I am not religious and have no desire to start being now but sometimes I just want the community people get with church. I am craving connection with the community and feel it’s very healthy for families and neighbors as well. The United States is seriously lacking in third spaces and communities. It’s leading to a serious loneliness epidemic… Just wondering if there is anything that can fill that need for non-religious folks?

  • Ketram@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    91·
    13 hours ago

    I would see if you have a Unitarian Universalist (UU) Congregation near you.

    It IS technically a religion, but it doesn’t feel like anyone is trying to make you believe anything, is aggressively LGBTQIA+ friendly, and is also welcoming to all races and cultures (it is literally in their commandments to respect people regardless of creed or views, and respect their individual search for truth and meaning).

    While people there are incredibly nice, welcoming etc…the big downside is that most people at UU churches are usually older. It’s got a lot of “old hippie” energy, which is great but they might have less younger people if you’re looking for people in your age group. You won’t really know until you visit your (hopefully) nearby congregation.

    They do have traditional church services, with sitting at pews and singing hymns (a select hymnal with a lot of pagany hymns) and a sermon, but the sermon is always about philosophical things and thought provoking stuff, or more recently about current events. For example, when I went for my first time to a nearby church, the reverend spoke about her life growing up queer and everything the world did to make her feel like she didn’t belong.

    If you can give the church format a chance, I can’t recommend it enough. A lot of the greatest most loving people I have met have been UU, and I still love and cherish them to this day.

    Sorry if this is too churchy for what you are looking for. I would say if you’re pretty liberal/leftist and you want to find groups that do/talk about stuff like that you can often find those connected to UU churches in some way and they’ll never pressure you beyond “oh we hope you will stay, we love to have you” and things like that.