Even as growing numbers of U.S. adults are disaffiliating from faith-based institutions, some have found that secular life lacks the community structures and sense of belonging often offered by religious organizations. “A lot of people get isolated when they lose their faith or don’t have any faith to begin with,” said Joshua Hyde, 31, a board member of the Oasis Network. Whereas believers may find solidarity with others at a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque, Hyde said, secular people often have fewer ways to cultivate friendships with those who share similar views.
Oasis wants to create this kind of space for people who don’t fit in to traditional faith-based settings. And yet, ironically, Oasis and groups like them—such as the nonreligious Sunday Assembly—are organized in ways that resemble a church, suggesting that the influence of religious congregationalism remains widespread even in secular American culture. Some secular communities seem to be negotiating between conflicting impulses: to separate from religion on the one hand, and to adopt the frameworks often associated with religion on the other. Rather than experimenting with something wholly new, they seem to be inviting nonreligious people to revise their relationships to the kinds of collective rituals they may have avoided—or felt excluded from—in the past.
Oasis chapters meet weekly on Sunday mornings, offering live music, talks, children’s activities, and a break for coffee and donuts. At Kansas City Oasis, a crowd of roughly 180 people gather each Sunday in the upstairs gym of a community center, where chairs and aluminum bleachers are arranged in an arc and a black scrim has been set up to obscure the climbing wall. Many are Gen X or older, white, and casually dressed. Some have cars with Oasis bumper stickers or wear Oasis T-shirts printed with yellow letters against a blue background.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member