Sanderson Jones
Sanderson Jones | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Born | 1981 | ||
| Nationality | British | ||
| Citizenship | United Kingdom | ||
| Occupation |
| ||
Sanderson Jones (born 1981) is a British comedian, filmmaker and social entrepreneur who is the co-founder of Sunday Assembly.
Comedy Career
Sanderson Jones began to perform stand up in 2008 and is known for his innovative conceptual performances with the Skinny saying ‘Sanderson creates genres at the same rate other comedians write shows.[1]
His 2010 Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Taking Liberties’ challenged the legal definition of art.[2]
In 2011 he took his show to the Melbourne Comedy Festival where it received favourable reviews from The Age and The Herald.[3]
In August of 2011 he created his show Comedy Sale where every single ticket was sold in person. The show had a sold out run and was one of the best-reviewed shows of the Fringe.[4]
In every show of Comedy Sale Sanderson Jones would research the audience and include their social media into the performance. In October 2011 the show went to the Union Chapel where it played to 700 people, who he had all met previously.[5] The show was nominated for a Malcolm Hardee Award in 2011,[6] and for a Chortle Award for Innovation in Comedy in 2012[7].
In 2012 Sanderson Jones took Comedy Sale to Australia where he played shows at the Adelaide Town Hall, the National Theatre and the Sydney Opera House.[8]
In 2013 he was part of Mark Watson’s 24 Hour Comedy Show for Comic Relief and broke the world record for the world’s longest hug.
Sunday Assembly
In 2013 he co-founded Sunday Assembly with Pippa Evans - a worldwide movement of non-religious congregations. Sunday Assembly spread rapidly with the Daily Beast calling it ‘the world’s fastest growing church’.[9].
Sunday Assembly has been widely studied.[10] [11] [12] [13] In 2015 researchers from Oxford University and Brunel University completed a 6 month longitudinal survey of Sunday Assembly participants, and found that attending was correlated to improved wellbeing in a significant way.[14] The impact of Sunday Assembly has been discussed in books such as The “Emerging Church, Millennials, and Religion: Volume 1: Prospects and Problems”, “Recognizing the Non-religious: Reimagining the Secular”, “Organized Secularism in the United States: New Directions in Research” and Oxford Dictionary of Atheism (2016).
For his work on Sunday Assembly Sanderson Jones was elected to the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship [15] which ‘recognises leading social entrepreneurs with solutions to social problems who seek to make large-scale changes to society’.
He has also received awards and recognition from Nesta and UnLtd.
Lifefulness
In 2018 he left Sunday Assembly to develop the practice of Lifefulness - an approach that adapts the techniques of the spiritual community in a way that everyone can take part. Lifefitness secularises the religious congregation, in the same way mindfulness adapted vipassana meditation and modern yoga adapted Hindhu hatha yoga.[16]
In 2020 the Lifefulness Project was selected onto the Facebook Community Accelerator as one of the world’s 100 leading social impact communities.[17]
Lifefulness builds on the studies into Sunday Assembly and the research into Religion and Health that shows how congregations improve people’s lives.
Sanderson Jones and James Croft, the minister of the St. Louis Ethical Society, are writing a book about Lifefulness, and are chronicling that journey in the Lifefulness Podcast.[18]
Broadcasting
Sanderson Jones wrote and presented Meet The Unbelievers a three-part series which investigated how unbelievers create meaning and belonging.[19] The show was produced by History Hit (Dan Snow’s history channel) and funded by Understanding Unbelief - the world’s largest study of atheists and agnostics.[20]
He is regularly invited onto news programmes to discuss issues of faith, community and belief.
In May 2020 he contributed to two BBC world service programmes on community[21] and prayer[22].
In the media
References
- ↑ "Sanderson Jones: "We will celebrate the hell out of life" | Comedy Interview | The Skinny". www.theskinny.co.uk.
- ↑ "Sanderson Jones offers us a picture of ourselves offended | Jay Richardson". the Guardian. August 16, 2010.
- ↑ Richards, Tim (April 14, 2011). "Taking Liberties". The Age.
- ↑ Guide, British Comedy. "Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2011: Shows With Best Reviews - 2011 Edinburgh Fringe". British Comedy Guide.
- ↑ "Sanderson Jones, the face-to-face funnyman". www.standard.co.uk. April 5, 2012.
- ↑ "Cunning stunts up for Edinburgh Fringe award". August 23, 2011 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
- ↑ Guide, British Comedy (February 22, 2012). "Chortle Awards 2012 nominees announced". British Comedy Guide.
- ↑ "Sanderson Jones". www.australianstage.com.au.
- ↑ Hines, Nico (September 21, 2013). "Sunday Assembly Is the Hot New Atheist Church" – via www.thedailybeast.com.
- ↑ "The Sunday Assembly : creating community among the nonreligious". July 7, 2015.
- ↑ https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/30043/650053.pdf?sequence=1#page=159
- ↑ Cross, Katie (July 3, 2017). "The Sunday Assembly in Scotland: Vestiges of Religious Memory and Practise in a Secular Congregation". Practical Theology. 10 (3): 249–262. doi:10.1080/1756073X.2017.1344418 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.
- ↑ https://psyarxiv.com/phjyq/
- ↑ Price, Michael E.; Launay, Jacques (August 8, 2018). "Increased Wellbeing from Social Interaction in a Secular Congregation". Secularism and Nonreligion. 7 (1): 6. doi:10.5334/snr.102 – via secularismandnonreligion.org.
- ↑ "Sanderson Jones | Ashoka | Everyone a Changemaker".
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYN8vPaZrE
- ↑ "2020 Accelerator Participants | Facebook Community". www.facebook.com.
- ↑ "The Lifefulness Podcast". The Lifefulness Project.
- ↑ https://research.kent.ac.uk/understandingunbelief/research/public-engagement-projects/meet-the-unbeleivers-a-history-of-unbelief/#:~:text=Meet%20the%20Unbelievers%20is%20a,yet%20deep%20and%20engaging%20way.
- ↑ "Understanding Unbelief – Understanding Unbelief is a major new research programme aiming to advance the scientific understanding of atheism and other forms of so-called 'unbelief' around the world". research.kent.ac.uk.
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct0t1d
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct0t25
External links
This article "Sanderson Jones" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.