Atheist Sunday Assembly prepares for first 'synod' as expansion continues

[rug]

General assembly in London on Saturday will set up a system of church-like management for rapidly growing group

Esther Addley
The Guardian, Monday 28 April 2014

In the beginning there was one – a gathering of several hundred atheists in a deconsecrated church in north London. Within months that solitary event had mushroomed into a cluster of get-togethers across Britain and further afield, where unbelievers met to celebrate life without God.

Now, 16 months after the first Sunday Assembly, the organisation predicts it will have 100 congregations on five continents by the end of 2014, and this weekend it will hold its first "general assembly" to set up a system of church-like management, an event that the group's organisers acknowledge will be compared to the Church of England's General Synod.

"Sunday Assemblies have been kicking off in places we never thought possible," said Sanderson Jones, the comedian who along with musician and actor Pippa Evans dreamed up the project in January last year.

"If I open my email box the first email is in Hungarian, discussing Sunday Assembly Budapest, after there is something from Kenya, then the Western Cape, then Richmond, Virginia, then Cincinnati, then Boston." Congregations are also starting in São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Grimsby and Aberdeen.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/atheist-sunday-assembly-first-synod

[pipoman]

1. Religion comes in many packages. ..