I disagree with this. Definitely there are many examples of organised religion being perfect case studies of the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But there are also many ways that religious communities support each other and their wider communities, outside just providing a doctrinal “granule of truth”.

Sikhism I think is most famous for this, and I feel like at least where I live whenever something bad happens in the background on the news I see Sikh communities mobilising to render assistance.

Similarly, the denomination I was brought up in (church of christ) has always been oriented, both in theory and practice, around doing community work first and debating doctrine a fairly distant second (also, each church of christ congregation is an independent entity, which I think has probably contributed to it being able to maintain its strong community-first focus over time).

I mean, you can create two accounts. I have my Beehaw account as well as my startrek.website account, for example. I use them both for different things, and they both have different vibes. I quite like it tbh.

I agree, at first my knee-jerk reaction was against defederation, but I think actually this is one of the cool things about Lemmy and the way it works; you can have relatively isolated pockets and very open spaces, and users can move between them freely. It’s not like leaving Reddit and coming to Lemmy, for example. You can use Beehaw and other instances, and both can serve a specific purpose. I really appreciate this write up because without it I would not have felt good about this decision, but after having read it I get it and I appreciate it.