There’s a really wild reason why the church has been so durable and pernicious in the US. That’s because what you’ve described, OP, is a third space. Third spaces are those places that are neither home nor business, but strictly places meant for social activity. In other countries, they have pubs, parks, and cafes, among other things, that also fulfill this role. In the US, due to seventy years of low-density car-centric urban design and forty years of Reaganomics, the only real third spaces left are the churches. There were malls, I guess, but the internet pretty much nuked them. You want to loosen the church’s grip? Advocate for more walkable and bikeable towns and cities, which will support more third spaces. Another good place to start is demanding reform on parking minimums, which are, by and large, based entirely on bullshit and put otherwise usable land to waste.