Sound The Trumpet : Atheist Churches Creeping Into the Bible Belt

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“Atheist Churches Creeping Into the Bible Belt”
by Prophecy New Watch
August 26th, 2014

What looks like a church, sounds like a church and behaves like a church but is not a church? It comes complete with music, instruments, singers, sermons and its own pastor and speakers. It attracts a gathering of hundreds of adherents each Sunday morning. It has social programs and seeks to help the local community. Yet it’s still not a church in the traditional sense.

Its distinguishing factor is that it is one place where God Himself is not welcome – the “Sunday Assembly” secular church movement which is an umbrella body of atheist churches around the world. The organization is said to have 75 international congregations and will add another 25 in September.

Such are the atheistic or ‘faithless churches’ that are “good without God” –and are seemingly getting increasingly proliferated across the U.S Bible belt. Typically but unsurprisingly, they have no prayer, Bibles or worship songs. The National Post recently carried a report on this, using an example from a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. In the article, Peter Foster quotes David Lyle, a founder-member of the Nashville branch of the “Sunday Assembly” movement: “I pass seven big churches between my house and the main road two miles away, there are plenty of churches in Nashville, but we needed a place for us.”

Foster further explains that the Sunday Assembly concept offers a church experience but without the “God part” and, according to organizers, it is starting to catch on in America. It was reportedly started in London in January 2013 by a pair of British stand-up comedians. According to Sanderson Jones, one of the London co-founders, almost 400 towns from Sao Paolo to Singapore are now expressing interest in setting up an Assembly, and more than 150 of these are in America.

In addition, the movement is non-profit and hopes to tap into a rising tide of secularization which — for all the continued power of the U.S. religious Right — means that almost a third of American’s under-29s now say they have no religious affiliation. These are the so-called “fuzzy faithful.” The Nashville group, conscious of the continued stigma attached to atheism in Bible-minded places like Nashville, also performs public works, providing a monthly meal for the homeless and rounding up volunteers to clean up a local creek.

The Dallas News also recently reported that atheist Sunday Assembly co-founder Sanderson Jones is due to visit Dallas, where the growing North Texas Church of Freethought is located. Freethought is an atheist church that has been in the Dallas-Fort Worth area since 1994. They have monthly meetings, a youth group and social outings — programs usually reserved for traditional religious organizations. Its pastor, Tim Gorski, said: “We want to not only be a community for people who reject the supernatural, but also for people who need help dealing with life upsets.”

What does an average Sunday Assembly meeting entail? The Dallas News account of the first Sunday of each month perhaps summarizes what a visitor could expect. Gorski’s church meets in a conference room at the Sheraton Grand in Irving. The members, ranging in ages and background, grab coffee and send their children to Sunday school, where Gorski’s wife and kids talk about how to handle classmates who don’t accept their lack of beliefs. Gorski opens with a “moment of science” to talk about scientific innovations, followed by music appreciation, where the members listen to pieces such as Beethoven’s “Merry gathering of the country folk.”

Besides the collective mindset that “there is no God”, certain statements made by the Assembly faithful typify what your average atheistic Sunday Assembly member’s philosophy of life is:

• “It’s my personal opinion as an atheist that we should leave the word church out of our vocabulary.”
• “The idea is why not steal all the good bits about church — the music, the fellowship, the community work — and lose the God stuff.”
• “Just because I’m an atheist doesn’t mean I’m not moral…I’m a conservationist; I have dedicated my life to doing good things and helping others. I just do it for myself and not for God.”
• “Not having a church doesn’t mean I don’t have a moral code…I want to get away from this idea that you have to have God to be good. You don’t.”

So concludes the atheist: “I don’t believe in God, I want no association with the church but I will borrow what I think I can use from it. I serve myself only and I have my own moral standards without God.”

Clearly the self-professed atheist does believe in one god – the god of self. In so doing, he or she unwittingly bows to and serves the ultimate god of self – Satan himself. There is no real atheist today because God has already revealed Himself to them, as specified in Romans 1:18-20:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

No wonder the Bible also states:

The fool has said in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity;
There is none who does good.
2 God looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
3 Every one of them has turned aside;
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good,
No, not one (Psalms 53: 1-3).

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13