Belonging without membership?
From security, opportunity and belonging to risk, obligation and artifice
You know that old saying that we each give the gift we most need ourselves?
Well, here I am—writing about joyful belonging—and yet most of the communities that I belong to are ones that I’ve had a significant hand in creating. I am a perpetual starter and a truly terrible joiner. Nothing seems ever to be good enough!
Prepping food in the homeless shelter felt transactional, but a regular volunteering commitment seems “too much.”
The music festival was too crunchy, but the Taizé service too stiff.
The community garden committee was unreliable, but the professional network was too Type A.
Am I alone in this? No, m’am.
Membership is down across unions, congregations, and voluntary organizations. It seems we’re increasingly looking for belonging without membership.
Whereas membership had meant security, opportunity, and belonging; it now signals risk, obligation, and artifice.
In a culture where authenticity is king, melting into membership feels like an attack on individual personhood. The threat of commitment to the “freedom” of choice seems like a limitation. And mutuality isn’t seen as a safety net, but a stone that might sink us both.
That doesn’t mean folks aren’t looking for belonging—it’s just that membership is too high a price to pay. I’d wager that this is why ephemeral connective experiences are so popular: think retreats, festivals, and conventions. We look for meaningful connections amidst the safety of temporality.
Claire Gilbert has argued that this is also why attendance at cathedrals in England is rising, when churchgoing has declined—people can sneak in from the edges and experience the liturgy without the exposure of actually being known. Namely, they can be consumed. Like a museum. (All of this is why I admire Elise Granata’s writing about being a member of her bike co-op!)
But when we treat community as a consumer, we forfeit power.
As Peter Block writes in the classic text Community, “[Consumers of community] believe that their own needs can be best satisfied by the actions of others.” Namely, that belonging can happen without us contributing (beyond the price of admission.)
This logic has decimated our relational landscape—and the power we have to stop the governmental horrors being conducted in our name. If the right has money and the left has people, it sure matters when “membership” has come to mean as little as being signed up to an email list.
The Collecting Our Dues report articulates this beautifully. When organizations are funded by their own constituents, they have greater autonomy, engagement, and accountability. But that is hard, slow work, and frankly—foundation dollars are much more easily available.
So my brain knows that membership is vital. I want to be part of the solution. But I still shudder at the prospect of joining my local Democratic Party meeting; or a church; or whatever.
Dear Reader, do I need to just bite my lip and silence my inner asshole?
Or is there something you’ve learned about making membership work? Please share in the comments below. Let’s help each other.
I, too, have struggled with a sense of belonging, a struggle that dates back to my early childhood and continues throughout my adulthood. I'm also a do-er and so have been more of a starter than a joiner (though as I write this, I wonder how much of that is a protective mechanism).
I recently bought my first apartment, and while my initial instinct was to host a welcome breakfast for the floor (inspired by your building's rooftop parties), I ended up deciding to wait and observe what networks, norms, and infrastructure already existed. I still said hi to everyone I met, but this approach took more patience and trust. It's only been a few months, but it's been a wonderful experience allowing myself to be received by this building community. I also have a similar experience with a weekly small workout group class where I am the youngest by a decade, the only person of colour and the least fit, but I have allowed myself to feel welcomed by the group instead of deciding that I don't belong. In both cases, whenever I feel a moment of belonging, I try to imprint the feeling in my body in hopes to create new patterns.
I've gradually gotten involved in my union at work over the last couple of years and what you wrote about Casper captures the reticence I encounter when I go talk to my coworkers about potentially joining our union as a member. As one of my fellow organizers loves to say, our union is not a fee for service organization, but that's the attitude many of our colleagues have. It's just all of us making stuff happen in whatever way makes the most sense at the time, and we're more powerful when we work together, so there's a big incentive to work together. I've taken that sentiment to heart to make stuff happen in our union in whatever way makes sense to me (I'm currently creating a resources page on our website so people have guides for how to check that their pay stub is correct, etc.). That's the best way I've been able to combine my desire to join something that matters to me and also channel my starter energy