Atheist Sunday Assembly prepares for first 'synod' as expansion continues

[cbayer]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/atheist-sunday-assembly-first-synod

General assembly in London on Saturday will set up a system of church-like management for rapidly growing group

Esther Addley
The Guardian, Tuesday 29 April 2014


The Sunday Assembly in Islington, north London. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

In the beginning there was one – a gathering of several hundred atheists in a deconsecrated church in north London. Within months that solitary event had mushroomed into a cluster of get-togethers across Britain and further afield, where unbelievers met to celebrate life without God.

Now, 16 months after the first Sunday Assembly, the organisation predicts it will have 100 congregations on five continents by the end of 2014, and this weekend it will hold its first "general assembly" to set up a system of church-like management, an event that the group's organisers acknowledge will be compared to the Church of England's General Synod.

"Sunday Assemblies have been kicking off in places we never thought possible," said Sanderson Jones, the comedian who along with musician and actor Pippa Evans dreamed up the project in January last year.

"If I open my email box the first email is in Hungarian, discussing Sunday Assembly Budapest, after there is something from Kenya, then the Western Cape, then Richmond, Virginia, then Cincinnati, then Boston." Congregations are also starting in São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Grimsby and Aberdeen.

moe at link

[Warpy]

1. Friends in London went to one of those last year

and had a great time singing pop songs and meeting new people. However, they're not joiners so they haven't bothered to go back, preferring to loaf in bed with the Sunday Times to getting dressed and going out.

We have UU congregations in the bigger cities and those function for unbelievers in search of community here in the US. I'm not surprised alternatives are catching on in other places outside the US.

Atheists have the same need for community as religious people do. We just have to organize it around something besides competing dogmas, all of which we find to be hooey.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. I guess, but we already have established UU's and...

Ethical Culture societies, along with a bunch of others. Sunday meetings where you are free to be an atheist but still continue the Sunday morning traditions.

Aside from some people preferring to start a movement instead of join one, I suppose there's a place for people to loudly proclaim their atheism. Seems little different from those churches that loudly proclaim their One True God. A bit restrictive, though.

[immoderate]

3. People are so strange.

They had a schism over differences in the definition of atheism.(?) That's organized non-religion.

--imm

[TexasProgresive]

4. Going to need atheists bishops

Somebody has to maintain order among the rabble.