I don’t know, I haven’t seen a great replacement. The only things that come/came close are things like Elks Lodge, VFW, Country Clubs/sports clubs, and things like that. I don’t think most of these have thrived into in the 21st century.
After that, maybe kids’ schools if you have the energy.
At least in SE Michigan, some of the lodges of the Loyal Order of the Moose (fraternal organization) are really good.
OTOH...the Moose are a pretty religious organization, in many ways.
Thanks for that second paragraph, because my (otherwise neutral and uniformed) alarm bells on the subject were blaring with the notion that we should replace religious-institution-backed schools with secular schools run by… The Loyal Order of the Moose.
I haven't either, but I'm hesitant to suggest that there's something particular about the religiosity of faith communities that make them work the way they do.
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
Think of this in terms of game theory. Some religious communities, e.g., Christianity, explicitly ask for personal sacrifice for community good with compensation to be provided post-death, e.g., eternally blessed life.
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.
Maybe a tangent idk, but how do unitary universalist groups work or religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines? They exist, but I don't necessarily think their minority status means there isn't something they're doing that we can learn from or expand our model with.
> Maybe a tangent idk, but how do unitary universalist groups work or religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines?
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
The real answer unfortunately is that they mostly don't. They're an absolutely tiny minority of active religious people and because of that they struggle to take effective group action based on their values or sustain their communities across generations.
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.
> Look at the Quakers for a really admirable but ultimately pessimistic illustration of it
> 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
The origin of Unitarians as a movement is fairly instructive. The Congregationalists (descendants of Puritans, kind of) were hard-core Reformed and determinists with a very strict view of God. They ended up not believing it was possible to know whether you were a true Christian ("Elect") since God decides and is inscrutable.
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 main thing churches have going for them is that they are "all ages" and specifically family.
The VFW, Elks Lodge, Masons, Knights of Columbus, they're all old and mostly men.
KofC is also very specifically tied to the Catholic Church, so it has no reason to try to substitute for the role filled by a Church.