Atheists Gather on Easter Weekend
Easter is the holiest time for Christians. It is also the weekend that an atheist group meets as you can read in this story. It does not bother me that they meet at Easter and their reasoning for that makes sense. What I find interesting is their opinion that atheism is experiencing a resurgence for two reasons: 1) Internet and 2) George Bush. I do not think that the Internet creates very many atheists, but it is a place for people to connect, no matter what background they come from. Atheists, Christians and pretty much everyone else uses the Internet to network and it helps all of us to gather our resources. As for George Bush, that puzzles me. Perhaps it is because I am Canadian. I do not necessarily agree with everything that Bush did but I do not understand why so many hate him. While Bush is a Christian, I do not think that his term is an example of rule by religion. Every leader is influenced by their own belief system, there is nothing wrong with that. I think that somewhere along the way, people jumped on an anti-Bush bandwagon without even knowing why. It was as if being anti-Bush was fashionable and if Bush was understood to be too devout of a Christian, perhaps that made atheist views more popular. None of this sounds like a very rational way for people to develop a worldview.
re: George Bush
somewhere between the Ronald Reagan and George Bush there was the ascendency of the Christian Coalition and a general direct foray into politics by conservative Christians. this provoked a backlash from people who felt threatened by some of the policy points the conservative Christians were pushing. a lot of people here in the u.s. are pro-choice, pro gay rights, obviously the christian right political bloc was going to rub them the wrong way. to the extent that George Bush courted evangelicals and went to pains to identify as one, he alienated some people in a general way that you are correct to identify as probably more emotional/partisan than issue based. but George Bush was unpopular for a variety of tangible reasons. his first term he came into office under a cloud as there had been a big vote counting flap in Florida – to this day it’s a bit unclear if hewould have been president had not the Supreme Court handed the election to him in a highly controversial decisin. a lot of people rallied to his side after 9/11 only to be repulsed by his seemingly single-minded drive to wage the Iraq War, which did not seem inevitable or necessary to many, and did not seem to go very well for years. He left office with the economy tanking. So you might not agree with the reasons people disliked him, but it’s probably wrong to say there were no issues involved. Personally, I disagreed with him and thought he came off as stupid, but would have been happy to be proved wrong and gain some benefit from him. I didn’t like Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York, but was very happy with some of the things he did. With Bush I felt like he really was just as unqualified as he seemed, his administration was a mess.
Thanks for your perspective. I would agree that issues were important. It is just my impression that once certain people took offense toward his policies, others jumped on the band wagon simply because Bush was a symbol of the religious right. But again, as a Canadian and as someone far from being a political expert, this is only my opinion.
doh, i finally read the link about the atheists and see what you were responding to.
my apologies, now i get it.
i guess i would give the same response to the guy quoted in the atheist article — i don’t think it was George Bush per se, but the vocal, political rise of the christian right that prompted a vocal atheist response. You also had an era where radio talk show guys were going on about how America was a Christian nation and how we should all get up in arms against the ACLU who was trying to uphold the idea of a secular government. for people of other religions or of no religion, this stuff sounded like a regression to the bad old days of state religions.
Perhaps one could use ‘Bush’ as shorthand for a lot of related phenomena that conspired to create the illusion of a certain political climate. it would have a grain of truth, but it also wouldn’t make sense if you took it too literally –as you point out, Bush’s religious views didn’t affect his policies in any tangible way.
When you see how these things are abused, perhaps you understand how Christians feel when they see ‘separation of church and state’ as an excuse to ban any public display of religion. The purpose of separation church and state was to prevent a state adoption of a denomination such as we see in Europe with the Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans. Often the ministers are state paid. Certainly other denominations were discriminated against. The last thing on the founding fathers minds was a ban on public display or expression of religion. Is there a place where Christians and secularists can come to a compromise of tolerance?
We have tremendous freedom to make public expressions of religion in the U.S.
You can put up all the christmas trees and church steeples they want. You can wear a cross around your neck. you can put up a cathedral if you like, right in the middle of your city, for all to see. You can shout your message from the street corner, you can distribute your pamphlets on the sidewalk. You can have 24/7 cable shows devoted to your Christian message. If you want, you can drag a crucifix down the street every Good Friday, as they do in my Italian-American neighborhood, and the city will even send cops to re-direct traffic around you. And if you’re from some other religion, you can do your thing too. Unlike in Paris, you can wear your headscarf to class if you’re a Muslim woman who is so incline. You can dress like a Chasidic Jew and drive a Mitzvah Wagon through the streets blaring nigunum. this is the place where you can do your thing in public, without minimal concern with government interference.
the degree of religious freedom we have in the U.S. is remarkable, and it’s just as remarkable how well we generally get along. Is that not a tribute to a tremendous degree of tolerance?
So with all this religious freedom in practically every aspect of our lives, why is it unfair to ask the government, which we all pay for with our tax dollars — the tax dollars paid not just by christians but by muslims, atheists, jews and so on — to play a neutral role? To me it seems quite beyond the game of divining the intentions of our founding fathers. it seems like a straight-forward matter of fair play in a diverse society.
Yes, I do not think atheism is “catching on.” We are just more aware of the ones that are out there via the internet. Good insights about Bush. He narrowly won both elections because of his stance on moral issues which I believe is why people associate him so closely with Christianity. You make a good point that he did not rule the white house by his faith however.
Appreciate your good thoughts,
Pastor Adam Barton
Akron, Ohio