As a former *fanatical* church goer turned agnostic, I have a lot of thoughts about organized religion. Lately I’ve been wondering about the fall of church membership alongside the rise of coworking. It is related? I want to believe.
As fewer people belong to churches, something else is shifting alongside it. Not belief necessarily, but the loss of a built-in place to land, somewhere you go every week without overthinking it, somewhere people notice if you stop showing up. Church membership in the U.S. is now around 45 percent, down from about 70 percent at the end of the 90s, and a growing share of people have no religious affiliation at all.
The broader picture of connection isn’t great. The Social Connection in America report found that 41 percent of adults feel lonely at least some of the time, and nearly three quarters only see people they care about twice a month or less. It’s not just that people are leaving church. It’s that they’re not consistently replacing the structure or relationships that came with it.
That’s part of what makes coworking and Cohere interesting. People see each other often enough that familiarity and care can take root. Recommendations, introductions, advice, rides, someone checking in. It’s simple, but it works better than trying to figure everything out alone.
What’s been on my mind is that Cohere holds a mix of people. Some still go to church. Some are spiritual in their own way. Some aren’t at all. That mix seems to matter. Support doesn’t come from one shared belief system, it comes from different lived experiences layered together. Someone offers something grounded in faith, someone else offers something practical, someone else just listens. No doctrine required.
I’m not trying to make a big claim here, just noticing that as church becomes less central for many people, the need for something like it hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just starting to show up in places where people don’t all believe the same thing but still show up for each other anyway.
Love,
Angel