A godless community An exploratory study on the Sunday Assembly and its attendees Emma Binnendijk 10830928 Supervisor: mw. dr. U.L. Popp-Baier Second reader: mw. dr. C. Ivanescu Master Thesis Research Master Religious Studies University of Amsterdam June 2020 Table of contents Introduction 1 1. Theoretical Framework 6 1.1. History of the concept of non-religion 6 1.2. History of the concept of belief 16 1.3. Conclusion 23 2. Method 24 2.1. Participant observation 24 2.2. Sampling of respondents 25 2.3. Interviews 27 2.4. Coding & Analysis 30 2.5. Conclusion 30 3. The Sunday Assembly 32 3.1. History and vision of the Sunday Assembly 32 3.2. The meetings 35 3.3. An impression of a meeting 37 3.4. Conclusion 41 4. Analysis of the interviews 42 4.1. About the interviews and respondents 42 4.2. Why do people attend the Sunday Assembly? 43 4.3. The orientation and dimensions of the respondents’ beliefs 45 4.4. The Sunday Assembly’s values and their appraisal 59 4.5. Conclusion 64 Final Conclusion and Discussion 66 Bibliography 73 Appendix I: Dutch translation of the interview questions 77 Introduction Throughout the Western world, interest in religion is rising amongst a-religious people. People are looking for ways to enjoy the merits of religion without the God that was traditionally used to define religion in the Western world. A famous proponent of religion for atheists is Alain de Botton. He argues in his book Religion for Atheists that religion has a lot to offer for secular societies. De Botton proposes that atheists should use the good ideas of religion and use it to their benefit.1 There are many examples of religion for atheists in The Netherlands: Ricky Koole’s Dienst voor ongelovigen (service for non-believers) which consists of lectures and music;2 Bijbel voor ongelovigen (Bible for non-believers) which is an adaptation of Genesis as a novel by Guus Kuijer (Nieuwenhuis 2015); Preek van de Leek (sermon by a layman) in which public figures preach about what inspires them in a religious service-like setting.3 Similar to the Dutch Dienst voor ongelovigen and Preek van de Leek, there is an international network called Sunday Assembly. This initiative was started by Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans with their first meeting taking place in January 2013. The website states “they both wanted to do something that was like church but totally secular and inclusive of all- no matter what they believed”.4 The Sunday Assembly is a secular congregation that celebrates life under the motto ‘Live better. Help often. Wonder more.’.5 The Sunday Assembly has grown enormously since its start in 2013. When this research was designed and conducted (2016 and 2017), the organization had more than seventy congregations in eight countries.6 The Sunday Assembly has been featured regularly by big media outlets such as The Guardian (Brown 2013), Vice (Cheadle 2014) and the BBC (“Scores Assemble at Atheist ‘Church’.” 2013). The rapid growth of the organization and the media coverage shows that the organization 1 http://alaindebotton.com/religion/. Accessed July 4, 2017. 2 http://rickykoole.nl/wordpress/dienst-voor-ongelovigen-en-alle-anderen/. Accessed July 4, 2017. 3 http://www.preekvandeleek.nl/. Accessed July 4, 2017. 4 https://www.sundayassembly.com/story. Accessed July 4, 2017. 5 https://www.sundayassembly.com/story. Accessed July 4, 2017. 6 https://www.sundayassembly.com/assemblies. Accessed July 4, 2017. 1 generates a lot of interest. In contrast to the widespread interest in the media for the phenomenon of Sunday Assembly, academic research on the organisation remained scarce. State of research in 2016 As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the research for this thesis was designed and conducted in 2016 and 2017. The choices made for this research regarding relevance, methods and theories are thus based on the literature available at that moment. The only research based on empirical data available in 2016 was Hannah Dick’s article Atheism in Religious Clothing (2015). In this article, she looks at the Sunday Assembly as an example of an atheist church. According to Dick atheist churches are a way of positioning atheism as a religious expression rather than purely as a rejection of religion (Dick 2015, 382-387). Dick’s categorization of the Sunday Assembly as an atheist church is probably based on the fact that the Sunday Assembly used this label itself in the beginning, but later on the Sunday Assembly comments on the phrase ‘atheist church’ as follows: “The phrase “atheist church” was something we used when starting out. It seemed like a good shorthand phrase to explain what it is (and definitely helped us get press attention which has been vital in getting Sunday Assembly off the ground). However, we focus not on Atheism but on celebrating life. We actively discourage the use of ‘atheist church’ as a way to describe the Sunday Assembly.”7 The Sunday Assembly describes itself as “radically inclusive” and says that they “don’t do supernatural but we won’t tell you you’re wrong if you do”.8 The radical inclusivism of welcoming everyone regardless of their background or religion, is one of the things that makes the Sunday Assembly and its attendees interesting to me, since most organisations similar to the Sunday Assembly adhere to a specific set of beliefs such as atheism or humanism. These types of organisations are 7 https://www.sundayassembly.com/faq. Accessed July 5, 2017. 8 https://www.sundayassembly.com/faq. Accessed July 5, 2017. 2 known in religious studies as non-religious9 organisations. Quite some research has been conducted on non-religious organisations with a specific profile. Most of this research focusses on atheist organisations (see e.g. Quack 2012; Hunsberger and Altemeyer 2006; Catto and Eccles 2013). The Sunday Assembly is a unique case of non-religion, since it does not have a specific profile concerning its beliefs. Research goals & method Because very little was known about the Sunday Assembly in 2017 -while being an interesting and unique case of non-religion- this thesis examines who attend the Sunday Assembly meetings, what they believe and which role their beliefs play in attending the Sunday Assembly. The main research question for my thesis will be What is the role of a person’s beliefs in his motivation to attend the Sunday Assembly?. The sub questions will be the following: 1. Who are the attendees of the Sunday Assembly? 2. Why do people attend the Sunday Assembly? 3. What do the attendees believe? 4. Are these beliefs affirmed in the Sunday Assembly meetings? In order to answer my research question, I have conducted fieldwork and qualitative interviews within the Sunday Assembly communities in Amsterdam and Utrecht. The interviews are modelled after Abby Day’s research on beliefs without using questions about religiosity (Day 2009). By finding out why people attend the Sunday Assembly and which beliefs the attendees have, I will be able to clarify whether these beliefs play a role in the motivation to go to the Sunday Assembly meetings and whether the attendees share beliefs with each other. In my analysis, I will also take in account the 9 The use and definition of the term ‘non-religion’ will be discussed in chapter one. For now, the reader can keep in mind that non-religious phenomena are phenomena which are primarily defined by their relation to religion, but are not religious. 3 values of the Sunday Assembly itself, and whether they align with the beliefs of the attendees.10 The values that are important to the Sunday Assembly are summed up in their motto: ‘Live better. Help often. Wonder more’. Relevance The lack of research on the Sunday Assembly in 2017 is the reason this thesis focusses on the Sunday Assembly and the attendees of its meetings. Through the theoretical lens of non-religion, this thesis focusses on what the Sunday Assembly entails, who attends the Sunday Assembly meetings and why people come to the meetings. This endeavour will shed light on a problem identified by Lois Lee. Lee argues that researchers assume that forms of non-religion “are primarily intellectual rather than social, practical, symbolic, aesthetic and/or material” (Lee 2012, 136). The study conducted in this thesis focusses on one of the relatively rare institutionalized forms of non-religion (Lee 2012, 141) which has a strong social component to it and is thus not a solely intellectual manifestation of non- religion. The first reason why I would qualify the Sunday Assembly as non-religion is the reason of its conception: the wish for something like a church, but without God. The second reason is the form of the meetings. The meetings consist of songs and singing-a-long, a lecture, a moment of silence, a personal story about the topic of the month’s meeting, and cake and coffee after the meeting.11 This structure is very much like the structure of church services. So, by conception and form, the Sunday Assembly relates to religion, while the organisation does not consider itself religious. It calls itself a secular congregation. This is according to the Sunday Assembly “a gathering that looks a bit like church but has no religious background or content.”.12 10 The definition of ‘beliefs’ and ‘values’ and the relation between these concepts will be discussed in chapter one. 11 https://www.sundayassembly.com/faq. Accessed July 5, 2017. 12 https://sundayassembly.online/faqs/. Accessed June 8, 2020. 4 Apart from the fact that there was no empirical research on the Sunday Assembly in 2017, the Sunday Assembly adds an interesting new case to the few studies that have been done on institutionalized non-religion (e.g.