When the Turkish peoples came to Germany around 1961, it was not just an immigration by humans, but one of another culture and life style. During that period, Germany had more jobs in the offering than there were unemployed peoples. Before this, from 1955 up to 1968, workers from Italy, Greece and Spain were invited by the German government to come and be employed. Yet the south Europeans, although having different traditions, easy fell in line with the European way of life, and its religions. Christianity was still going strong in Europe, and so the south Europeans, when being Christians, had no difficulties finding back their known beliefs from home. The Turkish peoples, mainly Muslims, were confronted with a country different to what they were used to. This lead to a ghettoisation of the Turkish in Germany. Not only through the mistake of the government, the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), lead by chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was elected into office for the fourth term in 1961, housing the Turkish peoples in bulk communities, not making it mandatory to learn German, leading to isolation, rather than to integration and inclusion. Following their religious ways, the Turkish people began to set up Mosques in backyards and abandoned buildings. Backyard mosque is the common name for an unused building in a part of the German cities. In the beginning, this was established by Muslims as a combination of a mosque and a meeting place. These former factories or apartments in their new function, were not or barely visible from the outside as such. Since the 1970s, Muslim immigrants have often formerly remodeled commercial spaces in their own work to prayer halls.
During the decline of Christianity, specially in central and north Europe, many buildings used by the church, be it Catholic or Protestant, to name the most common ones there, started to stand as orphan houses. Christian communities had shrunk to a size, where priests and pastors were forced to join neighboring communities, to achieve a reasonably filled up church. The purpose of many church buildings was getting lost, and one could observe a transformation of usage. Through the years church buildings reopened as cafes and restaurants, museums and exhibitions, centers for music performances, due to the good acoustics inside, and there have even been cases, that churches were changed to brothels.
In the new era of “Atheism arising”, large groups of society do no longer belong to a religion, but they want to belong to a community. Church, next to its transportation of unfounded superstitions, was also a place for community and celebration. Atheism, has shown a rather dry touch of belonging, but this has slowly been changing. Atheism is not just a group of Ph. D. Professors philosophizing in a University room, or some old smoking brain wizard men, meeting in a clubhouse or in private, to exchange the laws of physics, and how to solve the questions of humanity. Atheism has become vibrant and young. Every layer of society can find his or her place within, as reality and humanity is joyful, as much as it is serious. Truth and reality holds all, like in nature, where the sun shines, the rain falls, and ice and snow offer tough living conditions.
Atheists have their own community buildings, meeting establishments and entire networks, enabling the accommodation of Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Secularists, Humanists and Free thinkers, including all who are just curious and on the path of change.
In London (UK), the St. Paul's Road accommodates a church; not really a terrible exiting news for a country where Christianity forms the largest religion. But this building is no longer a Christian church. It was transformed, and with that, has now become a meeting place for non-believers, holding gatherings with scientific and or purely human based topics, celebrating weddings and funerals, all godless and without the claims that go along with an religious set up. This is a normal and positive human act, when a building changes its purpose.
But what stroke me most was the headline: “First Atheist church opens in London”. Atheist church? Is this maybe going a step too far? Religion has its vocabulary and terms, and that should remain there. A church building being transformed to a Mosque will also not be called “Islamic church”, or the other way round, a Mosque changed to a church, would also not be called a “Christian Mosque”. Every organization defines itself through its vocabulary, so there is surely no need to adapt those words.
The growing group of Atheists in society needs more space, and in Europe, the churches becoming abandoned buildings, can certainly be reused, as most of them are solid constructions, and have eaten millions of Euros subventions by the state, money that was paid by tax payers, who are or were not even a member of the Christian religion.
The need for community, lays in the need for celebration and exchange. As Christians celebrate the myth of Christmas and its new born savior, peoples celebrated Hanukkah, before Christianity was introduced, and before that the Greco-Roman and Zoroastrian celebrations. Whilst the UK, is the first country to have now officially introduced this new form of community house, Americans have been thinking about such an establishment much longer. In 1877, Felix Adler, founded the Society for Ethical Culture. This was not yet a full blown Atheist community, but it simply went with the slogan “deed over creed”. This society suggested, that Atheism and Theism were a personal matter, and so irrelevant for the society. Felix Adler was a Jew, and what makes this relevant is, that Jews are the most secularized religious groups. Jewish peoples don't often even use the word religious, although and of course Jewish is a religion.
The newly founded “Atheist Church” in London (UK), is aiming to serve the purpose of belonging, taking over some Christian tools as the building, and the way of setting up a community. The establishment holds monthly meetings, where its visitors and participants can enjoy artists performing, comedians on stage, listen to documentations and stories, yet all without a god or a prophet or spirit.
The founders will surely have their idea in installing such a new face of “Atheism in action”. Maybe it is also a psychological move, wanting to make it easy for Christians, who are Agnostic or Skeptic, to change, and find their way to Atheism. The same as the Christians, when they placed Christmas around the date where the ancient Greeks celebrated the solstice, marking the shortest day, and with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. All done, to make it easier for the newly converted, getting used to, leaving the date of celebration in the same period.
I see the problem, that many theists will now claim Atheism as a religion or “new religion” whilst its not; and only because Atheists have adapted words from the Christian vocabulary, playing in the Christians hand of arguing. Also in our history, peoples were converted, often forcefully to another religion, what makes the word convert valid. But calling oneself an Atheist, even having been a member of a religion before, is not a conversion, but simply the step away from religion, hence away from superstitions to humanism and realism. Atheist meet-ups teach but not preach, and Atheists don't go to church, they go to a venue.
By Thomas Fleckner
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