Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I asked every sociologist I interviewed whether communities created around secular activities outside of houses of worship could give the same level of wraparound support that churches, temples and mosques are able to offer. Nearly across the board, the answer was no.

Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College, put it this way: “I can go play soccer on a Sunday morning and hang out with people from different races and different class backgrounds, and we can bond. But I’m not doing that with my grandparents and my grandchildren.” A soccer team can’t provide spiritual solace in the face of death, it probably doesn’t have a weekly charitable call and there’s no sense of connection to a heritage that goes back generations. You can get bits and pieces of these disparate qualities elsewhere, he said, but there’s no “one-stop shop” — at least not right now.

That doesn’t mean Americans can’t or don’t cobble together their own support networks and senses of meaning without organized religion; clearly, many do. But the group of Americans who are moving away from religion in the most significant percentages may have the hardest time building community from scratch, because they are often shortest on time and resources.’ (from the New York Times)

I just read a more recent article by this writer on the same theme, and followed a link back to a series she had been writing on the “nones,” those who aren’t espousing traditional religious beliefs.