It was a sort of small Ætherist community, maybe as close as Merle ever came to joining a church.
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Earlier in the text, Heino Vanderjuice described scientists' belief in Æther as based more on faith than evidence. Pynchon continues that idea here as he likens the Ætherist club to a church.
"as close as Merle ever came to joining a church"
Obviously this can mean a lot of things based on the reader's beliefs and experiences. This could just mean a close-knit community of people brought together by a single overarching belief. It could mean that Merle has never before been tricked into believing unhelpful bullshit while lording his position over others simply because he has something inherent in his brain missing which allows him to believe in nonsense. It's possible Pynchon means this on a tangible level and means that Merle has never in his life met up in the same place at the same time on a regular basis. I like to believe that Pynchon is simply pointing out that Merle was a rational and scientific man, an areligious bloke, who would never have even considered affiliating with religion so this meeting of scientific nerds in a bar to discuss something vaguely scientific is the only way he'd ever come anywhere close to joining a church.
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