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Can an Atheist Church Ever Work?

A new atheist church in Oxford? Praise God! Who wouldn’t want a movement that’s committed to making a positive impact in our community? It’s wonderful to hear of the Sunday Assembly’s desire to be ‘a place of love that is open and accepting’. Leo Mercer argued last week in these pages that the Sunday Assembly ‘offered those things that religion provides, though without dogmas or liturgy’. He mentioned some of those things that the Sunday Assembly seeks to emulate: ‘community, a place in which to reflect, a sense of purpose, and so on.’

And yet I wonder: are the wonderful aims and desires of the Sunday Assembly really compatible with its self-conscious atheism? Community and purpose aren’t ideals that Christians have happened upon, disconnected from what it is we believe; rather they flow from our understanding of the world – the ‘dogmas’ the Sunday assembly wants to do without. The two are inseparable.

I’m not surprised by the Sunday Assembly’s desire to build inclusive communities. The urge to gather in community is common to all humanity. But can an organisation that states ‘we come from nothing and go to nothing’ really have any basis for affirming that we should ‘live better, help often, wonder more’? By contrast the Christian understanding of humanity being made equally in the image of God was the bedrock of the human rights we all cherish. Couple that with the Christian understanding of us as flawed, yet unconditionally loved by God, and you have a strong basis to treat others respectfully and lovingly despite inevitably being let down and letting others down. Of course, in practice atheists are often more loving and generous than Christians – but in principle, with an atheistic understanding of the world, there’s no basis for affirming love instead of hate, or helping instead of hindering.

I fear that in their search for loving community, the Sunday Assembly have mistaken the trimmings for the Sunday roast: I’m not connected with this stranger sitting next to me because I’m singing a Disney song with them, but because we both know that through Jesus we have been made right with God and are now in his family together.

The same goes for meaning and purpose. Jesus says that we are to love God with all we are and have, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. And he provides powerful motivation for those who seek to live out this generous teaching by setting us the ultimate example: loving us so much that he died for us. But if we ‘don’t do God’ then can there be ultimate meaning? Sartre seemed to recognise this tension in Existentialism and Human Emotions: ‘If I’ve discarded God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values…life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose.’ Can we honestly feel the depth of this predicament and yet continue to celebrate life with integrity?

I wish the Sunday Assembly every success as it seeks to impact our city for the best. And yet the question remains: can the reality of an atheistic worldview sustain the goals the Sunday Assembly longs for? Could it be that the Christian understanding of the nature of reality and the human condition is actually the only basis for living better, finding purpose and building community, ideals that are the centre of what it means to be human?

 

 

 

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