On the flip side, I think religion has had a monopoly on the idea that only it can provide that kind of space for such relationships. I don't think that's true.
If some churchgoer was saying, today, that the churches have some sort of monopoly on providing such spaces...my interpretation would tend toward "we have a monopoly, while we last, because every other provider is already gone".
(Yes, if you go further back, especially in Europe, the church had somewhat more of a monopoly. Partly that was because governments were rather authoritarian, and didn't want organizations to exist, beyond their tightly-controlled churches.)
After that, maybe kids’ schools if you have the energy.
OTOH...the Moose are a pretty religious organization, in many ways.
My take is that it's a familiar social institution and we haven't yet formulated the social protocols to reproduce a secular version. You mention a variety of semi-institutionalized social groups. To me they are associated with older folks, which naturally leads to the question: why aren't young people[1] making their own formal groups? why do young folks communities tend to be anarchic? And what would empower young folks to form their own formal social institutions?
1. We're talking about a rather wide swath of 18-50 yearolds, but that doesn't necessarily mean specific groups must correspondingly be as age-inclusive
In game theory terms, cooperative behavior is rewarded from outside the observable system! That's the faith part of faith communities. Even if only a relatively small fraction truly hold these belief, those communities naturally get pay-it-forward dynamics.
I'm not sure how game theory can lead to the same result in non-faith communities (i.e., closed systems). Someone has to pay the cost of "redeeming" the effects of cheaters / defectors.
Unitarian-Universalists aren't growing, they are shrinking. Most denominations are shrinking, but on the whole, conservative denominations are shrinking rather more slowly than liberal ones, including the super-liberal UUs. I remember, when I was younger, I tried out a few different churches. I saw more than one conservative Protestant church overflowing with young families. I also went to a Unitarian church (only one, but there aren't many around here), and I was the only person there under 50.
In general, religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines, struggle to survive and thrive in the long-run. Their members tend to defect either to secularism or to religious communities which make bigger promises
Look at the Quakers for a really admirable but ultimately pessimistic illustration of it. A long and almost uniquely sound history of true dedication to causes of human freedom, safety, comfort, and thriving, but with no shared creed per se. At times united in their activism and influential because of it (abolition, prohibition, civil rights). Now generations removed from any unifying cause, they are fragmented into an entire continuum of irreconcilable beliefs; fewer than half a million left globally. And the only thriving, growing communities among them are in africa, with belief and worship virtually indistinguishable from the local main stream of evangelical christianity.
Whatever it is that makes religions culturally impactful does not seem easily separable from whatever it is that makes them religions. People have tried over and over, not all of them completely unsuccessfully. But I don't know of any with the kind of durable cultural influence we see in the mainstream religions that don't value or attempt that separation.
> And the only thriving, growing communities among them are in africa, with belief and worship virtually indistinguishable from the local main stream of evangelical christianity.
To add to what you say, not just in Africa but also in the West, the branchers of Quakerism which seem to be in the greatest health, are at its evangelical Protestant end – whereas, the end of the Quaker spectrum which you are talking about, is the one in the worst health
Within about a generation, most Congregationalists became Unitarian Universalists, which is strongly linked to uncertainty over eternal blessedness/damnation. (Generalizing the history quite a bit, TBH.)
The VFW, Elks Lodge, Masons, Knights of Columbus, they're all old and mostly men.
The issue is, almost no secular thinker comes away from admitting those two honestly and then stays within the purely secular realm for very long.
It was very possible to be an intelligent introspective atheist when the consequences of that stance were not on display so readily. The "forward thinkers" who might have been capable of forming secular religions are instead embracing established faiths. Perhaps it's an issue like attempting to create life from scratch again. Hard to do when existing life just crowds it out. It would take dedicated committed atheists, admitting that they are intentionally attempting to establish a secular religion as a sort of memetic symbiote to fill the same space as religion, but when you're biggest rallying cry for converts is, "People don't need religion!" it's neigh impossible to do.
I'm not so sure about this, though it depends on what you mean by "purely secular". I don't know if there's any data on this, so I can only speak anecdotally - I know people who are sympathetic to religion and believe it can be useful (even one who's a fan of Jordan Peterson, the person who has made a career about talking about religion in a secular way. Aside - I think it's telling that Peterson continually says good things about religion but is still atheist and still doesn't go to church.), but still are within the purely secular realm.
To be sure, I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong about secular institutions not being able to fill the role that religious institutions can. But at the same time, it doesn't seem like getting people to agree on the benefits of religion gets them to accept the resurrection of Christ, existence of God, or anything like that. Which kind of makes sense, right?
(Another aside - I have always sort of felt like this emphasis on religions being useful over religions being true is a kind of implicit concession to atheism. It's as if religion actually is just a shared delusion, but that's ok, because it's a useful shared delusion. I have no trouble seeing why an atheist would not see this as a compelling case. But the case for religion being true isn't nearly as weak as this "pragmatic delusion"-style argument implies.
Not a criticism of what you're saying, it makes sense to say what you've said in the context of the thread. I'm just thinking out loud.)
To focus on Christianity (since you brought it up), religion not being useful would be a blow to the "Loving God" claim, as a God who (like a bad parent) gave lousy advice that harmed us wouldn't seem very loving. Similarly, if a utilitarian secular philosophy continuously failed to be useful based on its own utilitarian standards, it's self defeating.
Certainly faiths that don't assert a loving God, and secular philosophies that don't include utilitarian moral and ethical frameworks aren't effected. The usefulness of religion compared to secular philosophies doesn't PROVE one is correct, but if you can DISPROVE one or some of your largest competitors for mindshare, I get why the argument is so stressed.
Well.. of course that is what the religion you were born into, brainwashed by, and are currently paying crazy amounts of money to wants you to think. It is necessary for the churches survival.
People need to be careful about believing anything taught by an organization when that organization's very survival depends on you believing that thing.
I think you're off the mark here. Your brother-in-law doesn't believe what the church teaches. He believes in the effect he sees it having on his own life (and maybe also the effect that not having it has on his own life).
I think they are simply the ones that survived the most in our current era of narcissism and consumerism because they were bigger to begin with.
I mean I live in an old fashioned, traditionnally poor gipsy neighborhood. Most people around here don't go to the church, but this is a tight knit community. As a stranger, and for good reasons[1], it took me a long time to be accepted as part of it, and in a sense I will never be completely part of it. However I have already been shown that my neighbors are ready to give me a hand when I need it and even that they are ready to fight for me had I been in a situation that required it, no question asked. Which is funny because these are the same people that initially tried to rob me!
[1] first and foremost because the presence of expats working remotely for big corps like me is one of the reason the rents are ever increasing and becoming out of reach to