There is a quiet, often unheralded truth pulsing beneath the long story of human faith: religion—at its best—has always been a midwife to community. Before the creeds calcified, before the councils convened, before somebody built a steeple and declared it holy ground, faith served as the gathering place where fragile souls learned how to belong to one another.

Today, many reject organized religion outright. And let the record show: their critique is not without merit.

The rules, the mores, the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots,” the divine imperatives—what to follow and what to flee, the holy instructions and sacred prohibitions

the heavy hand of hierarchy, the old scaffolding of patriarchy, the ecclesiastical hegemony that polices bodies and borders—all of that can suffocate the very breath the Spirit gave. The charge of “soul-narrowing" isn’t a false alarm; it’s a lived testimony.

So people declare themselves “spiritual but not religious,” connected to the Divine but not to the institutions. And I listen, because theirs is a real lament—a lament born of wounds inflicted by communities that were supposed to heal.

And yet—

something true and unshakable remains:

we need each other.

People need people.

Not as a sentimental slogan, but as a structural fact.

As a spiritual necessity.

As a sociopolitical reality.

The rejection of hierarchy is understandable; hierarchies have often harmed more than they’ve helped. But the rejection of interdependence is a different matter altogether.

For from city to neighborhood, from neighborhood to community, from community to mosque, temple, synagogue, sanctuary—every human ecosystem is interwoven with the state, the faith, the people, and their shared moral imagination. None of these can thrive alone. Not for long.

When the bonds break, when community becomes optional, when we worship autonomy/indeopendence and forget communion/togetherness—dystrophy, when the connective tissue fails, follows. Something in the entire social body weakens. 

And from that weakness, history shows us what rises: demagogues who exploit the vacuum, debasement of what once was sacred, fragmentation that masquerades as freedom, and finally the slow decomposition of the very society we hoped to transcend.

The Harlem Renaissance women understood this balance—Zora, Nella, Jessie—naming the beauty and the burden of belonging. Cone reminds us that liberation must be communal or it is not liberation at all. Thurman taught that the human heart seeks a “friendly universe.” Baldwin warned that when we retreat into private spirituality without public responsibility, the powers of the world run unchecked.

So yes, we must name the failures of religion.

But we must also reclaim its gift:

the holy art of bringing people together.

For in gathering—messy, complex, imperfect as it is—we remember the truth creation has been whispering since Genesis’ dawn:

It is not good for humanity to be alone.

And every people that forgets this truth soon discovers the cost.