Free Republic

LONDON (CNN) - The Sunday Assembly was riding high. The world’s most voguish - though not its only - atheist church opened last year in London, to global attention and abundant acclaim. So popular was the premise, so bright the promise, that soon the Sunday Assembly was ready to franchise, branching out into cities such as New York, Dublin and Melbourne. “It’s a way to scale goodness,” declared Sanderson Jones, a standup comic and co-founder of The Sunday Assembly, which calls itself a “godless congregation.” But nearly as quickly as the Assembly spread, it split, with New York City emerging...

As prisons go, it's a relatively pleasant one. The Sheshan seminary can be found on a quiet leafy lane that could just as well be in Tuscany as its true location, the outskirts of Shanghai. There is no barbed wire in sight and no guards, just a solitary, rather friendly watchman on the front gate. Nonetheless it is, as our inquiries confirm, being used for the effective confinement of China's missing bishop, Thaddeus Ma Daqin. Friends of Bishop Ma whom I spoke to told me that he does enjoy certain limited freedoms. He can get permission to come and go...

For people who like church except for the parts about God, a British couple have bodied forth a new denomination that cheerfully excludes him, raising the volume on the question “What is atheism?” several decibels overnight. The Sunday Assembly, a “godless congregation” founded in East London last January by standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, now boasts affiliates in Brighton, Bristol, Oxford, Canberra, Melbourne, New York, and Portland, Ore. On September 21, it announced a “global missionary tour”: This past fall, interested individuals in 22 cities across the Anglosphere held Sunday Assembly meet-ups. Look for permanent congregations to be...

This is an UNBELIEVABLE story of a personal experience the narrator had after the birth of one of his children. It's an absolutely inspiring story for any believer in G-d. It's long (I think 3 or 4 hours) but I remember listening to it on the way home from work and cancelling the rest of my evening to complete it. Totally worth playing at least in the background tonight (as you like me clean up after your kids, exhausted, and ready for a spiritual boost.) It's basically a string of incredible "coincidences" that lead to the rabbi's baby boy being...

In Chicago's Daley Plaza, wedged between – and in front of – the traditional nativity display and a giant menorah, there sits something new this year: an 8-foot-tall letter "A" lit up in red. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) placed the big "A" in downtown Chicago. They say the "A" stands for Atheist, but it also represents Attack, given its timing and placement. While the nativity scene is linked to Christmas, and the menorah is part of Hanukah, the only apparent purpose for this lighted letter "A" is to demean the other displays. In Florida's State Capitol, the...

Imagine if an activist group blanketed a major city with 55 billboards urging that illegal aliens go back to their own country. Or that homosexuality is a crime against nature. Or that Muslims are responsible for most of the world’s terrorist attacks. The mainstream media would be all over the story. Organizations – like La Raza, like GLAAD, like CAIR – would organize protests. President Obama would publicly condemn the billboards (while defending illegals, homosexuals and Islam). And the sponsors of the billboards would be branded a “hate group.” Yet, there has been little outrage over the 55 billboards that...

On November 11, 2013, Religion News Service reprinted an Associated Press story by Gillian Flaccus on the development of “atheist mega-churches”. These have the rather revealing name “Sunday Assemblies” (perhaps an allusion to the Pentecostal Assemblies of God—in the hope of emulating the success of the latter?). The story described a recent gathering of this type in Los Angeles: “It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.”...

Atheists in San Diego, Calif. are trying a new approach to recruiting non-believers by offering food, such as pretzels and cheezits, and putting up large banners that read "Relax: hell does not exist, or heaven either, enjoy your life." The atheists are members of the San Diego-based group the San Diego Coalition of Reason, and every Saturday they set up a booth in the city's Balboa Park alongside other religious groups, such as Hare Krishnas and evangelical Christians, to educate passerby on their lack of beliefs. Along with the quirky banner that hangs over their booth, members of the group...

A humanist organization is threatening lawsuits against two public schools for their participation in Operation Christmas Child, a project of evangelist Franklin Graham's international Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse that seeks to deliver Christmas toys to needy children throughout the world. The American Humanist Association recently sent letters to two public elementary schools, one in South Carolina and one in Colorado, threatening legal action if they continue participating in Operation Christmas Child, which delivers thousands of shoe boxes stuffed with gifts to needy children throughout the world every year during the holidays. Along with containing small gifts, the shoe boxes...

Sunday Assembly, a godless church, founded by two British comedians that meet to hear "great talks, sing songs and celebrate life" throughout 30 cities around the world, launched a new congregation in Nashville, Tenn., last night as part of their effort to expand as a non-religious "megachurch." The Sunday Assembly opened its first church in London in January and both Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, leaders of the atheist group, decided to break ground in Nashville as their way of "church planting" since the pair has already established stateside congregations in San Diego, New York and Washington, D.C. Close to...

This post originally appeared at Pew Research Center’s Fact Tank blog. Estimating the number of atheists in the U.S. is complex. Some adults who describe themselves as atheists also say they do believe in God or a universal spirit, according to Pew Research Center surveys. At the same time, some people who identify with a religion (e.g., say they are Protestant, Catholic or Jewish) say they do not believe in God. The debate over the definition and identity of atheists came up recently during Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Diana Nyad, a self-identified atheist who recently gained attention for her Cuba-to-Florida...

Oprah and the AtheistsTrent Horn October 23, 2013 | Members of the atheist community are outraged, but not at their usual targets, such as conservative politicians or pastors. Instead, they have set their sights on Oprah Winfrey.This past weekend on her show Super Soul Sunday, Oprah interviewed Diana Nyad, the 64-year-old marathon swimmer, to discuss her amazing feat of swimming from Cuba to Florida in 53 hours. During the course of the interview the following exchange occurred:Nyad: I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist, go on down the line, and weep with the...

The miracles of Jesus attest to who Jesus is, God in flesh (John 1:1,14; Col. 2:9). Jesus used the Divine Name for Himself (John 8:58), the same Divine Name used by God when Moses asked God what His name was in Exodus 3:14. However, people claiming to be God is not that uncommon in the world. Mental institutions are filled with those who claim to be divine. But, Jesus doesn't fit the category of a crazy person. If anything, Jesus deserves the utmost respect and admiration for His humility, love, teaching, and self-sacrifice. But, even though there are other great...

Moscow, November 1, Interfax - Victims of political persecutions suffered for faith were commemorated at the Butovo firing range, the Moscow Patriarchate reports at its official website. Names well-known today (of about thousand people) killed in Butovo in the years of Great Purge were declared near the funeral ditches for several hours. The NKVD "shooting list" was voiced in compliance with the days when verdicts were carried out, photos of the killed people were shown at a special display. Rector of the Novospassky Monastery and other clerics read out the first names, then parishioners continued the reading. Several dozens of...

It’s fascinating, the amount of emotion at least some non-Catholics seem to have about Catholic teaching. I can tell you that when I was in the anti-God period of my life, I did not give one whit what any church taught. I paid them the ultimate diss of not giving a care. But from what I’ve seen on this blog, there are a large number of people who claim to be atheist or some what-not version of what I was in my anti-God period, who appear to think about Christianity, the Catholic Church in particular, 24/7. They appear to be,...

An Oklahoma woman says she's a firm believer in God after meeting him during the nine minutes she died in 2009. Crystal McVea is a 36-year-old married school teacher and mother of four who didn't quite believe in God for most of her life. At the age of three, McVea started to be sexually abused by her drug and alcohol-addicted step father and that abuse continued by him and others until the age of 12. Those experiences made her second guess from a young age whether or not God existed, and if he did, whether he loved her. 'I saw...

As headlines go, it's certainly an eye-catching one. "Scientists Prove Existence of God," German daily Die Welt wrote last week. But unsurprisingly, there is a rather significant caveat to that claim. In fact, what the researchers in question say they have actually proven is a theorem put forward by renowned Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel -- and the real news isn't about a Supreme Being, but rather what can now be achieved in scientific fields using superior technology. When Gödel died in 1978, he left behind a tantalizing theory based on principles of modal logic -- that a higher being must...

A godless church may seem to some as an oxymoron, but it has become a reality as the oldest church in Leeds opens its doors for an atheist congregation. The Sunday Assembly Leeds is a non-profit organisation which has chosen to put away religion but still keep the traditions of song and sermons. Originally starting in London last January it was created by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans. After success in the capital they have now launched their movement worldwide in their ‘40 days and 40 nights tour’, which will be opening assemblies in the UK, including Leeds,...

If you are familiar with Ray Comfort and the man on the street Way of the Master ministries, you will like this video. WoM ministries produced the linked youtube 30 minute video on Evolution vs. God. Ray and crew go to two CA universities to interview and debate science students and science faculty on Darwinian evolution. So please set aside a half hour from your busy schedule and enjoy "Evolution vs. God." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0u3-2CGOMQ#t=743

Most mainstream media stories about women in the growing skeptic/secularist/science education movement (the boundaries between the three are pretty porous) usually begin with articles and videos asking, "Where are all the women?" But people within these circles know that there are actually a lot of female leaders, and the real woman problem is sexual harassment. As Rebecca Watson, a major writer and speaker on the skeptic/atheist circuit wrote in Slate last year, the amount of sexual harassment aimed at women over even the tiniest suggestions of how to make the movement more female-friendly is absolutely stunning. ... This sort of...