It's kind of the mix of a loss of "third place" (institutions, coffee shops, etc.) and the increase of social media bubbles that pushes us to be more polarized, I think.
I haven't had anything like it since, and I've been relatively proactive too. I have hobbies, go to meets, and go to the same coffee shops and restaurants so often that they know my order, but there is always this barrier between everyone, like no-one needs eachother because they have their phones. I ride the same bike park twice a week and go to the gym every couple of days, but I moved on to a 24/7 gym and everyone is buried in their phones, and I don't see the same people twice at the bike park. Me and the cleaner always have a great yarn though, I appreciate that.
I don't go to the gym anymore, but a few years ago when I resumed for a bit, everyone was on their phone, or dead-eyed while listening to music or a podcast, etc, and not interested in talking to anyone.
To keep riffing on the religious theme, there was a fair bit of controversy around crossfit when it first arrived on the scene, to the point where even other fairly similar gym disciplines were pushing it out of their gyms. That kind of criticism tends to drive you back into your group (the same way door-knocking drives evangelists back to the warm embrace of the parish), and I almost never see crossfit happening in regular gyms, just crossfit gyms. As above that's partly practicality, but I think it's also fair to say it wasn't received well at first and that likely drove people to those specialized gyms instead of practicing it at their local.
I do powerlifting/strength training and powerlifters had the same issue in mainstream gyms, and there are powerlifting specific gyms around. But that's gotten better over time with mainstream gyms having powerlifing/olympic lifting gear more often than not now.
This isn't a democrat or republican thing though, you can totally join a Democratic church, with a strong community, but they are largely minority churches.
They are also still generally conservative.
"Eventually, you pick a relatively relaxed “normal” religion, complete with all the “God” stuff. You don’t believe everything they say is literally true, but our reality is strange and inexplicable, so who knows? There’s a great stable community and you talk about the broader themes of life and you’re healthier and happier.
You secretly guess that the group is sustained by a minority of true believers who make up critical mass for a larger group of people like you, but you never talk about this and neither does anyone else. When you have kids, you feel weird about explaining your thoughts about all this to them, but you don’t parrot back what the religion says when you’re talking about the meaning of life either."