Community is important. That should seem obvious since humans are social creatures who have evolved large brains and advanced language skills to allow us to navigate the social groups that have allowed our survival as a species.

Religion knows this and creates social networks that keep people dependent on the religion’s community. After all, if everyone you regularly come in contact with believes the same things you do, then you would have to actively search for challenges (unless you actually read your holy book). This is especially true for the groups like Adventists, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some pentecostal groups with their restrictive social norms, dietary rules, and a myriad of other oddities that separate them from the outside world which severs to make it difficult to form close social bonds with those outside of the group.

In the case of Adventism, you could conceivably be a multi-generational Adventist with all your living relatives being Adventists, attend Adventist schools from kindergarten through a doctorate, go to Adventist summer camps, spend your pre-teen and teen years in Pathfinders (the SDA version of Boy Scouts [a group which despite not allowing gays or atheists is *too* secular]), go off to an Adventist college, marry another Adventist, and get a job working at an Adventist school or hospital. With little effort it would be quite possible to go through your entire life with never having so much as a meaningful conversation with anyone outside of the Adventist church. It’s not much different for Mormon’s and other similar groups, although Adventists do have a more comprehensive educational system, as far as religious education goes, they’re second only to the Catholic Church.

Those who are raised in these groups will be ill suited to navigate “the world” and to leave the group requires leaving their entire world behind to start fresh in a seemingly foreign land. It would be easier for a young American Adventist to adapt to life in the Adventist community in Botswana than it would be to adapt to the general community in their own home town. In many ways losing this community is worse than the process of losing your faith, adjusting to a new world view, and rethinking the moral and lifestyle decisions that you’d taken for granted your whole life.

Many have found that those who most successfully adapt to their new life move at least 500 miles away from where they were before. When I lost my faith, I moved 2200 miles. Currently I live 500 miles from where I grew up and 250 miles from where I went to college, although I’m only 70 miles from where I spent my early childhood.

So your free, alone, lost, and on the highway to hell…now what? Find your local friendly atheist/humanist/skeptic/freethought group on Meetup.com or if you can’t find one, start one. There are groups all over the place and they are very welcoming of new people. Let’s be honest, these are small groups that don’t take 10% or more of their member’s income. They can’t do everything that your church could do for you. Don’t expect inspiring sermons, welfare programs, or a lot of the other services that your old church provided. What they do a good job of is providing community. Some groups are a little better than others at this, but if you find the right one, even if you just moved into town, you’ll find a great group of near instant friends. What more can you reasonably ask for?

This post may seem a bit redundant, since I have suggested Meetup a few times before, but I took for granted addressing how important it is, especially for those of us raised in a cultic subculture. I keep coming in contact with relatively new atheists who need this. If you don’t have a good social network where you can feel free to be who you are and say what you think and feel the need to find like minded people, please do so, you won’t regret it.