Our congregation is a fellowship governed by a Board of Directors elected by our members. At our Sunday Celebrations of Life, we hear invited guest speakers who bring us inspiring and informative messages that touch our hearts, feed our intellects, and rouse our spirits.
We are not a religion, we are an experiment in philosophical spiritual community. We believe in individual freedom, personal responsibility, and the importance of community. We believe that each person must seek their own path and find their own truth. We think that we can hold different beliefs yet live together in community and treat one another with kindness and respect.
Members of our congregation self-identify as Jewish, Catholic, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Wiccan, Muslim, agnostic, or atheist. But we all come together to celebrate that we can all seek different paths yet still be a part of the same community.
We believe in social justice for all people. We believe that no one should be excluded or discriminated against due to race, gender, gender and sexual orientation, physical or intellectual abilities, country of origin, or religion.
If you are intrigued, curious, excited by this different way of approaching a sense of meaning and purpose, we invite you to come to a Celebration of Life.
Our historic building and grounds are available for rent. Check it out!
We are a spiritual community philosophically based on existentialist and feminist principles, dedicated to human liberation and protection of the natural world. We make our spiritual home in The Old Stone Church, which was hand-built by the African American Antioch East Baptist Church 100 years ago. We acknowledge that racial hostility drove those African Americans from the area, and we honor them and the powerful history of this place. We also acknowledge that in the 1800s the Muscogee-Creek people were driven from this land, and we support justice for all Indigenous Peoples.
First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta Land Acknowledgement Statement
(Adopted June 6, 2021)
The First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta acknowledges that its sanctuary and the homes of most of its members stand on land taken from indigenous Muscogee (Creek) people. In the Nineteenth Century, the United States of America forcibly seized Muscogee and Ani’yunwi’ya (Cherokee) lands for the plantation economy of Georgia and other profitable ventures that continue to benefit many Caucasian Georgians today through generational wealth.
Historians ascribe numerous social, political and economic conditions leading to the destruction of the Indigenous ways of life on this continent. Some White Americans favored the assimilation policy, forcing Indigenous People to abandon their cultures and adopt agricultural and industrial economies. However, other Whites advocated removal or extermination. They ignored rights guaranteed to Indigenous People in treaties, routinely trespassed on and confiscated their lands, inflicted random violence against them and waged genocidal war on them. When a militant faction of Creeks retaliated against these abuses in 1813-14, forces under Colonel Andrew Jackson massacred and burned Creek villages and killed more than 1,000 warriors. Spurred by the 1829 gold rush on Cherokee land and self-righteous ideas of “Manifest Destiny,” the United States, led by President Jackson, forcibly removed more than 20,000 Creek people from their ancestral homes to Oklahoma in 1836-37. Approximately 3,500 men, women and children died on the long journey.
Over the past two centuries, White Americans inflicted systemic racism against Indigenous People and their descendants in many other ways, such as sterilizing young women without their knowledge and incarcerating children in harsh Bureau of Indian Affairs schools designed to eradicate all remnants of Indigenous cultures. Today Indigenous People continue to suffer affronts to individual dignity by racist persons and policies, and many reservations have suffered violations of tribal sovereignty by profit-seeking U.S. corporations supported by government entities.
The First Existentialist Congregation recognizes that to heal these societal wounds and advance our nation to a brighter, sustainable future of peace, liberty, justice and equality for all citizens, we must know the past and its effects on the present. We seek to understand and support with appropriate action the needs of Indigenous People living in our community, state and nation. We support reparations that would best suit the needs of America’s Indigenous People. Furthermore, we acknowledge and celebrate the wisdom and values of America’s Indigenous heritages and the many contributions of Indigenous People to our country and to the world.
Statement of Solidarity: Black Lives Matter
We, at the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta, join with the Alliance for Black Lives in support of Justice for Black Lives. We are standing with many Black communities in their demand for the end to racist police brutality and white supremacy in all its forms. We also stand in solidarity with the demands for demilitarization of the police and reducing funding of police departments in favor of social programs and institutions that deal with the underlying causes of poverty and crime.
We live in a country where our policing and incarceration systems not only devalue Black people, but kill them. We mourn and stand in solidarity with the families and friends of George Floyd (Minnesota), Ahmaud Arbery and Yassim Muhammad (Georgia), Breonna Taylor and David McAtee (Kentucky), Tony McDade (Florida), Mubarak Soulemane (Connecticut), and so many other Black, Indigenous and other People of Color, whose lives were cut short by the centuries long war on Black bodies in our country. Enough is enough. This must end.
We share in the responsibility to dismantle the legacy of racism and white supremacy, and to seek justice. We pledge to continue educating ourselves about white privilege and systemic racism. We will continue to invite Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color to use our weekly Celebration of Life platform to share their wisdom, knowledge and perspective. We will take action to support ongoing Black community and People of Color organizing programs.