I’ve been involved in several sports clubs and they always seemed to have a strong level of involvement from members, and were places people would often go to to hang out. It was usually started by parents having their children involved and getting to take to the other parents. But there were plenty of people whose children had long since left, or who were interested in helping the club out.
Back in 1987 I attended METAL CHURCH
I think so, and when someone religious shows up, they beat the living shit out of them. ;)
Warn me next time you’re going to say something so funny. i got mt dew up my nose.
My two most memorable moments at a UU service were when the Rev. busts out with Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine when talking about the tsunami that hit Malaysia a few years back, and when he sourced the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum as an argument FOR why we have a social obligation to keep abortion and contraception available to those who want it.
Very interesting and enlightening. I used to have a bad habit of falling asleep in Church, but UU sermons have been some of the most engaging I have heard.
You left out one very important consideration: you also have to get it qualified as a church so it is a non-profit…
Done. Although, I am usually not that funny.
I can’t imagine there’s any difficulty in that.
While the UU is accepting of all, as a rational atheist I still can’t get past all the damned hippy-dippy horseshit I have to hear at the services. Mind you, I fully support these folks’ right to speak up and am glad they’ve found a church, but a lot of it is just as cringe-worthy as a fundamentalist speaking in tongues.
Also, to be clear the formal services are usually quite good and neutral, but when the attendees get to have their five minutes yapping, the crazy starts flowing fast and hot.
H.
I bond with my community through Tweetup and activities with the Chamber of Commerce. There’s also all sorts of volunteer and charitable orgs you can pitch in from time to time.
I kind of doubt you’ll get Cornel West readings at the Chamber of Commerce. Just sayin’ :)
Huh. There us a UU church not far from me. What’s the protocol for checking them out. Call first? Show up at a service? Call then show?
Just go, it’s a church in every sense except the exclusion.
H.
Another UU here. I would say that humanists may not be the majority in my local church, but they are probably larger than any other single group… others being deists, wiccans, buddhists, and… I guess you’d call them “mystics” for lack of a better term.
The only real demand on going to UU is that you have to have some interest in hearing from different perspectives. And if you’re conservative, you have to be comfortable with hanging out with political lefties. Finally, you usually have to be comfortable with smallish congregations… a UU megachurch is a fantasy. Maybe there’s one in Boston or San Francisco.
One of the most uplifting things about UU is the other UU’s, at least the locals for me. These people get good stuff done in our town. They are focused on environmentalism, social justice, lots of good causes – and not converting anyone in the 3rd world.
I have trouble with UU’s because of the whole ‘embrace the spirit’ thing.
In the DC area there’s the Ethical Society, which is pretty explicitly the sort of secular-humanist “church” you’re seeking.
Here’s the page for my church where you can find podcasts of sermons. I can’t say they are representative of UU’s because I’ve only ever been to this church, but they should help.
“We are a humanistic religious community, without formal creed or dogma, united in the belief that the greatest moral and spiritual values are to be found through raising the quality of human relationships.”
That would be different (and may be what El Guapo is looking for) than UU. UU is basically about social justice, community, and service. UU also has no creed.
That’s not really a church though.
Sunday mornings are for sleeping in…
I think if you build an institution around Humanism you would wind up with all the same problems of organized religion. Who needs that stuff? Do what you want on Sundays man…
Well the goal would be to capture all the upsides of organized religion and hopefully tame the downsides by removing some of the siller metaphysical stuff.