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Godless gathering

12 August 2016

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IT MIGHT have been pure happen­stance; or perhaps it was a carefully planned, if understated, moment of irony. But, as Mark Vernon’s doc­umentary on the Sun­day As­­sembly (SA) movement, Swap­ping Psalms for Pop Songs (Radio 4, Friday), came to a close, I could have sworn I heard the congre­gation chanting “I want to be like you” from Disney’s The Jungle Book.

Whatever the explanation, it could not have been more appro­pri­ate: the SA is a secular organ­isation that wants to walk like the Church and talk like the Church.

Vernon proved to be an astute witness and commentator on the new phenomenon, created by two comedians, Pippa Evans and San­derson Jones. Originally dubbed “The Atheist Church”, SA now presents itself, through its com­munity outreach work, as “an import­ant social and health inter­vention” in the lives of the socially alienated. Assemblies consist of communal singing, talks, and a period of quiet reflection, or “mind­fulness”; in short, a church service.

It is clearly doing something right: Sunday Assemblies have started up around the world, and, in the United States, they provide a kind of self-help group for those who are out of step with the majority. But the criticisms that SA faces are telling. Tony Sanderson, of the National Secular Society, is contemptuous of its nostalgia for the baggage of traditional worship; while the Revd David Tomlinson told the pro­gramme that, whether SA liked it or not, the Holy Spirit was indeed working through its charitable work.

Most damning was the observa­tion from a sociologist, Grace Davie, who doubted the organ­isation’s ability to expand beyond the direct influence of its charis­matic leaders.

It is not such a big step to take for a reporter unjustly to dub an organisation such as SA a “cult”, or “cult-like”. Perhaps it is sufficiently reassuring to know that this is a British phenomenon, whose cul­tural context is recognised without the need for translation.

By contrast, it seemed somewhat unfair to be calling the work of the charity Development Aid from People to People (DAPP), and the associated organisation Teachers Group, “cult-like”, in Malawi’s Big Charity Secret (Radio 4, Tuesday of last week).

For sure, the Teachers Group has serious allegations to answer, and its methods of recruit­ment and funding are questionable. But the evidence provided here for “cult-like” activities seemed to entail a meeting at which songs were sung, and then a rather dull speech given about how to set up the Malawian equivalent of a direct debit.

The reporter Simon Cox had no need to overplay his hand. The case that he and his collaborators from the Center for Investigative Report­ing was already convincing: that DAPP, which is funded by many Western governments, and by the UN, is syphoning off funds, via employees’ pay-packets, to the Teachers Group, whose founder is wanted for questioning by Interpol.

How workers are persuaded to part with such large chunks of their pay-packets is not an issue about ideological brainwashing, but more a one of coercive employment practices.

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