Beside the entrance to West Hill United Church there is a cornerstone bearing a message that no longer applies.

It reads, “To the Glory of God.”

A lot has changed here since those words were inscribed in 1962.

“We were thinking of carving an extra ‘o’ in it,” said Gretta Vosper, the charismatic, controversial leader of this Scarborough congregation.

Vosper, who has been the minister at West Hill since 1997, is an atheist. By her own admission, she is more interested in the Good than in God.

Her services make no mention of a deity, and she certainly doesn’t read from the Bible. The church library has two shelves of theology, three shelves of fiction, and three shelves marked “Life Transitions.”

West Hill is housed in a red brick building near Morningside Ave. and Kingston Rd. that Vosper calls “the ugliest church in Christendom.”

She says it in jest, but there are some in her own denomination who sincerely question whether it is a church at all, or whether it has any place in the Christian community.

Vosper herself is a bit heterodox on the question of Christ. Asked if she believes that Jesus was the son of God, she said, “I don’t think Jesus was.” That is, she doesn’t think He existed at all.

These kinds of provocations – which Vosper invariably delivers with smiling good cheer – have rankled many in the United Church of Canada, famed for its liberality. In 2008, after she ended the practice of children reciting the Lord’s Prayer, more than half of her parishioners left West Hill, a schism that wrenched friends apart and shrunk the congregation to less than 50 people, but seems to have left Vosper emboldened.

More recently, she sent an open letter to the leader of the United Church objecting to a prayer he wrote following the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Vosper thought he was remiss in failing to acknowledge that belief in God had motivated the terrorists who rampaged through Paris.

This prompted a UC minister from Vancouver to call for her resignation.

During her sermons, Vosper is no fire-breathing atheist. (She prefers the term “post-theist” anyway.) For one thing, that would mean bringing God up, if only to deny His existence.

Instead, she preaches a brand of soothing, non-religious morality, faintly spiritual but mostly concentrated on leading a good life and being kind to others.

It can seem a bit woolly to outsiders, a bit New Age-y. A brochure in the pews reads “West Hill United: a warm place to find yourself.”

This attitude is reflected in the church’s design. Rainbow motifs are everywhere, from a quilt hung on the back wall, to the candle holders on the altar, to a set of simple stained glass windows, to the streamers obscuring a large steel cross that still looms over Vosper’s lectern.

Pews on one side of the aisle had recently been torn up and replaced with cushioned chairs, which might be a bit of playful desecration but might also be a practical step in view of the congregation’s median age of 75 or so.

Musical accompaniment to the service is provided by Scott Kearns, Vosper’s husband, a short man, quick to laugh, who from behind his piano bears a passing resemblance to David Letterman sidekick Paul Shaffer.

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His compositions reflect the spirit of West Hill as well as anything.

“May our world be a world, be a world of love,” one of his songs implores.

This being the third Sunday of the month, Vosper led the congregation in an interactive service. Parishioners who felt like it were handed a microphone and delivered secular prayers on behalf of ailing friends or relatives. As punctuation, instead of Amen, the congregation says, “In this, our time of need, may love abound.”

If it all sounds vague and mushy, it also seems to work: Vosper has a dedicated, affectionate flock, and the line-up to hug her after the service was about forty people long.

Donna Hall-Standish, who performed a beautiful rendition of “Danny Boy” in honour of St. Patrick’s Day, says West Hill feels like “home.”

She still remembers the first day she sat in on one of Vosper’s services.

“I didn’t feel that there were any critical eyes looking at me,” she said.

Vosper was raised in the United Church and has decided to remain a member because it still provides her parishioners with a sense of community and offers a venue for criticizing traditional Christianity.

Managing this contradiction hasn't always been easy, after Vosper’s first sermon at West Hill picking apart the idea of God, many thought the minister had lost her mind. Her 2008 book With or Without God alienated some congregants anew.

But with an average Sunday attendance of about 70, West Hill is prospering, relatively speaking, while churches throughout the Western world shrink and wither.

All they had to do, it turns out, was get rid of God.