Religion Without God: Impulse to hold a “church” service despite a hesitant or nonexistent faith

New York Times ^ | 12/26/2014 | T.M. Luhrmann

[SeekAndFind]

THIS Christmas our family will go to church. The service is held in a beautiful old church in the charming town of Walpole, N.H., just over the border from Vermont. The Lord’s Prayer hangs on the wall behind the sanctuary. A lectern rises above the nave to let the pastor look down on his flock. The pews and the side stalls have the stern, pure lineaments suited to the Colonial congregation that once came to church to face God.

Except that this church is Unitarian. Unitarianism emerged in early modern Europe from those who rejected a Trinitarian theology in preference for the doctrine that God was one. By the 19th century, however, the Unitarian church had become a place for intellectuals who were skeptical of belief claims but who wanted to hang on to faith in some manner. Charles Darwin, for example, turned to Unitarians as he struggled with his growing doubt. My mother is the daughter of a Baptist pastor and the black sheep, theologically speaking, of her family. She wants to go to church, but she is not quite sure whether she wants God. The modern Unitarian Universalist Association’s statement of principles does not mention God at all.

As it happens, this kind of God-neutral faith is growing rapidly, in many cases with even less role for God than among Unitarians. Atheist services have sprung up around the country, even in the Bible Belt.

Many of them are connected to Sunday Assembly, which was founded in Britain by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans. They are avowed atheists. Yet they have created a movement that draws thousands of people to events with music, sermons, readings, reflections and (to judge by photos) even the waving of upraised hands. There are nearly 200 Sunday Assembly gatherings worldwide.

[Oak Grove]

So sad.

[Campion]

2 Timothy 3:5 comes to full fruition.

[exnavy]

Faith without God. That is the definition of frustration.

[txrefugee]

Nice try, NYT, putting out your anti-God propaganda at Christmas every year. Christians will continue to embrace Jesus’s promise, “Lo, I am with you alway,” as the nervous ungodly search for a faux “religion.”

[Pontiac]

They are avowed atheists. Yet they have created a movement that draws thousands of people to events with music, sermons, readings, reflections and (to judge by photos) even the waving of upraised hands.

Why bother?

They desire fellowship but deny the existence to the creator of their fellows.

[Awgie]

“Sunday Assembly, which was founded in Britain by two comedians.”

Let's not forget Scientology which was created by a science fiction writer.

So comedians and science fiction writers can create their own religions while enjoying worldwide support, yet Christianity must be continually undermined and marginalized.

It seems like it is not popular to be an adherent of successful westernized traditions and practices. All successful “westernized” traditions are under assault, from outside as well as inside.

The only question is, How long before utter collapse?

[faithhopecharity]

Some parts of society have fallen all the way from the “shakers” to this - watered down jello that’s still a-quivering a little bit long after all the real shaking’s gone bye-bye. Sad. Pray for them.

[reasonisfaith]

I feel like I just read another essay by an eighth grade student of Common Core who’s done nothing but play video games every day of his life.

[PeterPrinciple]

This is just part of the “sorting out” Jesus came to divide the goats from the sheep, the tares from the wheat.

There is no middle ground. In other words, are you “fir” Him or “agin” Him. Nothing new here, just Jesus working........

Luk 12:51 Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
Luk 12:52 From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of Me, and two against—or two in favor and three against.
Luk 12:53 ‘Father will be divided against son and son against father; mother against daughter and daughter against mother; and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’”

[reasonisfaith]

What happened—has the NYT already killed off the last of their remaining writers with any thinking ability?

[MuttTheHoople]

The first words of Unitarians and atheists after they die:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! I'M BURNING IN HELLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

[MeganC]

Exactly:

2 Timothy 3

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; 9 but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.

[Vigilanteman]

Yet they have created a movement that draws thousands of people to events with music, sermons, readings, reflections and (to judge by photos) even the waving of upraised hands.

So did Woodstock in August 1969.

[SECURE AMERICA]

Sad people jst pissing into the wind..............

[Gumdrop]

There are none so foolish as those who think they can attend a church which is not a church and then say they have gone to church.

[Star Traveler]

There won’t be an utter collapse of civilization ... instead the Antichrist will come on the scene, and then, Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, returns to earth to set up his one-world government, after defeating the Antichrist and his forces.

[ravenwolf]

Rev 18
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

[353FMG]

Not for believers to make that judgment.

Hell is too serious a matter for us creatures to decide who goes there and who avoids it.

Thanks to God that He is the One who has the last word.

[353FMG]

The Antichrist already came in the 7th century and we have invited his forces to come live with us since the 1960’s because of his oil wealth.