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Sunday Assembly Portland 19th April 2014 by Cheryl Ann Lewis under Uncategorized

"Sunday Assembly is a secular alternative to church, a global movement that celebrates life without dogma, doctrine or deity and promotes good. Many people worldwide seek community, positivity and compassion and are looking for non-religious alternatives to provide them. The one thing we want most to communicate is Good is Great! The Sunday Assembly is a global movement of wonder and good who come together regularly across the world in a godless congregation to celebrate this one life we know we have and help one another. Sunday Assembly Portland offers a live band and speakers of interest to our community.

There are many opportunities to get involved with the non-theist community. The FCA has over 9,000 ordained ministers, people who would like to work with non-theist community-building. Sunday Assemblies are starting up in many cities world-wide. Join a Sunday Assembly Planning Committee Meetup, or join a Smoup, Small Group. If there isn’t yet a Smoup that you are interested in at your local Sunday Assembly, start one! If you don’t have a local Sunday Assembly in your city, start one! There are dozens of small, individual non-theist Meetup groups in Portland. Sunday Assembly Portland offers the opportunity to organize a small interest group under the umbrella of a larger organization, and benefit from being part of a congregation with a location and community publicity. There are opportunities to volunteer in the community and raise public awareness of non-theists. Visibility is key to furthering public acceptance of non-theists of every stripe."===http://www.sundayassemblypdx.org/

It's about time, regardless of whether they use "Assembly" or "Church" to reference themselves [Or: That media coverage finally allows the public to become more aware of them]. Since there's little possibility of traditional, theistic institutions fading away until their social role or community functions, services and missionary aid are replaceable by secular equivalents.

However, even church-like establishments originally grounded in separation of civil affairs and religious beliefs could become a polydoxastic Heinz 57 over time, as far as members go. For instance, while Unitarian churches of the humanist stripe might sport "ministers" who maintain neutrality in their sermons, they often have diverse flocks influenced by all manner of systems from paganism to the spirit-channeling of ancient Atlantean citizens. Which, say, atheists who are ideological (scientism, marxism, militant skepticism, etc) might be frowning upon in the course of sharing company with.

There's no avoiding of the fact that most people on the planet possess a disposition stemming from either the elusive "occult" and "fabulist/sci-fi" genes being inherited or suffering a biochemical imbalance in the womb which due to such rate of occurrence would actually be the norm. Thus the beneficial operations of civil churches (if they became a dominant part of the landscape) would always be colored by personal beliefs among their congregations (the latter just wouldn't be exclusively Abrahamic anymore).

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The term Unitarian is sometimes applied today to those who belong to a Unitarian church but who do not hold a Unitarian theological belief. In the past, the vast majority of members of Unitarian churches were Unitarians also in theology. Over time, however, some Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists moved away from the traditional Christian roots of Unitarianism. For example, in the 1890s the American Unitarian Association began to allow non-Christian and non-theistic churches and individuals to be part of their fellowship. As a result, people who held no Unitarian belief began to be called "Unitarians" because they were members of churches that belonged to the American Unitarian Association. After several decades, the non-theistic members outnumbered the theological Unitarians. A similar, though proportionally much smaller, phenomenon has taken place in the Unitarian churches in the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, which remain more theistically based. Unitarian theology, therefore, is distinguishable from the belief system of modern Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism#Terminology