http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081027/aronson
Part of this article was adapted from Ronald Aronson's Living Without God:
New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists and the Undecided
(Counterpoint).
As the fading Bush presidency is being greeted with indifference or rolling
eyes, one might expect eight years of faith in the White House to have
discredited religion in the public square for years to come. But after a
generation of the religious right, America is not yet ready to move on to a
sensible public understanding of religion. The electrifying arrival of Sarah
Palin on the national scene demonstrates the continuing vigor of conservative
Christianity and the political power of religiosity.
What about the Democrats' approach? In their hands this troubling trend may be
softer and sweeter, but there is great danger that religion will continue to
invade public life in unacceptable ways. It's not just that Democrats are
courting the evangelical vote; they are treating secularists as if they are
invisible and have acquiesced to the twenty-first-century "religious test" for
public office. They seem blithely willing to undermine our constitutional
commitment to the separation of church and state.
In his 2006 speech "Call to Renewal" Barack Obama struck an ambiguous chord,
paying homage to the separation of church and state while insisting that
religion must not be left "at the door before entering into the public
square." He set out what seemed to be a reassuringly sophisticated path for
bringing religion into politics:
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns
into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their
proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to
abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the
practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's
will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is
accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."
Obama's universalism offered a potentially profound and sensitive vision of
community and unity based on acknowledging rather than suppressing
differences. The vision drew its energy from his evident capacity to feel
empathy and from his demand that we see the world through other people's eyes.
As the presidential campaign unfolds, however, something very different is
happening. The Democrats have conducted a highly organized and many-sided
effort to attract evangelical and Catholic voters, based on the political
arithmetic that even a small increase in their share of that vote may be
enough to defeat the Republicans [see Sarah Posner, "Preaching to the Choir,"
page 49]. This strategy entails much more than marketing or pandering. It has
encouraged the coming out of many Democrats who are religious and an embrace
of a new kind of diversity among others who are not. It is creating openings
for the progressive religious political breed long championed by Jim Wallis,
the evangelical activist and editor of Sojourners Magazine who ran
faith-and-politics workshops at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
As Amy Sullivan points out in her book The Party Faithful, Democrats
have been learning to respect and appeal to the devout. They are discovering
that making religious voters feel welcome means making their faith part of the
conversation, bringing their concerns into the formulation of public policy
and even accepting their ways of judging candidates. Not only
that--progressive evangelicals have worked to show that the environment,
poverty and war are values issues, demanding the attention of those guided by
religious morality.
None of this should be troubling, except that it is carried out in a way that
leaves in the cold America's largest minority, out-and-out secularists, and
the even larger number of secular believers who stand by Jefferson's "wall of
separation" between church and state. Secular humanists, derided by
Republicans and the religious right for the past eight years, are confronting
a new consensus-in-the-making. This includes:
§ an informal but clear religious test for public office, to which Obama and
John McCain submitted when they were cross-examined by mega-church pastor Rick
Warren at his Saddleback Church. Each had to answer questions about personal
as well as political beliefs: "What does it mean to you to trust in Christ?
And what does that mean to you on a daily basis? What does that really look
like?"
§ widespread social pressure to believe, based on the pervasive myth that
"nearly all Americans" do. This was hammered home repeatedly by Leah Daughtry,
Howard Dean's chief of staff and the CEO of the Denver convention, who
explained the religious events there by saying, "Democrats have been, are and
will continue to be people of faith." Of course, this leaves out atheists,
agnostics, humanists, skeptics and freethinkers, people of no religion and
many deists and spiritualists.
§ ever more frequent references to God, faith and religion in public life. In
a Labor Day speech in Detroit shortened to nine minutes because of Hurricane
Gustav, Obama mentioned God and prayer no fewer than six times, including
leading the audience in silent prayer for those in possible danger.
§ treating secularists as invisible. Obama, who once seemed keenly respectful
of them, appears to have forgotten they exist. On Labor Day, he did not say,
"For those threatened by Gustav, let's have a moment of silence, whether in
prayer or meditation." Planning the Denver interfaith events, Daughtry ignored
the Secular Coalition for America's request to participate.
Paradoxically, in certain ways this new dispensation reflects the fact that
the country has become more tolerant. Seventy percent of Americans believe
that there are many different paths to salvation. Former doctrinal antagonisms
have dissolved into a multi-denominational religiosity that declares that the
specifics of one's faith no longer matter--as long as one believes in God.
Talking to Larry King after Saddleback, Warren said he could vote for someone
of a different faith, but not an atheist. He proclaimed his tolerance while
revealing his bigotry.
No less paradoxical, Obama proclaimed his expertise as a constitutional
scholar when announcing a "faith-based initiative" that undermines the spirit
if not the letter of the Supreme Court's "Lemon test," which requires that
laws must not advance religion and "must not foster 'an excessive government
entanglement with religion.'" How will Obama's proposed "Council for
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships" choose among competing religious
organizations applying for funding, some of which are very large and powerful
and some of which are local storefronts? And how will he guarantee an end to
discrimination and eliminate proselytizing when these have long been features
of many faith-based social service agencies? In trying to capitalize on the
perceived popularity of faith-based programs, Obama has clearly chosen to
ignore the fact that two-to-one majorities recently indicated a preference for
government agencies and nonreligious organizations, rather than religious
ones, to provide services for the needy.
It may appear odd that Obama and the Democrats are so unconcerned about the
dangers of welcoming religion into the public square after so many years of
religious-right influence, capped by eight years of Bush and the current
Supreme Court. Perhaps it's because they take no notice of the broad community
of secularists and believers who strongly support our secular Constitution.
These two streams add up to at least half of all Democratic voters, but
Jacques Berlinerblau, who blogs at The God Vote, explains that Obama and other
Democrats have concluded that secularists can be safely ignored. Democrats
"did the math around 2005 and figured out that the vaunted 'secular base' was
underperforming." Berlinerblau sees American secularism's two parts as
"organizationally impotent and incapable of forging a meaningful political
alliance."
A striking indication of this disarray is the lack of any grassroots backlash
after years of political attacks on secular humanism, public displays of
religiosity, bans on gay marriage and stem-cell research, restrictions on
abortion, the promoting of creationism and the campaign to appoint judges who
favor weakening the separation of church and state. As a result, Berlinerblau
writes, "if there was ever a constituency [Obama] could stomp on while moving
to The Center, this may be the one."
Unless religious and irreligious secularists overcome their disarray, find
their voices and become a political force, there seems to be little chance
that Obama's once inspiring call to find common ground will be any more than
words, a cover for him to create common ground with those he needs in order to
become president and maintain power.
But how will secularists become mobilized? As a group they share no easily
discernible characteristics: they cannot be recognized by such markers as
color, gender, class or ethnicity, and while they may be more demographically
concentrated in some places--in coastal and Northern cities, for example--they
certainly cannot be found according to workplace or neighborhood. In short,
unless they go out of their way to proclaim themselves, the irreligious
dispersed across America are unable to see themselves as a "we." Although the
Secular Coalition for America calculates from a Harris Interactive Survey that
there are more than 60 million US atheists and agnostics, this brave lobby's
constituent organizations can claim no more than 100,000 members. Why this
shocking discrepancy?
Obviously one reason is that nonbelievers have long been one of the most
despised groups in America. Another lies in the fact that secularists may be
among the last Americans who consider their beliefs private. Unlike
churchgoers, their beliefs, usually arrived at individually, require no
organizational expression, so they do not easily become part of a structured
community.
Secularists are often quite political but not often on behalf of their
secularism; other issues seem far more urgent. Why make a big deal about
church-state issues when we need to combat war, poverty and global warming? It
is hard to feel very motivated about being ignored, given the pressing need to
end Republican rule. And can't the constitutional issues get handled by
contributing to lobbies, foundations and legal defense organizations rather
than by joining and participating in mass organizations?
A no less stubborn problem is the difficulty nonbelievers have in making
common cause with secular believers over issues pertaining to religion. We
know from experience that secular and religious people work together on peace,
justice and environmental issues but usually without discussing their
underlying beliefs. We have all experienced the perils of such conversations,
especially because of the profound difference between being guided by faith as
opposed to science and reason. Each side has enormous difficulty understanding
and respecting the other.
The current religious climate poses new dangers but also new possibilities
that may rouse secular America. A Republican victory will keep alive, and
possibly even worsen, the in-your-face religiosity of the Bush years. But a
Democratic victory will not crush the religious right, and it cannot eliminate
Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts from the Supreme Court.
Yet the release of Larry Charles and Bill Maher's film Religulous, and
the recent presence of six books on the bestseller list advocating atheism or
attacking religion, suggests that a sizable number of people are sick of
public religiosity. The election of either party may generate the urge for
nonbelievers to "out" themselves. Imagine that a significant fraction of
atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and skeptics overcame their inhibitions
and made themselves seen and heard. Imagine that large numbers connected with
one another organizationally in ways that multiplied their overall visibility
and political heft. Fed-up secularists might become political about their
concerns and figure out how to work with the openly religious. Women, blacks
and gays were not invited to enter the public conversation--they made
themselves part of it. And secularists? Who is to say that at the next
Democratic National Convention a secular caucus might not suddenly appear,
demanding its place alongside the thirteen other caucuses that were a part of
the 2008 convention? What would happen if secularists were visible, recognized
and speaking out in their own voice?
Ronald Aronson is the author of The Dialectics of Disaster, After Marxism, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It and, most recently, Living Without God (Counterpoint). He teaches at Wayne State University.
Ronald
Aronson: An increasingly outspoken community of atheists and
agnostics is getting fed up with being marginalized, ignored and insulted.