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?
There are all kinds of clubs out there depending on where you live and your interests. Even the rotary club is a way to connect and do good work while not being religious.
To give more details on kind of clubs (while being more EU focused, but I don’t see why the same wouldn’t exists in the US)
Sport clubs, avoid the commercial Gym where everyone lift their own weight, but a team-sport, an outdoor sport requiring to travel means you’ll spend time with other. Some more traditional martial-art even have this drop of oriental philosophy about respecting and helping the others
Political group, you’re on Lemmy, so you may be interested
Volunteer group, stuff like the red-cross, and many more look for volunteers you’ll spend a lot of time with others. Actually when I’ve made my 1st aid course, the trainer told us a couple of time that they look for volunteer to go further, and at a point dropped that the red-cross is a massive dating club.
Rotary club is just a free masonry recruiting program.
Those bricks aren’t going to lay themselves my guy
Genuinely what’s wrong with Freemasonry? Everything I’ve read about it made me more interested in joining than anything…
I don’t really see the problem. Is it a political stance that is tied to the far right for instance? Or does it have ties to the elite? Maybe deep state sort of thing?
If you get into an influential position like the government, a political party, corporation or mass media they will arrive to recruit you at some point. You can’t just go and join like a religion you need to be invited by someone already in. Or if your parent is already into it you directly get in. I think the easiest way to “join” is to study something related to laws or political science and make connections there. Usually they recruit people from high-grade educational institutions as a way to make them get into important positions. Once you are in there are several grades you will be escalating, each grade you achieve will give you a better position into the organization. They are not into the right-left game. It goes beyond that.
I thought their core philosophy was accepting people no matter their social status, religion, occupation or wealth…
I guess it depends on the lodge. From what I’ve read, most of them say that of course it’s easier if you already know someone, but you can just contact them directly if you don’t.
Obviously I don’t know whether or not the selection process is fair to everyone. They say it’s about your values but it could secretly be about your connections and power.