The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
For me, growing up from semi regular church attendance as a kid to going to college to today what turned me off was the attitude towards lgbtq and increasingly right wing political stances but also that the pews were increasingly just the blue-silver haired crowd and I kept moving from community to community. Plus I never got Sunday off. Churches rarely did anything for me, we would sing, hear a sermon, take communion, and give money to a plate and then nothing else happened. It was frustrating hearing that Jesus told us as his followers that we should take care of the hungry and refugees and then get a political sermon on how welfare is evil and we should close the borders. One time a dad tried to set me up with his 16 year old daughter (this was pre transition lol). It just wasn't for me.