It’s quite literally impossible to stress how much you don’t matter

If someone told me tomorrow that you killed yourself because of this interaction, I’d be struggling to recall it, let alone care

Have a short and lonely life, loser

You seem to misunderstand my two previous comments. Reread carefully, and don’t hesitate to ask for precisions or complementary explanations about what I said. Also remember that contrary to some people’s belief:

• atheism is not a recent thing
• secular communities that can influence a whole society have not waited the 20th or 21th century either
• christian churches didn’t exist before the 1st century. The world without it was not a hellhole without any community, solidarity, or any beneficial value.
• christians churches are a model only to people whose personal culture was heavily influenced by any christian culture. Other social and cultural systems have other models.

That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways.

That’s not at all specific to churches, nor does it only produces beneficial consequences for society. (Domination systems pose many societal problems, some deadly.)

People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.

I don’t agree with that statement. That doesn’t match the acts of solidarity and socialisation I witnessed.

As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media,

Or not. Offline social hubs, politicized or not, and old school online social hubs still exist. Aside frop those I cited before, bars / pubs / cafés are still social hubs. The workplace is one too, at least in places where workers can have purely personal interactions with their colleagues.

By the way, politisation is not inherently bad, and the politisation of churches is as old as churches. Charity is political, preaching is political, clergy is in a way a political organisation. Hell, countries like the USA or France have law separating the “State” from the “Church” precisely because of the history of political ingerence from religious organisations like the roman catholic Church or the anglican Church.

which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.

Which difference with a community of churchgoers ? The religious belief systems, combined to the rules dictated by the clergy and peer pressure, can also cause an echo chamber. Any kind of community can become an echo chamber. Predatory communication media on internet (including the so called “social networks” or “social media”) are indeed efficient at maintaining very-large-scale echo chambers that transcend geography.

And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church.

Agreed, but I cited this only as an exemple of possible forced interactions. They can however lead to create or participate in what you call “a third place”.

They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with.

Very probably false. Your statement is, once again, based on the assumption that church was and still is the sole purveyor of motivation to socialise, form communities, help each other, etc. That has never been true.

And that is a loss. It’s one reason people are increasingly lonely.

Irrelevant since the premise is false. I didn’t rigrously studied socilogy meta-studies on the subject, and you didn’t either considering how you phrase your statements, but I’m pretty sure the so called “loneliness epidemic” does not count the decrease in church attendance (or the secularisation of most christian dominated societies) as a significant cause. I’m sure these may share common causes, though.

Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they’re afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they’re close to, and literally don’t knkw how they’d find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.

You almost had it. The church part was only one possibility among athoers. For some people, avoiding any church at all costs was a solution.

Because contrary to how you portray churches and their communities, these are not paragons of happiness, fulfilment, or benefits to society. Some communities may be mostly beneficial, some mostly detrimental. On the whole a common aspect of religions is control : religions can be viewed as systems of belief or systems of social cohesion, sure, but they also can be viewed as systems of domination. You yourself mention that aspect when talking about the obligations.

Systems of domination are never beneficial to society. They are beneficial only to the few at the top of these systems. These are the main tool enabling all kind of abuses :

• rapes and other sexual abuses are most often related to domination. Which international organisation related to our discussion is infamous for enabling many such abuses, and covering them ? The roman catholic Church. (Other cults are also infamous for that.)
• ethnic cleansings, wars, colonisation, racism, are related to domination. Religious beliefs and organisations have been contributors to all of these. (“Missions”, religious wars, crusades, etc) The driving factor being greed for money and power, capitalism and its ancestries and variants can often be the main contributor, but religion provides tools and “workforce” for these processes.
• minorities that stray to far from the societal “norms” are often oppressed by the dominant groups (in terms of power and influence in the societyn not in terms of demography). Such minorities include non cisgender people, as well as gender non-conforming cisgender people. You know what is an hostile environnement to these groups ? Most churches and their communities.
• non exhaustive list

For oppressed groups, churches cannot be a solution if they and their church-affiliated communities are part of the oppressors. Are they condemned to be isolated though ? No. They can find a sense of community, belonging, support, solidarity, an contribute to benefit the society as a whole, and chruches are not to thank for that. Mostly, autosupport organisations are their main salvation. Can these be echo chambers ? Depending of the subject, of course, like any community. Can they suffer from social media ? Yup, because their oprresor are dominant there too, but autosupport groups can also exploit the less predatory ones to help extend their group, and thus their ability to support each other and defy oppression.

Tl;dr : even when talking about community, belonging, solidarity, benefical impact, etc, churches are not the center of the world, nor the main model. Churches can even be an obstacle.