No Church in the Wild: The NEW Atheist Fad.
Hello fellow Heretics,
I return from my cave. I had a long list of stuff I was going to blog about but after reading a BBC article about Atheist ‘Churches’, and reading Alain De Botton’s ‘Ten Commandments for Atheists’ I felt sharing my thoughts on this subject matter would be a good way to return.
So I’ll give you a bit of background on this new fad first – and I insist on calling it a fad.
In the last few months, non-believers have been gathering at churches to hold ‘services’ led by Atheist ‘preachers’. Described as “part foot-stomping show, part atheist church, all celebration of life” congregations of more than 300 people have crowded into the shell of a deconsecrated church to join ‘the celebration’ on Sunday mornings. One Church in North London seems to be leading the way. Instead of hymns, the non-faithful rise to their feet to sing along to Stevie Wonder and Queen songs. They listen to readings from the Alice in Wonderland story and articles about particle physics and the Big Bang. Then people bow their heads and ‘contemplate’ the ‘wonder’ of life for a minute or two. Then people discuss what it’s like for them being an atheist or leaving their religion and express their joy over now having a ‘community orientated’ way of spending their Sunday now that they have left Christianity (if they had a religion to start with).
So. My initial reaction to all of this was ‘Hold on. This sounds like a cult’.
Why?
Well, for all the arguing that we Atheists do about the irrationality of religious practice and as much as many of us condemn the organised aspect to religion, it seems that some of us are falling into that exact trap. Meeting every Sunday? In a Church? Singing ‘hymns’ (even if they are Queen and Stevie Wonder hits)? Preaching? Some even have stand up comedy. I mean c’mon. It all strikes me as tasteless at best and ridiculous, if not dangerous at worst.
As I’ve said many times before, I go to Church every Christmas because I was raised as a Christian and it makes my mum happy. It used to be the thing I least looked forward to in my diary but now I feel so far removed from religion, I use it as an observational exercise. I watch the people sing, take their communion, I look at the religious iconography and I listen very carefully to what the pastor says. As I do all of this, I sit content knowing that none of this holds glue with me. I sit amazed that so many people could sit there and lap up every irrational line of superstition and take as truth a story written thousands of years ago. As much as this tradition has become something I have to tolerate as an agreement with my mother, who never asks anything else from me but this one thing, it’s still something I do out of duty and not choice. I can’t fathom why any atheist would willingly sit through an order of service and emulate religious practice. I simply do not understand it. It might be fair to call me a hypocrite for my annual trip to Church but, as explained, I have my reasons. I don’t know if I am a cultural Christian (and I use that term very reluctantly) but I look forward to the day when I feel like I’ve paid my dues and I can skip Church on Christmas day. You wouldn’t catch me replacing one form of church for another.
Some have argued that they are celebrating non-belief by gathering and discussing. People get together and meet other like-minded sorts and discuss the difficulties they’ve had in ‘coming out’ as an atheist, etc… That’s all good and well but surely the best way to get ‘unlikely’ and ‘reluctant’ Atheists together is in a discussion group or at events such as QEDcon? Surely writing articles, blogging, being active on forums and going to the many events that happen worldwide is the best way to understand your own beliefs and refine your arguments against religion and hear what other people’s viewpoints are. That is another key difference between Atheism and religion – there isn’t supposed to be a hierarchy with ‘enlightened’ people at the top and sheep that follow at the bottom. Atheists are not supposed to build a belief system based on what a few self-appointed ‘important’ people have told them. Yes, we’re supposed to think for ourselves.
I myself have thought about a good way to get in touch with more ethnic minority Atheists and create an organisation through which to explore Atheism and Agnosticism, particularly in Britain as there is already an American organisation that does something similar. After I wrote about Black Atheism, I found a lot of black Atheists on Twitter. Many who faced the same criticisms as me. Many who felt as misunderstood at times as I do/did. I do not see how I’d be able to relate to these people any better in a ‘church’ environment, with a preacher (even if what he is preaching is based in Science) and a hierarchical structure. Irrationality is deep-set in human nature and believing in the supernatural is something we’ve done since the first man and woman. In Derren Brown’s ‘Fear and Faith’ series this theory is put to the test and somehow, a hardcore Atheist woman finds herself believing in ‘a higher being’ and a ‘greater love’, almost ‘godlike’ in nature. It’s hard, but intellectual evolution demands that we shake ourselves from the shackles of supernatural belief. I like reading my daily horoscopes as much as the next guy, but just for fun. Sure, once in a while I find myself surprised by how ‘accurate’ the readings seem but I remind myself that it’s not real and any ‘truth’ is simply coincidental. Astrology is one of many methods that have been used to understand the world and the universe and explain our place in it, explain the unexplainable. For a time, even religion served a groundbreaking purpose and explained what could not previously be explained. Then natural philosophy (science) offered answers to the many questions that people had.
I’m rambling, but my point is that it is easy to get carried away and swept along with the tide. So we start with Atheist churches and meetings just once a week, every Sunday. Then a new moral code of conduct is dictated and ‘charismatic preachers’ emerge. Before you know it anti-religion become a new form of religion. What seems like a bit of harmless fun, or an educational exercise may well ‘lead you to god’ – a god we don’t even believe in.
Bishop Harrison, a Christian preacher for over thirty years, was quoted in the article, saying that he does not see this new cultural phenomenon as a threat. In fact he praises the move towards organising atheists and ‘confidently’ predicts that their spiritual journey will eventually lead them to God.
“They have got to start from somewhere,” he says.
A ‘spiritual journey’?
I think if you want to be ‘spiritual’ then that is fine but how then can you call yourself an atheist? I feel calling yourself a Theist would be more appropriate. I’m against organised religion and I, unlike religious people, feel no ‘greater force’ working in the world. I feel no relationship to something I can’t see. Sure, I can’t see my internal organs but I could if I booked myself an X-ray. The people who go to these ‘Atheist Churches’ strike me as people looking to replace a void that religion once filled with something else. Some of them have only recently rejected religion. Many are hesitant to even call themselves Atheists, just as I was a long time ago. We all ‘practice’ Atheism differently and have our reasons for choosing that path, but that is EXACTLY why we do not need to congregate in such ways. It’s too close to everything we are trying to fight against. It sends out the wrong message. It begs for an ‘I told you so’ response from religious communities. Even the word ‘Church’ finds its roots in religious meaning – ‘pertaining to the lord’. An ‘Atheist Church’ simply cannot be! Not in a rational world!
Here are a few extracts from the article:
‘There is a concern among some non-believers that atheism is developing into a religion in its own right, with its own code of ethics and self-appointed high priests.’
‘It will become an organised religion. It’s inevitable. A belief system will set in. There will be a structure, an ethical outlook on life.’
‘There is a difficulty that it might become cultish and it might become about one person. You could set yourself up as a charismatic preacher, that’s the danger.’
Bishop Harrison is right though. This is the ‘somewhere’. This is the first step in the wrong direction. I really hope that in five or ten years time I don’t see articles about Atheist cults and cult practices, which started in a seemingly harmless ‘church’ in North London. Or even worse, it may not be so clear what it means to be an Atheist. Things are rarely black and white, but that is exactly why we should not create grey areas where they just don’t need to be.
If I’m looking at this all wrong then I urge people to share their thoughts and enlighten me.
I’m not sure this is a cause for concern. Some ex-theists (and some non-theists) may still feel the need to congregate and do the social things that church congregations do in a similar context (rather than in a fully secular context that’s provided by other clubs and societies). Although I deprecate the continued use of “church”, such a congregation needn’t end up as a cult. It’s not an inevitable danger that it’s “too close to everything that we’re trying to fight against”. Remember that the BHA has its origins in the dissenting South Place congregation of the 1780s and the Ethical Churches movement that grew away from the South Place congregation in the 1890s and 1900s. As a humanist, I certainly do have an ethical outlook that’s shared with other humanists. Why is atheists’ having a structured, ethical outlook on life – based on evidence and reason – something to be concerned about?
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It’s the idea of it being a ‘church that I don’t like.
And I use the term ‘church’ because that’s what many are referring to it as. Not my words.
To me it looks like the start of organised religion. I also have an ethical outlook on life but it is not dictated to me by some preacher. Can’t you see that soon there will be a hierarchy? Like in religion. It all seems very cult-like to me. I also think much of it is distasteful. On the one hand it’s like a spoof on religion – with hymns via pop songs and stand up comedy – and on the other hand I think it’s not an effective way to consolidate one’s beliefs (well, non-belief). I don’t think it sends out the right message. We can do social things – but why do people feel that only a church-like environment can provide that?
I don’t see how this is a form of progress in any way shape or form. And I think it completely devalues any argument against Atheism being another religion. It’s not supposed to be.
Atheism is supposed to be an intellectual movement not a spiritual one and it’s clear that this movement is about spirituality. Read the Article and you’ll see what I mean.
Atheism is not supposed to be anything other than an absence of belief in any god.
You really can’t presume that all atheists are part of the same “intellectual movement”. Or any “intellectual movement”.
I really don’t see that the article suggests that this Sunday Assembly is “about” “spirituality”. But if it were, so what? “Spirituality” is such a loosely defined thing anyway, but seems to encompass, inter alia, what Christopher Hitchens was talking about when he said, “We have a need for what I would call ‘the transcendent’ or ‘the numinous’ or even ‘the ecstatic,’ which comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.” And it’s very clear from the article that that separation is there in this “church”.
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PS. “Christopher” means “the one who bears Christ (in his soul)”. Would you suggest that Hitchens should’ve renounced that name when he came out as an atheist?
It doesn’t really matter if you think it’s an effective way to consolidate one’s – shall we say? – life stance; what matters is if it’s effective socially and psychologically for these particular people. How it progresses will undoubtedly depend on why these people became atheists and what they feel that they’re missing from their previous church-going experience. But as long as they’re not claiming a fictitious supernatural agent is dictating how everyone should behave, so what?
As I said, I dislike the continued use of “church” too, but those Ethical Churches did become the BHA – not a cult, afaik!
And by taking umbrage against the way certain atheists choose to behave, by expressing concern that it’s not sending out the right message, aren’t you in danger of setting yourself up as an “enlightened” person?
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PS. A powerful aspect of a congregation of any kind is that it is a place where strangers are made welcome. I know an atheist lady new to York who found the most welcoming place to be my father-in-law’s church (yes, that is a source of some tension) and she is now ostensibly a Christian. So atheist “churches” might prevent backsliding!
PPS. Btw, just for the record, I’m an old, white, privileged straight man. With a trans* daughter.
Haha.
You have an interesting back story.
I am not saying I am ‘enlightened’ – I know no more than any other person. I’m also not dictating how people should run their lives, atheist or not, but I am criticising the hypocrisy that I see in this. I also feel that atheism should remain separate from religion and religious practices. I won’t budge on that. Some people are atheists because they just don’t care about religion or because that’s how they were raised. They no nothing different. For me, as a person who came from a very Christian background and rejected religion, atheism is indeed an intellectual movement for me because I’ve had to read and understand how and why my views changed so drastically. I had to re-educate myself.
I have every right to express whatever concerns I have about something I identify with. As I’ve said in my article and I will keep saying, this is a grey area. It seems to stem from people wanting their cake and eating it too (I really wish we had a better play on words for what we mean from that sentence). The people who come to these ‘churches’, according to the article, are often ‘new’ atheists and of course they are looking for something to fill a hole. So they go for spirituality or whatever. I still stress that it’s human nature to get swept away with the irrational and supernatural. I can’t see progress here.
Even if this is not a big deal, I think it’s just tasteless. Stand up comedy and mocking the idea of a hymn… in a church. I feel like someone is trying to reclaim religion or religious words. It is what it is. I know lots of more effective ways of spending your Sunday. I am sure there are better ways of interacting with other atheists socially or intellectually or whatever.
Each to their own of course but this is my stance. I’d rather go to a convention or sit in a pub with skeptics and atheists or listen to a talk. Or just hear what people have to say through discussion. Obviously they are trying to make a point. It’s a point, however, that I disagree with.
And I am neither white, nor middle class, nor do I have any children, transgender or otherwise.
Ps: You said an atheist woman went to your church and became religious. So instead of just accepting that people were being nice and generous and welcoming, she took it one step further and attributed all of that to religion. All of this when she entered the type of hierarchy I am talking about.
I rest my case.