Interfaith Group

but that churches just aren't that relevant any more.

It's not just religion that churches preached, and I'm not sure all that many people believe what they were told anyway, but churches were historically centers of the community, places where immigrant groups could find a welcome, a major social interaction every Sunday, providers of assistance...

They just don't fulfill those functions any more for so many of us-- we have more convenient alternatives for all of that now. Almost every church I've been in lately has completely greyed out, with few, if any, under 40 there and fewer, if any, kids in the nursery or Sunday School.

I do know a lot of people who admit they are, like me, wandering around looking for some spiritual path to follow, but few of today's churches have anything new, or all that interesting, to offer.

I'm talking about typically American Protestant churches here, and don't have much knowledge of others. However, my limited observation of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and even Roman Catholicism leads me to think they're heading down the same road with younger members just not keeping the traditions.

We all may keep some vestige of the beliefs instilled through childhood, but there just isn't any communal way to express what is left of them as we grow older in a world that has discovered a universe with exploding galaxies at unimaginable distances and that just can't all be the hand of some anthropomorphic god who lives right around the corner.

I may believe in some sort of God, but I no longer have any idea who or what that God may be, and organized religion has been of little help.