On September 28, 35 new locations of the Sunday Assembly, a non-religious gathering that calls itself the atheist church, were launched across the United States.
The Sunday Assembly, which has the positive and appealing motto, "Live Better, Help Often, and Wonder More," was started in January 2013 by British comedians Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, with the purpose to "build radically inclusive communities that help everyone find and fulfill their full potential."
"Pippa had been a Christian and found, when she stopped believing, she missed church (community, volunteering, music) rather than God," wrote the Sunday Assembly website. Sanderson "wondered if it was possible to harness all those good bits to celebrate the awesome fact that we are alive."
Like Evans, many of those who are attracted to the idea of the Sunday Assembly seem to have had previous experience with church, whether good or bad. Some express that their experience with church had been a completely bad one, such as Nicole Ciaramella, 29.
"For many churches, if you don't share their belief, you're an outcast," she told the Charlotte Observer. She said she plans on going back to the next Sunday Assembly meeting because "it's an opportunity to come to a place where everybody has their own beliefs but we can be together."
Some, like Richard Fortuna, who spoke at the Charlotte Sunday Assembly, didn't necessarily have a bad experience in church, but just didn't want the dogma.
"I really loved being in [church], but everything I loved about it had nothing to do with religion," Fortuna told the Observer. "When you walked in, it was family. There was singing. And the woman in the back hugged your neck."
The Sunday Assembly says it focuses on providing an inclusive community in which everyone is accepted, emphasized by the statistics cited regarding loneliness and its effects on a recent post on its website. The group encourages those who are not atheists but may be questioning about religion or consider themselves "spiritual but not religious' to also join the community.
Their gatherings consist of music, readings, sermons about life, and moments of silence, and several congregations plan to organize small groups"”which they call "smoups'"”to discuss philosophy and read books together.
