At Sunday morning Bible class I mentioned this article about atheists who feel the need for a church. Our pastor said I had just given the first paragraph of the sermon he had prepared for the day. We compared notes afterwards. We hadn’t read quite the same article. Mine was from New York magazine. His was this one: “Some atheists go to church too, but not to worship.”
But I wonder if it’s really just the sense of community that these atheists are looking for. There are all sorts of communities in existence besides religious communities. If community is what they want, they don’t necessarily need a church. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
In the meantime, I have in mind the G.K. Chesterton quote: “When people cease to believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.” Maybe it applies, maybe not.
I am not sure if that Chesterton quote is completely accurate, btw. I thought he said “men,” not “people.” I can find quite a variety of wordings on the web, but so far I haven’t found anyone who even cites where it came from. My favorite version, for irony purposes, was this one: “When people cease to believe in something, they do not believe in nothing: they believe in anything.”