Social and religious reasons, to most religious people of the sort in whom leftists ought to take interest, are one and the same. Only to the irreligious do social and religious reasons appear mutually exclusive. For the religious worth their name, believing in God, worshipping God, sustaining faith, seeking spiritual growth, keeping themselves grounded and inspired, etc. can't be solitary activities -- they are communal activities. Similarly, anarchism, socialism, and other secular faiths are only truly meaningful in communities of fellow believers. Solitary anarchists, socialists, etc. are essentially oxymorons, though some socialists, anarchists, etc. are temperamentally anti-social to the detriment of themselves and their faiths.
On 4/6/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > Still, this number is encouraging. It means that almost a majority of
> > Americans do not attend church frequently.
>
> Yup. And I'll bet their number is declining (Gallup doesn't have a
> long enough history to say).
Those who drop out from religion rarely turn to the Left today. They tend not to have alternative social networks, becoming nuclear-family-centered individualists who have few other friends than their spouses: "A recent study by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona found that, on average, most adults only have two people they can talk to about the most important subjects in their lives — serious health problems, for example, or issues like who will care for their children should they die. And about one-quarter have no close confidants at all" (Henry Fountain, "The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier," 2 July 2006, <http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/weekinreview/02fountain.html>). -- Yoshie