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It started, as a number of the world's great religions have done, with a small group of friends and a persuasive idea: why should atheists miss out on all the good things churches have to offer? What would happen if they set up a "godless congregation" that met to celebrate life, with no hope of the hereafter?

Eight months after their first meeting in a deconsecrated church in north London, the founders of the Sunday Assembly have their answer: on Sunday they will announce the formation of satellite congregations in more than 20 cities across Britain and the world, the first wave of an expansion that they believe could see 40 atheist churches springing up by the year and as many as 1,000 worldwide within a decade.

From Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol and Dublin, to New York, San Diego and Vancouver, to Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, groups of non-believers will be getting together to form their own monthly Sunday Assemblies, with the movement's founders – the standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans – visiting the fledgling congregations in what they are calling, only partly in jest, a "global missionary tour".

Though he always suspected he was not the only one to regret that his lack of faith excluded him from a church-style community, Jones admits to being a little bewildered by the speed and scale at which his idea has caught on. "When I had the idea for this, I always thought if it was something I would like to go to in London then it was something other people would like to go to in other places.

"The one thing that we didn't take into account was the power of the internet, and I think even more than that, the fact that there is obviously a latent need for this kind of thing. People have always congregated around things that they believe in. I think people are going to look back at the fact that it didn't happen as the oddity, not this part."

Satellite assemblies will agree to the central charter of Jones and Evans's original gathering – which still meets monthly in central London – and Jones expects them, initially at least, to stick to a similar format, in which a "host" leads several hundred congregants through songs, moments of contemplation and a sermon-like (but secular) talk.

"If we do it in London and there are 400 people who come, that's brilliant, but if we find a way to help hundreds of people to set one up then we can have a bigger impact than we could ever dream of," says Jones. Their vision, he says, is "a godless gathering in every town, city or village that wants one".

Stuart Balkham is one of a small group of Brighton unbelievers who next weekend will hold their inaugural assembly – the theme is beginnings – in a disused church in Hove.

He and his partner went to the London gathering where, he says, "there was just something that clicked". Part of the appeal was the style of non-worship: "It's unashamedly copying a familiar Church of England format, so it's part of the collective consciousness."

Balkham says he has envied churches the sense of community they can offer, and thinks atheists can learn from the social good that many churches do. "It's naive to deny that there's a lot of good that comes out of organised religion, and I think helping in the community is another thing that Sunday Assemblies should be aspiring to unashamedly copy."

Nick Spencer, research director of Theos, a thinktank looking at religion's role in society, says the growth of the movement may appear striking but it is not necessarily new. "This contemporary idea of people who are not religious but wanting to maintain some kind of church-like existence has got form. We've been here before."

Spencer, who will publish a book next year on the history of atheism, sees echoes of the late 19th century, when hundreds of "ethical unions" were founded in response to the growing atheism of the times. The movement, he says, similarly concentrated on good works and community around a recognisably church-like liturgy, but petered out within a generation or two.

"The reason for that was because you need more than an absence to keep you together. You need a firm common purpose. What you can see in these modern-day atheist churches is people united by a felt absence of community. I suspect what brings them together is a real desire for community when in a modern, urbanised individualised city like London you can often feel very alone. That creates a lot of camaraderie, but the challenge then becomes, what actually unites us?"

Jones says he is alive to criticism that the assemblies appeal to a limited demographic – young, professional and overwhelmingly white – but says: "I don't there's anything that's inherently elite about people getting together to sing songs and think about themselves and improve their community. But we can't wait to see people doing it in all manner of different places in all manner of different ways, that appeal to all manner of different people."

In the meantime, a few members of the London congregation have already started thinking about setting up a free school guided by Sunday Assembly principles, raising the prospect, as Jones notes, "of Christians one day lying about being atheists to get their children into school".
The Sunday Assembly missionary tour,

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Sounds like it might be interesting.

I'd hope that it doesn't get as dogmatic as some atheist organizations that get all bent out of shape at any public reference to a deity.


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

It started, as a number of the world's great religions have done, with a small group of friends and a persuasive idea: why should atheists miss out on all the good things churches have to offer? What would happen if they set up a "godless congregation" that met to celebrate life, with no hope of the hereafter?

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

That is just completely missing the point.

As if it's not hard enough to get any credibility in terms of the science versus religion conversation, and having to deal with all the prejudice, they have to go off and make a church that's liable to get mistaken for the satanists. Fan-fuggin-tastic.

Well, they'll do what they want, and if they need a damned support group to deal with their own beliefs, that's their business. But I don't even know them and I'm disappointed in them. It stinks of a lack of conviction in the ideas.

The REASON atheists don't like CHURCHES is because even the good sides of a church like the charity and the help are based on POWER PLAYS and POLITICS and intolerant DOGMA against other belief systems. To create an atheist organization that recreates all those frustrating and oppressive dynamics is quite possibly among the most foolhardy ideas I've ever heard.

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Originally posted by Wishimay:
Sometimes a little community isn't such a bad thing either, to pretend that people are actually capable of not being complete sucking voids for five minutes. It's a lie of course, but everyone likes to play pretend...

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Personally, i miss the community that comes with church going, and I miss the comfort of known rituals that accompany birth, relationships, death etc. I miss being able to pray when things suck, and knowing that other people are praying with you or for you as well. It's not about the big god on the other side listening, but more knowing that there is a group of people who are thinking collectively about you.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

I believe more and more we are being conditioned to not be able to tolerate others, its part of being in societies that value the individual so completely.

if its all about ME, and my happiness, and everyone around me is alsp all about THEM and their individual happiness, then it stands to reason that we piss each other off quite easily.

I feel the passing of my parents generation, the depression/ww2 era people. what they lacked in imagination, they made up for in their capacity to think more widely than their own personal needs. Something went missing in generations after the war.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


"Hey, good luck on your new baby/job/love interest/graduation/surgery! We're all pulling for you!"

Problem solved.

Also, my atheist parents had approximately zero problems raising me to be both atheist and completely uninterested in the pop-culture peer pressure goodies-rewards-fear-punishment system of most (all?) modern religions.

In Utah.

Surrounded by MORMONS who are, to put it lightly, COMPLETELY RELENTLESS. And who also constitute a vast majority of my actual blood relatives, who I see every Sunday.

Give your kids more credit. You raised them, the mechanisms of faith are likely to be completely transparent and nonsensical to them. Just as children raised with faith generally can't understand at all how anyone could NOT believe.

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No, this organized church for atheists tastes more like... A seedy, awful power grab. Perhaps promoted by various interests who would like to encourage secular unified completely un-diverse societies for their own benefits and our detriment. I would have no truck with these people who think they are clever enough to manipulate me.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


So what does this all mean? Could it be that ALL generations have EQUAL capacity for altruism, and they really AREN'T getting any worse? That perhaps people are the same, always have been, and always will be, no matter when they lived? Is it possible that the perception of generations being worse is actually malicious fear-mongering from certain political and religious groups that make gravy from parents and grandparents being scared of their own kids? Astonishing.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:


That is a rather pressimistic view of something that seems at worst, kind of pointless, but rather benign.

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But that's you huh, I remember having similar conversations where you were suspicious of meditation being put to nefarious uses to make us all calm and happy. Oh the horror, the horror.

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My you are being oppositional today. And is that a tad of hostility I detect?

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I have seen first hand the flaws of that generation, but as I grow older and they die off, I can also mourn for their good qualities that are passing with them.

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If you crave the group/community without God then this looks great, not sure why anyone would dismiss it, seems way too early.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


Erm. YEAH? What's it been, five years since I showed up on this shore? How many times have I had to say I'm a cynic? And this still surprises people? Of COURSE I'm gonna be suspicious, and also just a little bit paranoid, because I've got good REASON to be. This idea is so questionable, that I can't help but think the reason it's so bizarre is because there must be ulterior motives at play.

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You don't believe in scientific data, or perhaps just not what other people quote.

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Originally posted by Oonjerah:


The only way such an organization would interest me is as a discussion
group. Everyone gets a chance to have their say.

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