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Discovering the secularist cause: A brief personal history
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As one could guess from my title, "DC Secularism Examiner," this is a column in large part concerning the political and cultural situation in which atheist and nonreligious Americans find themselves. It is, as I have often said, a precarious situation, and its analysis and improvement have become the main focus of my professional energies and efforts. But how does one get to such a place, particularly in a country as religious as the United States? I thought that perhaps readers might be interested to get an answer to the question: What am I doing here?
Atheist and secularist advocacy is a relatively new field of study for me, though I have been a nonbeliever since I was quite young. My parents were not religious, never imposing any belief system (or lack of belief) on me or my brother, and our only real exposure to religion came from relatives' weddings and other isolated church ceremonies. By the time I was a teenager, I had probably been inside a church five or six times. No one ever asked what I believed.
Early in elementary school, my mother (now a very happily practicing Unitarian Universalist) somehow came to the realization that classmates and parents might inquire as to our religion. Aware that we did not have an answer, mom's solution was to "tell them we're Protestant." I didn't know what that meant, but as far as I knew it was fine. I could tell that it didn't really mean anything to her one way or the other; it was just something to say if someone asked and get us by.
I recall in fourth or fifth grade overhearing a classmate of mine casually tell our teacher that he did not believe in God, and though I had never previously given serious thought to the question -- or that it could even be a question -- my friend's statement fell on my ears like a heaping ton of obviousness. Freshly emerged from the Santa Claus myth, my brain was ready to grasp that all notions of omniscient and omnipresent beings were equally without merit. I seconded my friend's declaration right then and there.
But I did struggle with what I would call religious fear in my preadolescence. So many people seemed convinced that some rather innocuous activities were going to send me to Hell! Most terrifying to me, at the age of 11 I played a role in a local college's production of Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You, a satire which features a kind of Catholic school reunion in which Sister Mary must contend with her now-adult students' un-Catholic lives and resentments. I played Sister Mary's current student, and I recited Bible verses and Catholic dogma throughout most of the play, and spent hours in rehearsal listening to the Sister Mary character admonishing the audience about what will and will not send get you damned. Having no other exposure to religion to speak of, and having had no encouragement toward doubt either, I began to fear for my immortal soul. My 11-year-old brain took this black comedy far too seriously, and I even started asking my parents if we ought to start going to church, just to be safe.
I grew out of that, but I was genuinely terrified at the time. The rest of my teenager-hood was essentially free of religious speculation, and while I indulged some of my friends with their hippie-dippy versions of spirituality in college, I came out of it all relatively unscathed, securely ensconced in the 1.6 percent of Americans who out and out consider themselves atheist.
But I didn't advertise it. The few times I had brought it up in polite company it would tend to make others uncomfortable, or simply cause curious head shaking and arched eyebrows. No one threatened violence or persecuted me for it, but some friends did sincerely believe I was going to Hell (sorry as they were), and some just thought of it as another quirk in a generally quirky guy. That Paul. Thinks there's no God. What a nut!
As I put my career in professional theatre temporarily aside (populated by a generally liberal and socially tolerant demographic) and toward politics, I came to realize that while my own "soft" marginalization was surely unwarranted, I really didn't know how bad atheists had it in America at large. No one was keeping us from voting, setting police dogs on us, or subjecting us to formal inquisition, but I was exposed to polls that showed atheists among the country's least trusted and least liked groups. I found that with insanely rare exceptions, atheists were effectively (and in some cases explicitly) barred from public office. It felt to me like a major part of the 20th century's push for equal civil rights for all had not truly realized its full potential, for not only were there great strides yet to be made for the larger minority groups, but atheists were among those who almost no one had thought to include in the struggle -- that few wanted in the struggle.
So atheists in the political sphere became my thesis topic. Looking only somewhat closely, it was suddenly very clear that I lived in a culture that saw atheists as any or all of the following; immoral, misguided, untrustworthy, nihilistic, narcissistic, egotistical, and even existentially dangerous. Apart from the public perception of atheists, the rise of the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett fueled a separate imperative: Not only was it time to give atheists social and political equality, but it was also time to remove the force field of unquestionability from religion as it encroached on public policy. I saw that the faith-based mindset was not always a simple matter of private reflection, as contorted notions of political correctness have led us to think, but that it could have enormous impact on what our leaders do and how our neighbors decide how to vote. Not only were atheists being marginalized, but so was reason itself.
Which brings me to today. I am writing about atheist and secular activism because it is ridiculous that a group of citizens, distinctive only in their eschewing of subscription to a supernaturally revealed dogma, should be second-class. I am writing because the implications for this kind of ostracism stretch beyond the effects on the minority in question, shedding a light on our priorities as a liberal democracy. I am writing because concepts such as tolerance and offensiveness are being twisted, reason and intellect are being demonized, and faith and belief are considered virtuous in and of themselves.
Secular politics are American politics. Doubt and rationality are necessary for the health of our government, democracy, and world community. Nonbelievers, as our president happily reminded us, are full citizens with voices as worthy of note as any believers, and with moral groundings as solid. Not enough people know this, and not enough people are exposed it. There are a lot of questions regarding how best to make these things clear, and there is a lot of disagreement. There is also a lot of passion that needs expressing.
That's why I am here.
Why are you?
[Note: Returning visitors will have noticed that my title has changed from "Political Atheist" to "Secularism." I feel this broadens the scope of what I can write about, and better gets to the heart of the concerns I illustrate above. I hope you agree!]
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