches and white churches and that the two very rarely mixed. The KKK is an explicitly anti-Black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, pro-Protestant Christianity organization. Its self-stated reason for existence is to push down members of other religions and races. You can argue that these members aren't "real Christians", but they are sure as hell going to church and their fellow church-goers think they are. *> I can't think of any widespread religious riot in the US (I could totally be wrong though). It has a Wikipedia category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Religiously_motivated_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Religiously_motivated...

nicoburns 5y ago

It's religion not politics that makes church-attendance undesirable for most non-church-goers. Having said that, I agree that we are missing something that modern secular society is missing something that used to take place in churches. I'm not so convinced as you that the religious aspect is required to make it work. Shared purpose maybe, but there are lots of ways of creating that. In another comment you mentioned "might as well be a community centre", which I think is interesting because community centres are one of the other places I've this sense of well... community. One thing that churches have other than religion which I think often gets overlooked is money (in particular they generally own the building they use). I've seen more than one excellent community centre closed down because they ran out of funding and couldn't afford to keep paying the rent. I would love to see a concerted effort at government funded secular churches designed to serve a parish-sized community.

iammisc 5y ago
I doubt I'd participate in a secular community center, so I'd be interested in seeing this as an outside observer. But honestly, I doubt it'd work. Without any common values, it'll be hard to get a diverse set of people. In my experience, when secular people start this, it ends up being a club for other secular people 'like them'. In America the starkest examples of this are when these community clubs founded by whites end up being essentially white only, or black-only if founded by a black. Not due to any racism on part of the founder but simply that, without an explicit shared value system, no one quite knows what to believe except those 'already in the know'. I notice this with my own in-laws, who are white WASPy types. I am a Catholic obviously, and not white. Sometimes, they'll talk in ways that make me feel out of place and that I can't relate to. On the other hand, when white Catholics talk about Catholicism, I feel we're on the same wave length. > I would love to see a concerted effort at government funded secular churches designed to serve a parish-sized community. I think it's sad we have to replace grassroots decentralized community efforts with centralized government funded ones in this day and age. It's like we've regressed. That's my observation. I'd be interested in seeing this thing come around, and i'll continue to watch from the sidelines with interest. Maybe I'll even show up after church.
- 5y ago

socialist_coder 5y ago

Totally. As a devout Anti-theist I really wish I could join some kind of secular group that was identical to a church but without the religion. Go every Sunday with my family, socialize with the folks, have potlucks and events, help people out when they need it, etc. We need to bring back this sense of community.

munificent 5y ago
You could take a look at Unitarian Universalism or fraternal organizations.
machinehermiter 5y ago
Isn't the problem though that this doesn't work without a fiction that we all believe to be non-fiction? You need to create a fiction that is believed in more than any individual differences but it doesn't work if we know it is fiction. The group will not be able to put aside differences for very long without it. There is very clever aspect to what the church has done that is very hard to replicate. I really think team sports are the closest you can get. This guy putting the ball over the goal line is the most important thing in the world and you can gel 90,000 drunk people to watch it without it becoming complete chaos. It is the same process at work.
- alentist 5y ago
  Why "fiction"?

wonderwonder 5y ago

Plenty of people still go to church but attendance is declining as the popularity of the churches morals, biases and lessons fall out of favor. One could probably argue that as the larger Christian sects have become associated with politics that decline has accelerated. It does not make sense for people who don't believe in god or hold different views on what is moral or not to attend . With that said I am sure you are quite right that having something in common such as church attendance, etc. leads to community building but only as far as between those already in the same community, Catholicism, southern Baptist, etc. I do think that people would be well served to get involved in large organized groups but optimally ones that are not bent on separating people into us and them. I don't think that a decline in church attendance is in any way the driver of societies ills as church attendance was sky high in the 40's and 50's and did not go so great for everyone. My personal opinion is that social media, echo chambers and the ability to isolate oneself by having most of ones superficial needs met via technology is the cause.

amelius 5y ago

> We used to call this going to church. Elementary school was the same. Military service with enforced conscription is also similar.

jdavis703 5y ago

> However large political factions have made church membership out to be undesirable. I personally stopped going to church because of the politics coming from the pulpit. The last sermon I heard was the preacher saying Barack Obama was “demonic” because his weak foreign policy made it harder to spread Christianity throughout the world, therefore forestalling the end times. Of course it wasn’t just that one sermon: the homophobia, the sexism, the anti-science attitudes had all been bothering me for years before I finally quit.

princeb 5y ago

> When literally everyone of all political stripes attended the same churches "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning" -MLK