Last week a woman called me to ask whether I would perform a wedding for her and her partner.  We chatted a little, and then she sort of apologized, and said she hoped I wouldn’t be offended if she asked, but, would I mind performing a service that was appropriate for atheists?  Of course, I said, I do this kind of ceremony all the time.  In fact, I explained, I serve a congregation in which many members are either atheist (sure there is no God) or agnostic (don’t know whether or not there is a God). 

Church for atheists?  Religious weddings for agnostics?  How can this be?  At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester, we do not ask you to forget your questions at the door.  For us, religion has everything to do with what we call “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”  For us, it is important to engage with our questions, and to explore in search of answers to the important questions about life and death, separation and unity, our place in the cosmos.  Where else but in a congregation can you find a quiet hour to sit with those questions and concerns, to raise your voice with others in celebration of the spirit of life, in gratitude for all we have been given?

Where else can you bring your children, not to be indoctrinated into a certain set of beliefs, but to be invited to build their own.  Of course, we provide some building blocks, but we really do believe that the questions and honest inquiry into them will yield good answers.

Can a non-theistic wedding be religious?  We invoke the power of the gathering of family and friends to bless the couple, knowing that the holy breathes through the human spirit. We reach solemnly into the depths of the human spirit, that deep well of human need to live united and loving before a broken and imperfect world, and draw out deeply felt vows.  By emphasizing the love that flows between and among human beings, we don’t leave the door open for the expectation that some other being will take care of things.  The people involved take responsibility for their commitments, rather than relying on something beyond.