Putting the capital “A” in “Atheism:
Yesterday, The Sunday Assembly—the London-based “Atheist Church” that has, since its January launch, been stealing headlines the world over—announced a new “global missionary tour.” In October and November, affiliated Sunday Assemblies will open in 22 cities: in England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, the United States and Australia. “I think this is the moment,” Assembly founder Sanderson Jones told me in an email last week, “when the Sunday Assembly goes from being an interesting phenomenon to becoming a truly global movement.” Structured godlessness is ready for export.
The Assembly has come a long way in eight months: from scrappy East London community venture (motto: “Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More;” method: “part atheist church, part foot-stomping good time”) to the kind of organization that sends out embargoed press releases about global expansion projects. “The 3,000 percent growth rate might make this non-religious Assembly the fastest growing church in the world,” organizers boast.
The whole thing sounds to me like a Kiwanis or Rotary club that meets on Sundays. It has a vague do-good mission, but in reality it’s more of a social club than anything else (not that there’s anything wrong with that). If you’re interested, here’s how to start your own Atheist megachurch, and here’s information on the world-wide roadshow that the founders are taking, called “40 dates and 40 nights”.
Central Planning
Cue the “See? Atheism is a religion” wingnuts.
cleek
but, part of the joy of being an atheist is not having to associate with people like this.
or maybe that’s the joy of being an introvert….
hard to keep my identities separate sometimes.
sharl
This non-believer wishes them well. I’ve been seeing these efforts, on-and-off, for a number of years, at least since the late Paul Kurtz tried to introduce his concept of Eupraxsophy. A smart and sweet man he was, but as demonstrated by coining a word hardly anyone can pronounce, he didn’t have a lick of marketing sense.
Hopefully those folks will find their niche. The last time I looked they were already having some success with non-religious versions of Alcoholics Anonymous, including in prisons where non-believing prisoners often feel like they are having religion crammed down their throats.
JGabriel
SundayAssembly.com:
The first rule of Atheist Club is “Don’t Talk About The Child Sacrifices.”
The second rule of Atheist Club is “Don’t Talk About The Child Sacrifices!”
The third rule of Atheist Club is “DON’T TALK ABOUT THE CHILD SACRIFICES!”
.
Belafon
@cleek: and that’s how we get in trouble. The joy we get is in realizing that we don’t need an explanation forv every little thing that happens. You can be a Christian and be antisocial.
njb
I’d say churches are, in reality, little more than social clubs that meet on Sundays too. Except they get tax breaks.
joshua buhs
“So it’s sorta social–demented and sad, but social. Right?”
Linda Featheringill
The whole thing strikes me as strange. Good motto, though. The universe is worthy of wonder and awe on our part, regardless of our philosophies.
And, yes. Atheism is just another philosophy. Ho-hum.
Betty Cracker
A relative and I recently had the “atheism is just another belief system like any other religion” argument, and I trotted out the Bill Maher line: “Atheism is a religion like celibacy is a sex position.” These Assembly people are going to ruin everything.
Baud
This sounds like the “No Labels” of religion.
Runt
I have nothing against atheists holding weekly meetings, but I don’t see why I would go to such a gathering. I suppose it might be useful to atheists in countries like the US, where atheism still carries such a stigma; people may feel the need for a support group. But from my perch in Norway, it doesn’t sound very interesting. I mean, I could call for a weekly meeting of people who don’t work in banks, or people who don’t watch “True Blood”, but what would be the point? What would we talk about?
cvstoner
Better yet, just become a humanist.
Baud
Organized, vocal atheists (as opposed to people who simply go through life not believing in god) have always struck me as more aligned with the libertarian worldview than liberals, as a general matter. Anecdotal, YMMV, and all the other usual caveats apply.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I was looking into the local Unitarian church here when the kids were younger because I thought they might benefit from some occasional church that wasn’t as mindbendingly oppressive as what I experienced growing up.
Anyway, turned out the pastor of the Unitarian church is an atheist which I just couldn’t get my head around. What is the point of church if yer an atheist? Maybe so you can still have a church wedding?
So we just raised the kids atheist.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
We tried the unitarian church for a few weeks. Felt just as stupid as any other churchgoing experience.
Not for us.
The Red Pen
@Baud: This organization predates the British effort by over a decade.
It was billed as a “fellowship of non-believers,” and non-believers can use some fellowship, particularly in the Bible belt.
I think that what kept it from growing was that it was dominated by glibertarian assholes. I’m of the opinion that these kinds of things will be dominated by glibertarians and the rationalizers of islamaphobia, which will turn off the non-believers who might actually be interested in a positive mission.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Betty Cracker:
I had no idea that atheism was like celibacy, I may have to reconsider.
I mean church isn’t that bad really, as I remember it, there were the robes, the music, the drinking wine… or wait no that was sex. Okay now I’m all mixed up.
Belafon
@The Red Pen: You mean like Christianity?
The Red Pen
@Belafon: Yes, very similar.
Comrade Dread
Word of advice, if you all plan on going door to door, offering me a beer instead of literature will make me far less likely to release the hounds.
greennotGreen
My boss- whom I love and is the best boss I ever had – is a proselytizing atheist. I have a belief system that comports with my experience of reality and he has a belief system that comports with his. *But* I don’t feel the need to convince people who have not had my experiences that they should believe what I believe where as he (bless his soul, the one he doesn’t have) does feel the need to try to bring me into the nonbeliever camp. For atheists like my boss who talk about and seek to spread their viewpoint, it is similar to a religion if there were a religion confined entirely to the works of other atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
We all can disagree with the way many people interpret their religious writings. Heck, most of the time people interpret them in a way that will conveniently support what they already want to do. But to ask anyone – person of faith or atheist – to believe something that jars with their personal experience is to ask them to be unfaithful in the most essential way: to themselves.
kc
Hm, I wonder if a US branch of the group could qualify for some nice tax exemptions and faith-based government swag?
Betty Cracker
@The Red Pen:
That’s been my experience as well — for just about any atheist organization, online or off. It seems to attract Randroids in droves, which is one reason I prefer to be a lone wolf heretic.
shortstop
@The Red Pen:
I suspect that’s true. As it is, here in my godless blue bubble, it would feel like most any other social gathering, but with rules. I have an antipathy toward participating in all this organized stuff. By about week three the control freaks have started telling other people they’re doin it rong.
If I ever move to a red state, Ima look these people up, though.
JR
Sociologically, this makes perfect sense. E. Franklin Frazier, the eminent black scholar, devised a five-point definition of the ‘negro church’ in the early 1960s. His methodology was to determine what roles the church played in black society in order to paint a full picture of it. According to Frazier, the black church was:
1. An agency of social control,
2. A facilitator of economic cooperation,
3. A provider of education,
4. An arena for political activity, and
5. A refuge from a hostile [white] world.
That pretty much fits the bill for what any isolated or disfavored religious minority group in the West would want to establish. It builds their own economic, political and social networks, while organizing their own movement to allow consistent internal messaging and a structure that’s well-suited for coordinated actions.
Waldo
Sounds like the religious equivalent of vegetarians who bring meat-free hotdogs to cookouts and serve that hideous Tofurky shit at Thanksgiving. Trying too hard to look “normal” only makes you look weirder. Have faith in your lack of faith, people!
MattR
@greennotGreen:
So I guess it is unfair for us to ask Christian fundamentalists to believe in evolution or global warming even if that conflicts with their personal experiences and beliefs.
hoodie
Yeah, but do they have songs that don’t suck?
JR
@hoodie: Uhh, “Imagine”?
jeff
All religions are social clubs.
PurpleGirl
@njb: I would think that if they are incorporated as an educational organization, they could apply for 501(3)(c) status from the IRS.
Felonius Monk
Some self-proclaimed atheists can be just as obnoxious as proselytizing evangelicals perhaps even more so. I took an introductory psychology course in college many years ago that was taught by a young instructor who made a lot of noise in the early sessions of the course about not believing in God and if you did you were a fool, etc. — the kind of bullshit spouted by someone who seems more like they are trying to convince themselves than you.
Although I was a practicing Catholic at the time, I was greatly offended by this crap not because I felt my religion being threatened but because he was wasting class time on his personal horseshit instead of teaching the subject I was there to learn.
And even today (nearly 50 years later) while I am now pretty much an atheistic leaning agnostic, I still take offense because he was wasting my time and money.
Amir Khalid
I’m trying to figure this one out. This is supposed to be church-going without the religion part, right? The No Labels of religion. But the founders seem to assume that those who have no religion still yearn for something like church-going. I can imagine the curious coming to Sunday Assembly once or twice, just to see if it’s as much fun as advertised. But is there some point to it beyond that? I have no idea what’s going to keep them coming for a month, let alone a whole year.
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: Ack! My bad. 501(c)(3).
Redshirt
I think the main attraction of any religion has nothing to do at all with the Gods and the Devils and all the Angels and all that, but rather the underlying social structures, traditions, and habits.
Any group is built on these foundations, and getting rid of the God stuff is healthy. I’m all for so called “Atheist Churches”, but I think they should be called Churches of Sagan.
scav
@Amir Khalid: it can rather be a way to build up long term social relationships in a carved out time. Some might benefit in the effort by having the structure provided. Only reason my mother would go to church is for these sort of opportunities to meet people. Once she had a few friends in a community, church going was dropped. (eventually knitting groups served the same purpose). But she had the oomph to maintain the relationships afterwards.
Shinobi (@shinobi42)
Not having to be anywhere on Sunday is one of my favorite bits of Atheism. My atheist place of worship looks a lot like my bed and a good book.
hitchhiker
Why go to church every week instead of staying home with a nice cuppa somethin’? Because — if you’re among friends & not being asked for intellectual assent to ridiculous claims — it kind of works.
Hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it, but it really is a comfort to have a strong & welcoming community right nearby. This website can be that, right? I could see an atheist church as a sort of real-world analogue, with the jokes and the thoughtfulness and the music, and a gathering here and there.
I might do this . . .
Jay in Oregon
Yeah, nothing like giving the Glenn Beck crowd more fuel for their paranoia. Assholes.
How long before Beck or some other tinfoil-hat-wearing-nutter ties the “Atheist church” to the “one world church” from Revelations?
sneezy
So, the Anglosphere, less New Zealand.
Well, no.
The Red Pen
@Jay in Oregon: Oddly enough Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has a pretty dry article on it. There are even a lot of atheists in the comments.
But, teh crazy is already in the works.
PopeRatzo
Sounds great. If they have a secret handshake and maybe funny headwear like fezzes or coonskin caps, I’m in.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@joshua buhs: Thank you, Mr. Bender.
tybee
@Betty Cracker:
or
“atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby”
Uncle Ebeneezer
@greennotGreen: I don’t really think your bosses behavior is indicative of the greater aim of organized atheism. Several prominent atheist bloggers have been quite clear that they have no interest in trying to convert people with strongly held religious beliefs. For the most obvious reason, that those people are never going to be convinced no matter how good an argument is presented. The real goal is encouraging people who are on the fence due to societal pressures, fear of stigmatization, family pressure etc., that atheism is a viable alternative, and to try to create a world where those pressures are not so powerful. And in fact there are a litany of testimonials from people who were on the cusp of abandoning their faith and found the final straw to be some atheist literature or debate where the illogic of religion became too obvious to deny. When PZ Myers debates some idiot creationist, it’s not to convince the creationist, but the people who are present in the audience or will view it later. Which is to say that argumentative atheists like your boss certainly exist, but they are hardly the norm. And the vast majority of arguments between atheists and faithful are ones where the faithful came in very much looking to argue. I don’t know any atheists who strut up to random people on the street and start asking them about their beliefs, or condemning people in public for not sharing their views.
This common attempt to equate a couple dozen atheist blogs, books, cons/meetups and secular organizations with a church-on-every-corner-of-America, Saturday morning uninvited Witnesses on your porch, people constantly handing you Bible-verses on the street, parents disowning their children for turning their back on God etc. seems more like an attempt at both-sides-do-it-ism, rather than an honest accounting of the activity, motivation and influence of the two groups.
As far as the atheist church idea, I’m not crazy about it. Especially if they do anything like going door-to-door. But I do think that atheism is well-served by trying to make an effort to provide people with the benefits of organized religions but in a secular context. Dependency/addiction support groups, officiants for weddings, grieving, social activism etc. I have been participating in the Grief Beyond Belief group on FB since my mother passed away last year and it is a wonderful thing. It’s nice to be able to open up about loss/death without having to listen to all the “she’s in a better place, with angels” nonsense. Creating more organizations and interest groups along these lines will give people on the fence a much more welcome place to land when they decide to abandon their faith.