Last weekend I spent a pleasant hour in a dark, sweaty hovel where a shirtless man and his accomplice induced a crowd to scream, clap, rave, meditate and sing karaoke. These things happen in Scotland, albeit with greater frequency during the Edinburgh festival. But Wonder & Joy is no ordinary show. It is the creation of Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two comedians whose Sunday Assembly, a self-styled “godless congregation”, opened in January in London and has since spread globally.
Sunday Assembly goes by the motto “live better, help often, wonder more”. It is an organised celebration of humanity without the threat of eternal hellfire. The monthly gatherings feature talks from scientists and philosophers, readings from novels and the collective singing of pop songs, such as Bon Jovi's “Living on a Prayer”. The first events in a former church in north London proved so popular that the company moved to a 1,200-person venue. There are now assemblies in Bristol, Melbourne and New York. “We accidentally became a movement,” Jones writes on their website.
Like Martin Luther, the duo in charge of Sunday Assembly has kept parts of organised religion that its congregation likes and changed parts they are less keen on. Evans attended church up until the age of 12. “I stopped believing in God but I missed church,” she tells me. Unlike so-called militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins she is “not really interested in not believing in God”. Instead she wanted to know whether “you could make a community but without a common belief system”.