An atheist at an Evensong

First off, I am an atheist. I don't believe in God, I haven’t even been baptised and I must admit I don’t even know that much about Christianity. Of course I know the basics, Jesus dying, sacrificing himself for us and rising and going to heaven. And other similar stories. But I’ve never read the bible and when I go to the mass (not that that happens very often), I don’t know any of the responses or know really what’s going on.

Most of my life I have been surrounded by my fellow atheist friends, and together we were nicely complaining about the stories the Church is serving its people, who, like sheep, believe them, the Church as an institution doing so many things wrongly, being too traditional and not accepting the modern standards of equality, in terms of LGBTQ community, abortion and so on. Honestly, I would still agree with all of these, but at the same time I am asking myself a question, can a thing that millions of people are following really be only bad, not bringing any benefits to their life except going to heaven after they die, provided that they abide the many rules on earth.

 I was singing at the evensong yesterday at Corpus Christi College, and this was a new experience for me in so many ways. Firstly, I have never been at any kind of service given by the Church of England, I’ve only been to catholic masses. A very big difference for me was also the language, as in Slovene I still recognise some of the responses and prayers that are being said, while now it was like I was there for the first time. And although I have sung at two midnight masses at Christmas before, we’ve never sung the responses and the psalms, which was really quite interesting to do.

So anyway, as yesterday’s rehearsal first began and I saw all the godly things we were about to sing I thought to myself, what have I gotten myself into?! Here I will be, surrounded by all the Christians, praying to their Lord, and I don’t even believe into anything we’re singing, and even worse, cannot even fit with the crowd saying those prayers and responses, as I don’t know the words! I felt completely out of place. Then we started to sing, and the music was genuinely nice, very beautiful praise to the Lord, I just thought to myself that instead of dedicating it to the Lord as  being grateful for the world he created, I could in my mind, my heart, dedicate it to this world and show my gratitude for being able to inhabit it. It’s kind of a similar thing, except that I’m not directly addressing it to anyone, just being happy that all the coincidences that led to my conception, or to enabling me to live. We all ought to express our gratitude for what we’ve got from time to time, shouldn’t we, really nothing bad in that at all.

The next interesting bit was the sermon. An “ordonant”, meaning a future priest in training, was giving it, telling us a bit about her training and how it was supposed to change  them. And that at the end of the academic year, we should all look back and observe how we changed, and in a way decide who we want to be – what parts of ourselves we want to change and which should remain as they are, and who we are, after all. Honestly, I could not agree more that such a reflection is an important part of our lives, and the sermon made me think about that at the end, although I did not quite have enough time there to answer any of these questions. But anyway, I feel like in the modern life such quiet reflection is often overlooked, we often simply forget about it and don’t have time for it, therefore going to the service where someone motivates you and reminds you to do it is useful for anyone, really.

The sermon was followed by some more of our beautiful singing - these evensongs and other services are, if you think about it, free concerts in a way, especially so for people that may not be enough into music or don’t have a chance to actually go to some proper concerts, and so much beautiful religious music has been written! The service was finished with some prayers, more like good wishes, to those that are struggling with exams right now and all the other people who are in tough situations (I don’t remember them exactly, there were just too many of them). I feel like praying for other people like that can make you remember how there are many people in a much worse situation than you might be at that time, also making you more wanting to help them, as when we are happy and have everything we often tend to forget that there are many people not as lucky as us. So again, only good about that, really.

So, is everything about religion so bad, as it seems to be from the outside world of the atheists? Many of the values we share with religious people, and with their religion they are really just expressing their emotions like we are, just in a different way, although here I would say that incorporating God into it is unnecessary. The ritual of going to the services every Sunday is, although sometimes boring, not that bad really, is it? In a way it is about taking some time to reflect and think, enjoy the music, in a way fully enjoying and taking time for the best of being Human, all nicely combined in one hour. I think everyone could or even should do with one hour of such time for yourself per week. If only we the atheists had something like that, something that would make us stop sometimes in our daily rushes.