Atheist church undergoes ideological schism

Look at us, thinking that schisms were limited only to the Catholic Church. It seems that the world’s largest godless congregation’s binding is starting to come unhinged, though it certainly didn’t start out that way.

Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones’ Sunday Assembly, a self described “global movement of wonder and good,” was founded in London several years ago by Evans and Jones, both of whom are comedians. The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation, meaning that its members gather, reflect, sing and worship on the tokens of their spiritual belief system: atheism.

Basically, it’s adopted many of the fundamentals of what we know as today’s traditional Christian church, minus the Christ. They gather on Sunday mornings, sometimes in old churches, formerly in dive bars and most commonly in auditoriums. I wrote about the Assembly here a few months back — at that time, it was flourishing. NPR noted that Evans and Jones’ “lighthearted approach seems to be reaching a growing number of nonreligious people.” It had just gained an unsurprisingly significant foothold in largely liberal Europe and was starting to make its way over the pond into some of America’s more progressive locales: New York, Los Angeles and the like.

Most recently, it seems, ideological dissention has taken hold of the Assembly. As previously mentioned, Evans and Jones’ Assembly has flourished through the organization’s carefree approach to nonreligion.  Their roots in entertainment have served the duo well as far as expansion and community outreach goes, and most people probably appreciated a nonchalant approach when the Assembly was little more than a secular hipster start-up. As the Assembly has continued to gain notoriety, though, not all are fond of such breezy nature when it comes to whom the Sunday Assembly includes in their now internationally prominent congregation.

Lee Moore is a former member of the Sunday Assembly. He attended Assemblies in New York City and was eager to spread the news of what he thought was a positive influence in an otherwise negatively stigmatized belief system. He became a member of the Board of Directors of NYC’s branch, only to discover, as he wrote, that Jones had plans to transform the Assembly into something resembling a Unitarian church service. Unitarianism, interestingly enough, is essentially non-Trinitarian Christianity. They believe in the existence of God.

“Everything seemed to be going really well, so it came as quite a surprise when we discovered a few from the anti-atheist minority (of the Sunday Assembly’s directors) had been conspiring to steal the show,” Moore wrote on his personal blog. “The majority (of the Sunday Assembly’s directors) were notified via Skype shortly after our last show that the minority was resigning from the board en masse with the intent to turn the Sunday Assembly into something more like a Unitarian church service. Jones informed us shortly thereafter that he was with the minority, and we were no longer a part of the official Sunday Assembly.”

Years earlier, Katie Englehart, special correspondent to CNN, wrote that the Sunday Assembly “had a wayward, whimsical feel. At a table by the door, ladies served homemade cakes and tea. The house band played Cat Stevens. Our ‘priest’ wore pink skinny jeans.” Englehart was describing one of the Assembly’s first services, back when they were still a vogue mötley crüe in East London. It was written before the Assembly’s expansion and before any sort of popularity had struck.

“What started out as a comedic atheist church wants to turn itself into some sort of centralized humanist religion,” Moore continued in his stinging blog post, “with Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans at the helm.”

One can only assume that Moore was upset at the Sunday Assembly’s preference for an auditorium over a dive bar when he called the new-and-improved Sunday Assembly “Unitarian.” Moore, I assume, saw the Sunday Assembly’s new credo as a slap in the face on the part of the organized religion that atheism fundamentally rejects.

Moore is one of three former Assembly members that have founded the Godless Revival, an ultra-atheist strikeback at the all-encompassing nature of the Sunday Assembly. That all-encompassing nature might have served the Assembly well in their expansion aims, though. Pew’s 2012 Forum on Religion Public Life found that 20 percent of Americans have no religious affiliation. That’s an ambiguously large market of sans-spirituality to cater to.

Further, Englehart of CNN wrote that “a godless congregation is likely to draw crowds if it appeals to what Herb Silverman, founder of the Secular Coalition for America, calls ‘big-tent’ atheism, which includes ‘agnostics, humanists, secular humanists, freethinkers, nontheists, anti-theists, skeptics, rationalists, naturalists, materialists, ignostics, apatheists, and more.’”

That’s 12 different spiritual identities “and more,” and they’re all wildly different. Atheism, for example, is founded on a sweeping rejection of the existence of spiritual beings. Agnosticism, however, can be broadly summed up as a belief that sees the existence of spiritual beings as something humans will never be able to know for certain. Apatheism doesn’t see the question of God’s existence as anything relevant to their life. Those three spiritual platforms would be tough for one organization to cater to concurrently. Throw 10 more belief systems into the mix, and the Sunday Assembly might’ve been spreading themselves too thin.

Then again, the Sunday Assembly might’ve just been trying to help market their original nonbelievers’ belief systems. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism have never struggled too much to be recognized as legitimate ideologies. The broad umbrella belief system of atheism, however, has been stigmatized by ambiguity and negativity. Perhaps the Sunday Assembly’s original intent was simply to give international recognition to an oft-discarded spiritual belief system. In that respect, they certainly succeeded.

Regardless of their intent, the Sunday Assembly has managed to sever ties with some of their more devoutly atheist membership. Moore, of the Godless Revival, certainly isn’t the only guy in history to have felt this way. It’s hard to ignore how the early schism of the Sunday Assembly mirrors the early schism of the Catholic Church, Christianity’s largest denomination. It’s also ironic that a congregation founded on godlessness is experiencing similar tidal shifts to Catholicism, but that’s neither here nor there.

If a schism is what it takes to ultimately strengthen a religious movement, Moore’s separation might bode well for the Sunday Assembly’s overall success. However, a downright radical ideological shift — from unapologetically atheist to a ritualistic nonreligion — might redefine the Sunday Assembly past the point of recovery.

Senior staff columnist Cara Smith is a communications junior and may be reached at [email protected]