Date
Sunday, 22 Nov 2015 12:00 PM
Our speakers on Nov. 22, Rev. Gretta Vosper (author of With or Without God, Amen, www.grettavosper.ca/) and Ryan Bell (“Year Without God,” “Life After God”, www.lifeaftergod.org/) come together for the first time to share their respective stories about leading lives of faith within Christian traditions and how they came to let go of the theistic God and claim atheism. Bell, a former Seventh Day Adventist pastor, decided to spend a year living as if God did not exist. Vosper came out to her congregation as an atheist in 2001 and continues to minister to a United Church of Canada congregation through a contemporary redefining and reimagining of the symbols and non-exclusive language of post-theistic faith, though it looks like the UCC now will be doing a form of a heresy trial.
Together they offer a challenge to traditional faiths and an invitation to the “nones” (those who refuse to identify with any particular faith tradition), the fastest growing demographic in the USA, especially among Millennials.
Both are members of the Clergy Project (Gretta is a board officer), a support community for current and former religious professionals without supernatural beliefs. Ryan recently started his “Life After God” project to help people wrestling and questioning in the liminal space between theism and atheism, and Gretta is a senior advisor/consultant for his project. There will be a celebration at noon celebrating AFS’s 30th anniversary, and the lecture will begin at 1:00.