We need a secular alternative to churches

 Sam Smith – As church attendance declines there has been little discussion of how this may affect our moral and community values. I call myself a Seventh Day Agnostic because while I do not share organized religion’s spiritual beliefs I do recognize the role religions have played in building or maintaining virtuous secular values. I suspect the moral problems America is currently having are due in no small part to a society that no longer is effective at teaching and maintaining the values that churches have long encouraged.

One way to deal with this would be to create non-religious community groups aimed at sharing and building good values. I imagine such community centers meeting on Sundays to describe and discuss such values. Instead of a minister giving a sermon, you might have a social worker or other activist discussing some of the issues they face that are community related or someone offering the non-political moral side of current controversies.

I imagine such a gathering – which could be jointly organized by community activists, local teachers and even ministers – would be designed not to activate specific programs but to strengthen existing ones by giving them greater communal and moral standing.

In fact, some churches might want to host such meetings as a way to boost their own status in the community. The important thing to remember is that even if organized religion is declining our demand for moral and communal values is not and we need to come up with a worthy alternative to churches.