I am an atheist, and last night, on Saturday the 9th of February at 5:30 pm, I went to a church service. It had been about five years since I entered a church (not counting several old and beautiful houses of worship in Italy), and I was dying to know how I would respond to the whole experience now that I’ve examined the arguments for and against Christianity quite thoroughly. I am hoping to go to a bunch of different churches and document my experiences. I intend to be open about being an atheist, and hopefully I’ll end up having some interesting conversations. Here is my account of Church: Round One.

It was very clear that Church #1 is desperately trying to be “relevant.” The vibe was similar to that of a hipster-y restaurant, the layout of the building was anything but traditional, and the crowd was decently varied in age but a bit on the younger side. There were people at the door handing out programs, which contained a bunch of information on their faculty, plentiful groups and events, who to contact for many different services and age groups, and their (ahem) app. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this fountain of resources, but it was very much in contrast to the smaller and decidedly less cool church environment I was raised in.

I did not speak to anyone before entering the auditorium and finding a seat near the back. The worship team came on and played four songs, none of which I was familiar with or impressed by musically. It was strange but liberating to sit silently and take notes on everything instead of participating in the praising. A few people were doing the raised hands thing, but not as many as the congregation at my past church. Boredom set in fairly quickly, so I tried to imagine that it was Hozier playing Take Me To Church on stage, then Depeche Mode playing Enjoy the Silence. The music was quite loud and there was a multitude of colorful lighting and fancy effects on the lyric screen, so of course this made me feel like the concert should be better. Oh how I would have loved to hear a chorus singing those songs instead of repeatedly and joyfully proclaiming themselves to be wretched souls in need of salvation.

After the songs of the wretched concluded, the campus pastor came on say a brief introduction (we were told that they “do church a little differently”), and then a prerecorded video with information on some upcoming events played on a big screen (thankfully, I had narrowly avoided showing up on baptism night). This church has six campuses in the area, so the sermon was recorded at the main campus and played on the big screen as well. I was amused when they prefaced the sermon with a dramatic video introducing “Mark: The Untold Story of Jesus.” Firstly, this story is in no way untold…it’s a gospel, and as such has been excessively circulated to billions of people. Secondly, the vibe I got from the video was similar to that of a commercial, a marketing campaign. Again, they are desperately trying to keep things interesting to those in the crowd. The phrase “Myth or Messiah?” remained on the screen behind the pastor for the duration of the sermon, and this struck me as unnecessary. Of course you all ‘know’ he’s the Messiah! I guess they’re trying to highlight my belief that he is a myth, or something of the like.

Here are the most notable points of the sermon itself:

It was made clear early on that the events of the passage we were reading from (Mark 1 verse 40-onward) would directly cause a “split of humanity into two groups.” Later on, the pastor identified these groups as being “those who see Jesus as God” and “those that refuse Him.” I felt a smug rebellion in likely being the only member of the ‘wrong’ group present.

The pastor acknowledged that with a certain verse, some versions of the Bible used the word “compassion” and some used “indignant.” He noted that this sort of thing was “rare” but did not adequately explain the reason behind this.

Multiple times during the sermon when the pastor repeated the same phrase multiple times for emphasis, he would gesture to the crowd to say certain words. This made me feel like we were all in school and thus annoyed me. One can repeat after one’s teacher and still feel apathetic towards the lesson.

The pastor made a joke about how the Bible is too long, and he wished that it contained more details on the stories about Jesus. To me, this sounded a lot like he could do without some of the things in the Old Testament that Christians so readily ignore (a multitude of the people God created being put to death is not as relevant as God’s son being put to death, it would seem). He then proceeded to tell an elaborate backstory for the men who lowered their paralyzed friend through a roof to be healed by Jesus (interspersed with the occasional Bible verse).

One part of this backstory was like a slap in the face. The pastor was saying that the four men had brought their friend to Jesus in hopes of him being healed, not having his sins forgiven. He made this point by stating that “they hadn’t just caught him watching porn or something!” Really? Is that the worst thing someone can do? Should we bring all our friends who watch porn to church to be cleansed of this capital offense? This one made me angry. Churches need to stop conditioning people to be this repulsed by sexual sin. I have personally experienced the negative effects of this mentality.

As a shining example of the prophecy of the Messiah, the pastor stressed the importance of Jesus telling the religious teachers that he was “The Son of Man,” as this phrase is used in the book of Daniel. But wouldn’t any Jew at that time be aware of the contents of this book, or at least have access to the information if they wanted it? If so, literally anyone could go around telling people they were the Son of Man (or pull an Eowyn and say they were the Daughter of Woman, I would have liked that better).

The main lesson we were supposed to take away from the sermon was one of obedience. According to a worksheet we were instructed to fill out throughout the talk (again, making it feel like we were in school), “The struggle for a Christian will always be between God’s greater plan and [their] desires.” In addition, “[their] greatest need is to be forgiven, not to get [their] needs met.” We were then invited to say a specific prayer that was essentially an apology for bad behavior (“living life *our* way and believing The Enemy’s whispers that God is not enough”) and a commitment to putting His will first. I’m not really sure how one is supposed to determine what exactly this “will” is. If I made a guess based solely on the teachings of this sermon, I would say that God simply wants what you don’t want, and oh Lawd do I ever have some problems with this. For one thing, the pastor didn’t really give any concrete examples of what we all might be doing wrong- is there an implied prompt to analyze our actions and identify our supposed sinfulness? This is a great demonstration of how Christianity breaks one’s metaphorical leg and then supplies the Holy Crutch, and honestly it’s sickening to me. Atheism has freed me of the guilt and shame that are inherent in this ideology, and it saddened me to see that everyone seemed to respond positively to this message. Secondly, I was horrified by the excessive downplay of the importance of people’s needs and wants, with the exception of forgiveness. It’s called a need for a reason, and I seriously doubt that forgiveness can meet actual human needs in any way (except perhaps as a placebo). To top it all off, we had all been given green cards upon which to write our name, contact information, and prayer requests or other comments. The pastor said that everyone who had prayed the special prayer as instructed could write this on their cards (which they collected in baskets, presumably along with money) and then the church staff would contact them to “see how they were doing with their commitment to God.” This was framed as support, but all I saw was a Jesus Police Force: Live life His way, or else.

Much to my disdain, three more worship songs followed the sermon, one of which contained a phrase something akin to “Jesus called me, and I ran out of that grave!”…so now people are proclaiming triumphantly that they are the walking dead without God?! Wow. Just wow. After swallowing this bitter cherry on the church sundae, I went to the welcome center for first-time visitors in hopes of discovering what the church’s official belief statement was and perhaps finding a person to politely interrogate at a later date. The guy I talked to was friendly and informative- I was given a “Visitor Guide” packet (enticingly including a gift card to a local coffee shop) and an opportunity to ask a few quick questions. (I introduced myself as Emma for anonymity.) I filled out the previously mentioned green card with my contact information and was promised an email from the campus pastor in the coming week, so we’ll see how that goes. Their so-called statement of faith was annoyingly ambiguous, and I intend to get some clarification. On the whole, I’m very happy with this preliminary experience and look forward to Round Two.

My counter-sermon, as it were, is shorter and much sweeter: We are in need of each other’s love, and though we may not be perfect, we are awesomely free.