304

Is there anything like church without the church? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by epicthundercat@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

133 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 months ago

What's a grange?

[-] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 3 points 6 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grange

fraternal order with an overall left-wing populist stand on most things founded right after the civil war. fundamentally, granges represent a form of mutual aid with a bit more structure, a bit more hierarchy, and a bit more pre-existing connections into local communities than starting a new mutual aid project from scratch.

they're a bit more direct in how they seek to help people through politics than things like the odd fellows or rotary clubs, but also a little bit more explicitly political. that said, for the experience of being in a church and removing harmful aspects, they have a lot of the same features:

community meetings
broad coordination of support across long distances
a purposeful attempt to influence society at large through outreach and financial influence

[-] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 months ago

Cool, thanks :)

this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026

304 points (99.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

41135 readers

2435 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world

7) No Hit-and-Run questions.

Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.

8) No Bots.

Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.