Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (84 page)

When the Southern Baptist denomination was founded in 1845, they really understood this concept. They were a tiny minority, and they didn’t want some majority vision of God forced on them or on their kids. So the Southern Baptist Convention wrote strong support for the separation of church and state and freedom of religion into their founding documents. “The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind,” they said. They fought tooth and nail to be sure public officials and public schools were never endorsing any form of religion. That’s for the home and church, they said.

But after they became the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, Baptist churches became the greatest violators of church-state separation, endorsing candidates from the pulpit, pushing for Christian prayer in public schools, directly lobbying for public policies that match their values . . . and they forgot what all that separation nonsense was ever about — even though their official documents still clearly favor separation.

That’s okay — atheists, Jews, Hindus, and all the rest of the minority worldviews down here in the cheap seats will remember for them. Protecting the rights of those outside of the majority is a battle worth choosing, for the sake of
everyone’s
religious freedom.

Grappling with church-state issues in public school and in the public square

Pursuing your own beliefs in your heart and home is easy. The challenge comes when lives overlap with the lives of other people who have their own visions, their own way of doing things. Public policy, public schools, public parks and roads and buildings — this is where it gets tricky. But the goal of a free society is worth the work. And a big part of meeting the challenge is understanding what the separation of church and state is really about.

Most atheists feel the same way as I do — that not everyone needs to believe the same. Good thing too, because universal agreement on religious questions is never going to happen. I also don’t need to be protected from offense, which should also be a relief — it’s too much to ask others to keep from offending me. There’s no way to know what’s going to offend each and every person.

On the other hand, it’s reasonable for you and me both to live without having to take part in someone else’s religion, or to see our shared government playing favorites with one worldview over another. And asking that our kids be able to go to a school that doesn’t promote another religion is also reasonable. That means government and schools need to stay out of the practice of religion entirely. Those are decisions best made at home.

When you hear a parent raising a concern about religion in the schools — sometimes an atheist parent, but just as often not — notice that it’s rarely about “offense.” The school should not promote or favor one worldview over another because doing so interferes with the rights and responsibilities of the parents to raise their children as they see fit.

There’s a good way to drive this point home. Suppose I’m the principal of your child’s middle school. I rise at the PTA meeting and announce that I’m in favor of putting God back in schools. Starting Monday, we’ll open each day with a prayer, and we’ll be teaching creation instead of evolution. A loud cheer goes up. Finally, our prayers have been answered! As I’m carried out on jubilant shoulders, I announce that we’ll be praying to Chac-Xib-Chac, the Mayan god of blood sacrifice, and it’s the Mayan creation story that’ll be taught as true.
I’d get a quick plunge to the floor — and I’d deserve it. I shouldn’t force any religion on your child. Those decisions are best made at home.

If on the other hand I said our prayers would be specifically Catholic — that we would pray to Mother Mary and invoke the name of the Holy Father each morning, for example —Baptists and Methodists would be lined up outside my office, and rightly so. The same goes for my own worldview. If I heard that a teacher at my child’s school was advocating atheism — saying specifically that God doesn’t exist, and telling the kids they should believe the same — I’d be the very first parent demanding the teacher’s head on a plate.

Some people try to solve the problem by suggesting schools can use “interdenominational prayers.” But no prayer accommodates all concepts of God. Not all religions have gods that are prayed to, for one thing. Others aren’t called “God,” and some faiths consider it blasphemous to say or even write the name “God.” One religion I know of even includes a specific instruction not to pray in public, ever, but to only pray alone in your room. (You may have heard of this religion — it’s Christianity, and the instruction is Matthew 6:5–6.) And I haven’t yet heard an actual prayer that fits with my point of view as an atheist. So no, “interdenominational prayers” aren’t the answer. Secular schools are the answer.

Remember that “secular” doesn’t mean the same as “atheistic.” Secular schools are
neutral
on religious questions, leaving those questions where they belong — in the hands of individual families.

The same applies to all other aspects of a shared government. It’s just as intrusive to have “In God We Trust” or the Ten Commandments in a federal courthouse as it would be to have “Praise Allah the Merciful,” or “No Worries, God is Pretend.”

Allow the statements and symbols of a single religious viewpoint into government buildings, and the next thing you know, it’ll be on money! Okay, so it
is
on US money. Given these examples, I hope you agree that it really shouldn’t be. (In fact it wasn’t always there. The US Founders preferred a secular motto —
E pluribus unum —
but “In God We Trust” was added to currency during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s to distinguish the United States from the godless Communists.)

Despite every effort by the founders of this country to clearly define and protect religious liberty, it continues to be a real challenge, something each generation has to grapple with and rediscover. That’s okay — as hard as that is to do, it’s the best way to keep everyone’s shared values alive and maturing. (See more about the US Founding Fathers in
Chapter 6
.)

Living in the closet

A few years ago I had a terrific conversation with one of my wife’s cousins, a Southern Baptist whom I deeply admire and respect. He’d just found out I was an atheist, and he chatted me up about it for two good hours. No conversion attempts, just a good chat. At the end he said, “I hope you don’t mind me bending your ear for so long. I just don’t know any other atheists.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m pretty sure you do.” The odds are very good that he knows several people who are somewhere on the “rainbow of disbelief” I describe in
Chapter 2
. But the stigma attached to atheism is so large — especially where he lives, in the US South — that most of those individuals who don’t believe in God stay closeted, sharing their opinion with few people or no one at all. In many cases, they continue going to church, continue bowing their heads at the table, and even continue their professions of faith. (As I note in my description of the Clergy Project in
Chapter 11
, some atheists are even in the pulpit.) Any other nonbelievers around them are probably under the same camouflage, so all of them continue assuming they’re alone. And the many believers around them, family and friends, continue in their belief that all the atheists are somewhere out there in Hollywood, New York, or Beijing.

You can easily assume that every parent on your block, everyone cheering in the stands at the soccer game, or everyone walking the aisles of the supermarket is a churchgoing believer. But it’s never true. No matter where you live, even in the Bible Belt of the southern United States, atheists, agnostics, and humanists are in your community. Surveys put the nonreligious population around 20 percent in the United States, or more than 50 million people, and a much higher percentage in Canada and the United Kingdom. (Check out
Chapter 14
for specific numbers for different countries.)

Being public about that worldview in some places is easier. In others, the vast majority of nonbelievers remain quiet and closeted, even as they go through the motions of belief.

Coming out of the closet

An atheist or other nonbeliever may choose to keep his or her opinions quiet for many reasons. The first and most common is the fear of how those around him or her would receive such an announcement of unbelief.

The comedian Julia Sweeney describes the reaction of her Catholic mother when she found out Julia was an atheist. “Not believing in God is one thing,” her mother said. “But an
atheist
?!” Comedy aside, Julia describes the real difficulties her parents had accepting her decision. Her dad said she had betrayed her family, her school, and her city — Spokane, Washington, in which Catholicism is the largest religious presence. Both parents said they would no longer speak to her, and her father told her not to come to his funeral.

Just try and stop me,
she thought.

Eventually, gradually, her parents came around. Her father even ended up telling Julia he was proud of her for saying what she really thought — though he still figured Satan was involved somehow.

That’s a quick summary of one coming-out story — a long, complex process crammed into a few sentences. A thousand variations exist, some smoother, and some much rougher. Some atheists describe being harassed, abused, or completely cut off by their families. Some atheist teens have been disowned and kicked out of their homes. But many others who expected a bad reaction say it went surprisingly well, even resulting in a stronger, more honest relationship with friends and family. The response depends on dozens of things: the religion of the family, how orthodox they are, where they live, how strong the family relationships already are, and much more.

Coming out atheist parallels many of the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as they struggle with the same decision. Both atheists and gays know that many of those around them, including people they love and care about, consider both religious disbelief and homosexuality to be immoral or even evil. The thought of losing valued relationships or even being shunned completely by family and friends is painful and frightening. Many decide that coming out isn’t worth the risk.