What is it, Woj? Do communities "just happen" or can you build them?
I think you are being really naive here. Communities are organic to a great extent, but you can also consciously build communities.
What do you think the religious right is doing with their churches?
Do you think that churches just happen? No, for the most part they are part of a clear strategy of recruitment, evangelizing, and proselytization. Contemporary fundamentalist Christian churches are even more into community building than ever--the seek to control every aspect of their members' lives. There is a school and gym attached to the church. Church social lives dominate the lives of its members. Churches offer counseling and other social services. Some offer financial planning services. The bigger megachurches have coffeeshops, cafes, and all kinds of stuff designed to totalize the religious experience of parishioners.
I agree with you that churches speak to everyday concerns of most people. This is one thing that the Left has never understood and still rejects. I think that the left can't achieve anything until it starts addressing these basic human needs.
This is why much of my activism focuses on building counter-institutions. You can build a different kind of community.
[WS:] My choice of word would be "cultivate" rather than "build" - which is a difference between, say, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water (which can be thought of as cultivated environment rather than a mere building) and the cookie cutter suburban McMansions build on bulldozed farmland. More deference to the existing environment, be it natural or social, less arrogance in human power to shape that environment at will. I think the Old Man preached that too, albeit in different words "men make their own history, but they do not make as they please..."
Wojtek