The Sunday Assembly: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Church, minus the God bit, plus a live band.

A network of secular congregations started by two comedians in a deconsecrated London church in January 2013: pop songs sung together, a talk from someone who knows something, a reading, a moment of quiet, tea afterwards. It has a charter and no doctrine, spread to dozens of cities within two years, and then lost roughly half of them — which makes it the best available evidence about how hard the congregation is to build without the theology.

Why it is filed this way

A movement rather than a philosophy: it makes no claims about the world at all, and what it actually offers is a form — an hour, a room, a running order. That is deliberate, and it is also the thing critics inside organised atheism objected to, since a congregation with no doctrine cannot take a position on anything.

Sharply contracted from its peak. Around seventy chapters existed at the high point and roughly half have since closed or gone dormant; assemblies were established in forty-eight locations as of December 2019. Sunday Assembly in America, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) and the network continues to run conferences.

DeitiesThe Assembly says it does not do supernatural, and in the same breath that it will not tell you that you are wrong if you do. That is a governing constraint rather than a fudge: the charter commits it to having no doctrine and no set texts, so there is nothing anyone is required to disbelieve. What occupies the place of a god is the congregation itself and the fact of being alive at all, which the charter names as wonder.

Founded2013 CE · Islington, London

FounderSanderson Jones and Pippa Evans

AfterlifeNone asserted. The stated frame is that this is the one life we know we have.

TextsThe Sunday Assembly Charter · No set texts — the charter rules them out on purpose

The map

The Sunday Assembly’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

One life, and this is it. The Assembly describes itself as a network of secular communities gathered to celebrate the one life we know we have. That is the closest thing it has to a doctrinal statement and it is doing a lot of work. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Whether a congregation with no doctrine can hold together. Part of the New York branch split off wanting a harder atheist line, and the movement has lost roughly half its chapters since its peak. This is the open question and the Assembly is the experiment. ⚖ contested within Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

T Two comedians in a car. They worked it out on the way to a gig: something like church, without God. Neither has ever claimed to be anything more than the person who booked the room. Domain The running orderStanding Founders, and explicitly not authorities — the charter gives them no doctrinal power Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The assembly. Singing, a talk, a reading, a silence, tea. It is the shape of a church service with the theology taken out and the hymns replaced by songs everyone already knows. When Monthly, usually on a Sunday morningWho Anyone who walks in; children included; free Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Yoruba Religion — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Jainism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Sunday Assembly — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Sunday Assembly shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

The Sunday Assembly, sundayassembly.org cited 2× →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.