The Sunday Assembly Comes to New York
July 1, 2013
By Adam Lee
This past weekend, the Sunday Assembly, an atheist congregation that got its start in the U.K., came to New York City as the culmination of a swing through the United States. I was in attendance, and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it!
I have to admit that when I first got there, I didn’t have high expectations. The venue was a Manhattan dive bar called Tobacco Road, tucked away on a grimy, dingy side street next to the Port Authority that was an obstacle course of construction barriers and idling buses. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where you’d come looking for a transcendent experience of atheist spirituality. But when I saw this sign-waving protestor on the sidewalk outside, I knew I’d come to the right place:
After the swelter and dazzle of a late June day, the interior of the bar was a cool, dark cavern. Tobacco Road’s usual selling point is its skimpily dressed female bartenders, but since that wasn’t the image the Sunday Assembly organizers wanted to send (and good for them), the staff had been asked to cover up for the occasion; some had, others hadn’t. The bar was nearly empty when I got there, but there was a curtained-off room in the back with a stage where the sound crew was tuning up.
I was worried that just a handful of people would show up, which would have made for an agonizingly awkward service. Happy to say, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was one of the first to arrive, but then people started coming, and kept coming, and kept coming. By the time we were ready, the bar area was packed, with a crowd that I’d guess was close to two hundred people. That turnout must have surpassed the organizers’ wildest expectations, because the room in the back had enough chairs for maybe a third of that! When the service started, it was literally standing-room-only.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2013/07/the-sunday-assembly-comes-to-new-york/
The bar is still open.
http://tobaccoroadnycofficial.com/The_Bar_Page.php
Maybe it's time to get their own building.
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