6 ms·

Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in eve

Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. I wonder if something else could be established, or even if such a thing as "athiest/agnostic churches" could be organized.

zellyn 10y ago
http://www.firstexistentialist.org/ http://www.firstexistentialist.org/
panglott 10y ago
Atheists go to the Unitarian churches.
huxley 10y ago
You'll find that in some communities, the Universalist Unitarians or liberal/universalist/nontheist Quaker meetings might fit the need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers I've known several atheists/agnostics that go to both locally and the few times I've gone to either the meetings tend to be quite low in dogma. Not my thing, but if you crave that sort of community might be worth taking a look.
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  I looked into the local Unitarian Universalists, and they are very New Age types. I like their social justice angle but wouldn't be able to sit through their sermons/discussions without making faces.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    It's worth seeing if you have any other Unitarian church near you. There's a lot of variance in their practices, from intense New Age spiritualism to simple discussion and silent reflection.
  - CelestialTeapot 10y ago
    If you're not interested in the woo, you could always try the Secular Humanist Society or other similar rationalist local groups that don't preach religiosity. https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/locations/ https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/locations/
- s_kilk 10y ago
  Thumbs-up for mentioning the Quakers. I'm not a believer at all, but they're generally great people and super non-preachy.
  - jdeibele 10y ago
    There's at least a couple of kinds of Quakers: ones with ministers and ones without. My wife belongs to a Meeting that doesn't have a minister. Instead of having someone preach, the attenders sit silently in a circle. If someone is moved to say something, they stand up and say it. Sometimes one or more people will respond. Meeting decisions have to be unanimous. It's a real source of frustration at times trying to convince the last holdout. Instead of a minister, they have a clerk. The clerk is elected and coordinates the church for a year. Before we were married, we had to meet several times with a clearance committee that had to say that we were ready to marry. I understand many ministers do something similar but this was a great thing. One of the members said it used to be a way that parents could stall a marriage - things were different 200 years ago with teenagers wanting to get married. (My wife and I were 33 and 39.) I remember reading an article about calling "root" "clerk" as a way to deter your boss from asking for root privileges.
cableshaft 10y ago
Or just a community space with rooms that people can set things up in. Libraries kind of fill that role today, but you have to reserve the rooms sometimes a year in advance. I mean more a place where you go, say 'this empty room is going to be used to play games for the next two hours' or 'we're going to set up some punch and cookies here for people to socialize for an hour' or whatever, and you're good. Maybe be able to set things up on a weekly basis or something, so you can have a regular, predictable event people can attend. I know there's plenty of meetup groups, for example, that have a hard time finding spaces that can host 40 or more people at a time, that doesn't cost like $50 to reserve ahead of time or have to be reserved almost a year in advance. I've been wanting to do a meet and greet for my group for months and haven't been able to find a good space for it.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  I can agree with your last statement. Unfortunately, due to liability and insurance reasons, "generic venues for doing stuff" are pretty expensive and unavailable. I help organize a local group of game players and by far finding an inexpensive (by this I mean under $120/day) venue willing to unlock their doors for 50-60 people on a weekend is one of our biggest ongoing challenges. There are lots of businesses that don't operate on the weekend and have to maintain their empty office for 2 days a week--you'd think they'd be open to renting a conference room out for some extra $$ but nope--if someone trips and falls, it's suddenly a money loser for them. Also, as far as I can tell, there's not really a marketplace for these kind of "single-day activity space" rentals, so I mostly trawl through Cragslist and pound pavement looking for HOA clubhouses and cheap hotel conference centers. There's your next start-up idea: AirBNB for temporary office space on the weekend.
  - VLM 10y ago
    My advice is you're seeing competition for business meetings. Yes the executive conference center in the woods costs $800/dy because board meetings are willing to pay $800 but not $801. Thats why in the city there's nothing to do but drink, and if you don't drink there's nothing to do at all. In the burbs there is an entire division of the govt called "parks and rec" or whatever and I live far from the coasts in an area with a hyperactive parks and rec dept. All you need do is convince one parks and rec functionary that you should run game night and you've got your choice of parks and rec owned rooms for free. If you can't convince them, then you get to pay rent which is of the $100 class you mention and the city self insures. There are issues, like no dogs or alcohol in the parks and park facilities. And there are first come first serve issues, you are not getting the pavilion on monday nights because thats projection screen movie night, tuesday nights because thats free cover band night, thursdays are free community orchestra concerts, and every friday night the streets are blocked off for a block party. Aside from festivals and holiday events. Of course that's just one busy park, but wednesday nights are open right now. With respect to "things to do" the problem is defining things to do. If thats defined as drink until 2am and throw up in the street and take some beer googled person home, thats fun but its city only and nothing to do in the burbs. If you want to play a different intermural parks and rec sport every night with the general public in organized games, or have what boils down to club meetings or block/street parties or park concerts or festivals for the heck of it, there's nothing like that to do in the city because corporate has priced the recreation out, yet the burbs are incredibly active, because the burbs are where sober people go for fun. Recreational tree climbing, Adult tae Kwon Do, Learn to Kayak, every sport imaginable...
Spoom 10y ago
This is essentially me. My wife and her family are religious and go to church every Sunday, but when I tried going with her earlier in our relationship, I felt like a fraud (as I'm an agnostic). I liked that they did good things for the world. I liked that they helped their community. But I couldn't stand up and sing about Jesus when I really didn't feel the same faith that the other members ostensibly felt. I've heard good things about Unitarian Universalist churches.
humanrebar 10y ago
> Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. Participating in a healthy church is way too much work if all you get out of it is the community benefits. Healthy churches: * feed and clothe people * take care of the abandoned people in society (foster kids, shut-ins, people with personality disorders, the homeless, people with immigration problems, addicts) * talk people into apologizing to each other (yeah, like your mom and her sister after all these years) * educate themselves about local issues (homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.) with a mind towards helping somehow * mentor and provide structure for prisoners and ex-prisoners * are involved in global relief... they've been doing charity-water-style projects for millenia * do all the normal boring stuff involved in maintaining and funding an organization with facilities * do intense critical analysis (including studying dead languages) of the Bible and related resources * provide educational opportunities to underpivileged children * put on an 90-120 minute A/V production once a week * provide huge amounts of child care services, including background checks, training, instilling best practices to ensure safety of children, etc. * provide therapy for people that need it (techniques here vary a lot but every church does it somehow) * provide mentoring and care for people entering new life stages (newlyweds, new couples, divorcees, recently widowed, etc.) That is to say it only makes sense to explore if you are interested in God. If you aren't, consider looking for something else and good luck on your journey. Yes, there are people (many of them) who just show up sometimes for the A/V portion of the weekend, but that's pretty much missing the point. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have a rougher time 'getting' the whole church thing.

zellyn 10y ago

http://www.firstexistentialist.org/ http://www.firstexistentialist.org/

panglott 10y ago

Atheists go to the Unitarian churches.

huxley 10y ago

You'll find that in some communities, the Universalist Unitarians or liberal/universalist/nontheist Quaker meetings might fit the need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers I've known several atheists/agnostics that go to both locally and the few times I've gone to either the meetings tend to be quite low in dogma. Not my thing, but if you crave that sort of community might be worth taking a look.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
I looked into the local Unitarian Universalists, and they are very New Age types. I like their social justice angle but wouldn't be able to sit through their sermons/discussions without making faces.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  It's worth seeing if you have any other Unitarian church near you. There's a lot of variance in their practices, from intense New Age spiritualism to simple discussion and silent reflection.
- CelestialTeapot 10y ago
  If you're not interested in the woo, you could always try the Secular Humanist Society or other similar rationalist local groups that don't preach religiosity. https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/locations/ https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/locations/
s_kilk 10y ago
Thumbs-up for mentioning the Quakers. I'm not a believer at all, but they're generally great people and super non-preachy.
- jdeibele 10y ago
  There's at least a couple of kinds of Quakers: ones with ministers and ones without. My wife belongs to a Meeting that doesn't have a minister. Instead of having someone preach, the attenders sit silently in a circle. If someone is moved to say something, they stand up and say it. Sometimes one or more people will respond. Meeting decisions have to be unanimous. It's a real source of frustration at times trying to convince the last holdout. Instead of a minister, they have a clerk. The clerk is elected and coordinates the church for a year. Before we were married, we had to meet several times with a clearance committee that had to say that we were ready to marry. I understand many ministers do something similar but this was a great thing. One of the members said it used to be a way that parents could stall a marriage - things were different 200 years ago with teenagers wanting to get married. (My wife and I were 33 and 39.) I remember reading an article about calling "root" "clerk" as a way to deter your boss from asking for root privileges.

cableshaft 10y ago

Or just a community space with rooms that people can set things up in. Libraries kind of fill that role today, but you have to reserve the rooms sometimes a year in advance. I mean more a place where you go, say 'this empty room is going to be used to play games for the next two hours' or 'we're going to set up some punch and cookies here for people to socialize for an hour' or whatever, and you're good. Maybe be able to set things up on a weekly basis or something, so you can have a regular, predictable event people can attend. I know there's plenty of meetup groups, for example, that have a hard time finding spaces that can host 40 or more people at a time, that doesn't cost like $50 to reserve ahead of time or have to be reserved almost a year in advance. I've been wanting to do a meet and greet for my group for months and haven't been able to find a good space for it.

ryandrake 10y ago
I can agree with your last statement. Unfortunately, due to liability and insurance reasons, "generic venues for doing stuff" are pretty expensive and unavailable. I help organize a local group of game players and by far finding an inexpensive (by this I mean under $120/day) venue willing to unlock their doors for 50-60 people on a weekend is one of our biggest ongoing challenges. There are lots of businesses that don't operate on the weekend and have to maintain their empty office for 2 days a week--you'd think they'd be open to renting a conference room out for some extra $$ but nope--if someone trips and falls, it's suddenly a money loser for them. Also, as far as I can tell, there's not really a marketplace for these kind of "single-day activity space" rentals, so I mostly trawl through Cragslist and pound pavement looking for HOA clubhouses and cheap hotel conference centers. There's your next start-up idea: AirBNB for temporary office space on the weekend.
- VLM 10y ago
  My advice is you're seeing competition for business meetings. Yes the executive conference center in the woods costs $800/dy because board meetings are willing to pay $800 but not $801. Thats why in the city there's nothing to do but drink, and if you don't drink there's nothing to do at all. In the burbs there is an entire division of the govt called "parks and rec" or whatever and I live far from the coasts in an area with a hyperactive parks and rec dept. All you need do is convince one parks and rec functionary that you should run game night and you've got your choice of parks and rec owned rooms for free. If you can't convince them, then you get to pay rent which is of the $100 class you mention and the city self insures. There are issues, like no dogs or alcohol in the parks and park facilities. And there are first come first serve issues, you are not getting the pavilion on monday nights because thats projection screen movie night, tuesday nights because thats free cover band night, thursdays are free community orchestra concerts, and every friday night the streets are blocked off for a block party. Aside from festivals and holiday events. Of course that's just one busy park, but wednesday nights are open right now. With respect to "things to do" the problem is defining things to do. If thats defined as drink until 2am and throw up in the street and take some beer googled person home, thats fun but its city only and nothing to do in the burbs. If you want to play a different intermural parks and rec sport every night with the general public in organized games, or have what boils down to club meetings or block/street parties or park concerts or festivals for the heck of it, there's nothing like that to do in the city because corporate has priced the recreation out, yet the burbs are incredibly active, because the burbs are where sober people go for fun. Recreational tree climbing, Adult tae Kwon Do, Learn to Kayak, every sport imaginable...

Spoom 10y ago

This is essentially me. My wife and her family are religious and go to church every Sunday, but when I tried going with her earlier in our relationship, I felt like a fraud (as I'm an agnostic). I liked that they did good things for the world. I liked that they helped their community. But I couldn't stand up and sing about Jesus when I really didn't feel the same faith that the other members ostensibly felt. I've heard good things about Unitarian Universalist churches.

humanrebar 10y ago

> Churches are definitely a great community resource, but I imagine that many people (myself included) don't want to be preached something we don't believe in every week even if it means losing out on those community benefits. Participating in a healthy church is way too much work if all you get out of it is the community benefits. Healthy churches: * feed and clothe people * take care of the abandoned people in society (foster kids, shut-ins, people with personality disorders, the homeless, people with immigration problems, addicts) * talk people into apologizing to each other (yeah, like your mom and her sister after all these years) * educate themselves about local issues (homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.) with a mind towards helping somehow * mentor and provide structure for prisoners and ex-prisoners * are involved in global relief... they've been doing charity-water-style projects for millenia * do all the normal boring stuff involved in maintaining and funding an organization with facilities * do intense critical analysis (including studying dead languages) of the Bible and related resources * provide educational opportunities to underpivileged children * put on an 90-120 minute A/V production once a week * provide huge amounts of child care services, including background checks, training, instilling best practices to ensure safety of children, etc. * provide therapy for people that need it (techniques here vary a lot but every church does it somehow) * provide mentoring and care for people entering new life stages (newlyweds, new couples, divorcees, recently widowed, etc.) That is to say it only makes sense to explore if you are interested in God. If you aren't, consider looking for something else and good luck on your journey. Yes, there are people (many of them) who just show up sometimes for the A/V portion of the weekend, but that's pretty much missing the point. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have a rougher time 'getting' the whole church thing.