Agreed, it's important to have community.
The problem with the church as the main provider of community (and values) is (at least) twofold:
1. It tends to impose some bad values with the good values (not to mention bad epistemology and ontology), and,
2. when people notice that and leave church, they a) also lose their community (which can be devastating), and b) sometimes throw out the good values with the bad.
2. You can be a member of several overlapping organizations, but only one church, normally. So, the problem of losing a community is exacerbated with church.
It sounds like your mind is inhabited by a caricature of religion, rather than a realistic conception of the thing. For instance, our neighborhood church uses their facilities to provide (secular) services to the local community. They also organize a monthly service day where community members (not just their congregation) provide help to people in need. Many other churches do similar things. And there is a reason why so many hospitals in the U.S. have religious names: they were started by churches.
If you want to hold religion to account for the bad that they contribute, you also have to give them credit for the good. And I think once you start doing that, you'll find that it's all pretty much a wash.
Bullshit
Commit mass genocide? That's ok look at these shiny new automobiles. The continued rape of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of children? That's ok, we taught them math.
You probably blame women for getting raped (What was she wearing? Why was she out alone at night?) instead of blaming men for raping.
Until all of these institutions are brought down and eradicated the "damaging good" will continue.
And religions are not the only human affinity groups responsible for other atrocities. Ethnicities have lead to genocide on several occasions. And so have political ideologies.
I'm not religious, I'm not a fan of organized religion as a thing, at least in the modern era--'toasterlovin makes good points about the historical and even current positives of such organizations, I'm not convinced they balance out to a net positive today but I'm much more willing to consider the notion historically. But there are nastier partners on the dance card right now and this kinda minimizes that.
Huh, my intuition is the opposite: now that organized religions have been defanged and stripped of most of their political power they are probably more of a net positive force today than they ever were in the past.
However:
1. Many of these share significant characteristics with religion (epistemic closure, or a stunning disregard for the truth; Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny touches on that).
2. For some reason religion still enjoys much more respect and reverence than these other organisations (among non-members).
You tell me.
So why single out religion as a specific problem? Especially when the overwhelming majority of people in the world clearly find a lot of meaning in religion.
See you around.
So, aside from a few outliers, I have always been under the impression that most people attending church get far more enjoyment from the social aspects than the religious ones.
You were clearly not a Pentacostal then.