Church of England minister and The Guardian columnist Giles Fraser has said that the atheist ‘Sunday Assemblies’ ‘deserve to perish’ because ‘no one really needs happy-clappy atheism.’
Fraser admits that when the Sunday Assemblies began, he thought the basic idea was well-intentioned and stemmed from a desire to ‘celebrate the best in life’.
The movement was founded in 2013 by two comedians, who wanted to bring people together for support without the religion. However, Fraser highlighted a report showing that the movement is struggling.
He said the root problem is that belief is not about ‘celebrating life and wonder’, but is about ‘being saved’. ‘That is, it is a way of addressing some inherent brokenness about human beings, a brokenness that we are unable to fix by ourselves.’
Fraser concluded: ‘If you cannot accommodate failure – your own or that of your congregants – then you don’t have enough to exist for.’
