Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans

NONBELIEVER

NATION

THE RISE of SECULAR AMERICANS

DAVID NIOSE

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For Katy, who’s given me much in which to believe.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN DIALOGUE

A CENTURY AGO, IN THE HISTORIC PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912, American voters saw a rare contest of four relevant candidates: the unpopular Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft; Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson; former president Theodore Roosevelt, running on the Progressive (or Bull Moose) ticket; and Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs. The abundance of candidates was just one of many remarkable aspects of the campaign, for few American presidential elections have seen such dramatic twists and intrigue.

Roosevelt, who just four years earlier had selected Taft as his successor, now returned to presidential politics to challenge the incumbent for the Republican nomination, polarizing the party between two men who were a study in contrasts. Energetic and full of gusto, having embarked on an African safari after leaving the presidency in 1909, Roosevelt campaigned with zeal and progressive rhetoric. He was popular among Republican voters and won the vast majority of state primaries, including even Taft’s home state of Ohio. Taft, meanwhile, the heaviest man to ever occupy the White House, conveyed none of Roosevelt’s vigor and charisma nor his populist spirit. He carried only one primary state.

In 1912, however, primary elections were not as critical as they are today. Only about a dozen states had presidential primaries back then, so most of the delegates needed for the nomination were instead selected by party insiders. Unlike today, when the national convention is usually just a coronation ceremony where the only suspense might be the selection of the nominee’s running mate, a century ago the conventions were frequently an arena for heavyweight politicking and backroom deals, where multiple ballots would often be needed to finally decide the ticket. Thus, having been beaten badly in the primaries, Taft was nevertheless able to use his influence with party regulars at the GOP convention in Chicago to secure the nomination. This was much to the chagrin of Roosevelt who, not a gracious loser, alleged improprieties and stormed out of the hall with his delegates, subsequently forming the Progressive Party with himself at the top of the ticket.

The scene was nearly as wild at the Democratic convention in Baltimore, where the party took a grueling 46 ballots before finally selecting its nominee. House Speaker Champ Clark appeared to be the early favorite, but his ties to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine eventually led party stalwart William Jennings Bryan—who himself had been the Democratic presidential nominee three times previously (losing the general election each time)— to throw his support to Wilson, thereby leading others to do the same. Wilson, the erudite, moralistic former president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey, was perceived as a moderate reformer with integrity.

Adding a unique new angle to the campaign would be Eugene Debs, the passionate socialist who argued that he was the only true progressive in the race, accusing Roosevelt of demagoguery and calling all three of his opponents pawns of large business interests. Debs received almost a million votes in the general election, an impressive 6 percent of the total, representing an all-time high-water mark for any Socialist Party candidate.¹

The raucous nomination battles of 1912 were just a prelude to the general campaign. A few weeks before the November election, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a deranged saloonkeeper before giving a speech in Milwaukee. Consistent with his tough-guy image, Roosevelt denied immediate medical care and went on to deliver a lengthy speech despite the bullet lodged inside him. The Taft campaign, meanwhile, would suffer a blow of its own when Taft’s running mate, the sitting vice president James Sherman, died of natural causes just a week before the election, a fatality that was ominously foretelling of the Taft administration’s own impending demise.

With the Republicans split, Wilson was able to coast to an easy victory despite a modest vote total. Receiving just over 42 percent of the popular vote, Wilson nevertheless carried the vast majority of states and received 435 electoral votes to just 88 for Roosevelt and 8 for Taft. With only 3.4 million votes, Taft’s total was well under Roosevelt’s 4.1 million and closer to that of the Socialist candidate Debs than to Wilson.

Looking back at the presidential candidates of a century ago, we discover unsettling truths about today’s America. Wilson, probably the most religious of the four, had this to say when asked about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection: Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.² Roosevelt was also a vocal admirer of Darwin’s work, calling the British naturalist the great Darwin.³ In a later memoir, referring to his love of nature, Roosevelt said, Thank Heaven I sat at the feet of Darwin and Huxley.⁴ (Thomas Huxley was known as Darwin’s bulldog for his aggressive defense of the theory of evolution.) While Roosevelt expressed sentiments that would make him a lonely man in the modern GOP, Taft was a genuine religious skeptic. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, he wrote in an 1899 letter, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.⁵ And finally, Debs, the socialist, was decidedly secular, highly critical of organized religion and the use of religion as a political tool, saying, I don’t know of any crime that the oppressors and their hire-lings have not proven by the Bible.⁶

When compared to today, these statements of long-dead public figures reveal the travesty of contemporary American politics and public dialogue. Typically, when we examine history from the vantage point of a hundred years, many of the predominant attitudes from that earlier time will seem antiquated; we may see beliefs that reflected a lack of knowledge that has since been gained, or perhaps prejudices that we now know to be plainly wrong. When we take a closer look at the candidates of 1912, however, we find that in important ways the process of antiquation seems to have worked in reverse—that the political generation of a hundred years ago, though lacking the benefit of a century of scientific advancement, nevertheless displayed considerable evidence of intellectual maturity that is woefully lacking today.

The ignoble demise of the American public dialogue becomes glaringly apparent when we contrast the views of the four men who ran for president in 1912 to the modern political landscape. Today, a full century after the era of Roosevelt and Wilson, we routinely see presidential candidates assure voters that they are doubtful of the theory of evolution, pandering to a large segment of the electorate that believes the world is just a few thousand years old. Rick Perry, for example, governor of the second-most-populous state in the nation, lucidly conveys America’s intellectual decline by expressing his views on evolution this way: God may have done it in the blink of the eye or he may have done it over this long period of time, I don’t know. Evolution is a theory that’s out there, Perry explained, but it has some gaps in it.⁷ The Texas chief executive is by no means an anomaly, as other major political figures, such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Mike Huckabee, have made a point of emphasizing their refusal to accept evolution theory, and even former president George W. Bush favored teaching creationism, disguised as so-called intelligent design, in public schools.

It’s no secret that a major cause of this regression is the Religious Right, the loose-knit but powerful movement that has been changing the dynamics of American politics for over three decades. Guised as representing traditional family values, the Religious Right is driven by a small minority that is extreme in its views, well funded, organized, and fueled by a fear of modernity that unfortunately resonates on a mass level. It exploded onto the scene in 1980, when the inaptly named Moral Majority flexed its political muscle to help elect Ronald Reagan, and it has increased in power with virtually every election cycle since, to the point that it now commands almost complete control of one major party and greatly influences the other.

From the standpoint of those interested in rational public policy, what is perhaps most troubling is that the public and the media have become largely desensitized to the Religious Right. When concerns were raised in 2011 about some extreme fundamentalist views associated with candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, for example, Washington Post and Newsweek religion writer Lisa Miller dismissed them in a column, saying, Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.⁸ Hence, whereas even a century ago many believed that biblical literalism and religious conservatism were unlikely to remain potent forces in politics, over the last 30 years the Religious Right has shown such predictions to be dead wrong. Extreme religious conservatives, men and women who would have seemed backward even a hundred years ago, are now viewed by well-informed mainstream journalists as a normal part of America’s political landscape. Today, even many adults are too young to remember the country before the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson. As a result, they are unfazed by the political influence of religious fundamentalists.

It would be an oversimplification to suggest that all of America’s woes since the late 1970s are due to the rise of the Religious Right, but it would be just as erroneous to downplay the harm caused by politically mobilized religious fundamentalism. The Religious Right is a uniquely American phenomenon, and its rise correlates with undesirable social phenomena that are also uniquely American, from high rates of violent crime and teen pregnancy to low rates of scientific literacy. Defiant anti-intellectualism has become mainstream, resulting in disastrous public policy and the decay of some of America’s most cherished values—rational discourse, pragmatism, and pluralism, to name just a few. When a significant segment of the politically engaged population stands firmly opposed to science, reason, and critical thinking, intelligent debate and policy making become impossible.

This book, as the title suggests, is not just about the Religious Right, but the growing resistance to it. Effective opposition to the Religious Right has been slow to crystallize in the wasteland of modern American politics, but now that it is emerging, it represents real hope. That opposition is made possible by the rise of the long-overlooked population of Americans who reject outright the notion that religiosity is a prerequisite to patriotism or sound public policy.

Until recently, because conventional wisdom presupposed that the public demanded the exaltation of religion, the most visible opponents of the Religious Right emphasized their own religiosity. They argued, for example, that religious conservatives do not speak for all religious citizens, often stressing that liberals can also be religious. While of course true, this emphasis proved inadequate and sometimes even counterproductive. When liberals and moderates joined the Religious Right in the enthusiastic acclamation of religion, they marginalized nonbelievers and unwittingly played directly into the hand of religious conservatives, implicitly conceding that a nonreligious worldview is wrong and un-American. This, in turn, only validated the Religious Right’s righteous claims that, as the most fervently religious segment of the population, they represent real American values.

As a result, far from having gained ground against the Religious Right, liberals and moderates have been fighting a losing battle for over three decades, as is evidenced by the steady increase in power of religious conservatives since the late 1970s. With a few notable exceptions (such as the success of the LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender—movement), the Religious Right has seen few major setbacks in its relentless effort to reshape the American public policy debate. Those opposed to the Religious Right have been getting beaten badly, and the sooner that this reality is accepted the sooner a better strategy can be found.

In fact, many are already utilizing a better strategy—a grassroots, identity-oriented approach that confronts the Religious Right headon. In recent years, a movement of unapologetic Secular Americans has emerged, determined to return politicized religious fundamentalism to its pre-Reagan level of influence. The pages ahead will document the rise of that movement and the hope that it offers, examining who these Americans are, what they believe, and the issues and events that have created the so-called culture wars. Secular Americans—though long ignored by the general public, the media, and politicians—in recent years have quickly become the Religious Right’s biggest threat. Call them skeptics, humanists, atheists, agnostics, or just plain nonreligious, they are coming into the mainstream, and their success will pull the pedestal out from underneath the Religious Right, rebutting its claim to the moral high ground and pushing its extreme policy positions back to the fringes.

Much has changed in America, for better and worse, in the century since the 1912 election. As Americans went to the polls that year, few would have imagined that in the decades ahead the country would split the atom, send men to the moon, and become the globally dominant military and economic power. Few would have predicted the progress, even if imperfect, that America has made toward racial equality, women’s rights, and gay rights. Unfortunately, however, not all the change has been positive. Despite its achievements, America now sits in the early years of the twenty-first century as a highly dysfunctional and seriously troubled society, and many of its problems—from the immature level of its internal dialogue to the misguided direction of its public policy—can be traced directly or indirectly to the impact of the Religious Right and, perhaps even more importantly, to the marginalization of the secular demographic.

As such, the rise of Secular Americans is not happening a moment too soon. If America does not learn to recognize and respect nonbelievers and religious skeptics as a valued segment of the population, bleak times will surely await the country and the rest of the world. Over three decades ago, when religious conservatives became a major political force, the country embarked on a terrible, long descent—one that continues today and will not be reversed without a renewed appreciation of reason, critical thinking, and the forward-looking values promoted by Secular Americans. This is not to suggest that religion itself must be made irrelevant, but only that effective opposition is needed to the politically mobilized fundamentalist element. That effective opposition, lacking for decades, is now taking root in a transformative movement fueled by Americans who will no longer allow personal secularity to be stigmatized. Given the state of affairs after several decades of Religious Right dominance, we should all be hoping that Secular Americans win their place at the table.

ONE

THE WEDDING INVITATION

THE WEDDING INVITATION ITSELF WASN’T A SURPRISE, BUT ITS content was.

I hadn’t seen Maria since we both graduated from college five years earlier. I met her during our junior year in an elective sociology class, where we sat next to each other and quickly became friends. As often happens among college crowds, she and her other friends started hanging around with my buddies and me, and we all spent lots of time together, staying up late chatting, as only college kids with too much free time can, about everything— life, love, politics, truth, religion, God. Neither Maria nor I had majored in philosophy, but in real life every college student sooner or later becomes a late-night philosopher. Along with our friends, we would be sitting around watching stupid pet tricks on Letterman or listening to Pink Floyd, when inevitably someone would start speculating about something deep.

More often than not, the opinions would be nothing too profound, but Maria’s comments were always intelligent and articulate. She was born into a Catholic family but by then was a nonbeliever and secular humanist who had no room for any of the superstition or doctrine of traditional religion. In fact, while unsympathetic in her assessment of all revelation-based religion—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—she was especially tough on the Catholic Church, which she considered a grossly outdated relic overseen by a paternalistic, misogynistic hierarchy. She loathed the church’s positions on birth control and abortion rights, considered its views toward sex repressive, thought the whole celibacy thing was absurd, and blamed the church for the anti-Semitism that eventually gave rise to the Holocaust. To call her a disaffected Catholic would be an understatement.

After graduation, we went our separate ways but managed to stay in touch with one or two phone calls a year. So I was not surprised to find, when I opened my mail one day in 1989, an invitation to Maria’s wedding. Since I knew she had been dating someone seriously, the invitation was certainly no shocker, but what bewildered me was what the invitation said: the wedding would take place at the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Maria’s hometown. Knowing her as I did, it made no sense that Maria would turn to the Catholic Church to seal vows of love and commitment with her life partner. As I mulled it over, I concluded that Maria had probably gone back to her family’s church to get married because that’s what her family, especially her parents, expected. Coming from a big Catholic family that hadn’t seen any of its members have a wedding (or at least a first wedding) anywhere else but the hometown Catholic church, she probably couldn’t break with tradition.

It turns out that I was right. It would be several more years before I would be able to have a conversation with Maria and her husband about it, but when that conversation finally happened, over dinner one night when I was visiting, Maria explained the whole ordeal to me. The Catholic Church is the last place I wanted to get married, she said. But I really felt we had no choice. In our family, especially with Mom and Dad paying for the wedding, there was no way it was going to take place anywhere else. It wasn’t even a topic that was open for discussion.

The rest of the night was a lot like being back in college. We all sat around and chatted about life, love, politics, truth, and religion, the only difference being the years of added life experience. She was still a secular humanist, still a wonderful person, and now married to a great guy. I was happy for her.

Maria’s story is a common one, and it illustrates a dilemma that many young, secular people face in our society. Family pressure and cultural expectations often force nonbelieving or halfheartedly believing participants into religious ceremonies that convey validity and legitimacy upon institutions for which they have little admiration and sometimes even contempt.

In Maria’s case, the chain will end there. Despite the fact that her family pressured her into having her wedding at the Immaculate Conception Church, she and her husband are raising their children without traditional religion. Though there was some controversy when the wider family learned that the kids weren’t getting baptized or going to church, they eventually accepted the couple’s decision to raise a secular family.

Maria and her family have joined the ranks of the Secular Americans, a growing group of individuals who affirmatively choose to live without religion or, at the very least, without theistic religion. Secular Americans have existed as long as the country itself, but only in recent years have they begun to stand together as a unit and demand recognition, respect, and equality. Whereas in the past someone in Maria’s position would have been more likely to yield to family pressure by indifferently shuffling the kids through the milestones of a Catholic upbringing—baptism, Sunday school, First Communion, Confirmation, and so forth—today a growing segment of the population sees the value of rejecting such gestures outright, of standing firm as openly secular.

THE SECULAR AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHIC

Before discussing who the Secular Americans are, what they want, and what they are doing to get it, a few words about terminology are in order. The word secular simply means without religion. Some dictionaries will use the definition worldly or temporal, rather than religious or spiritual. In civics class, we usually learn that secular government is a basic characteristic of most modern democracies. That doesn’t mean that a secular government must be antireligion, but only that government should be neutral on religion and not controlled by clerics or based on religious law. Some modern democracies, such as Great Britain, technically mix church and state (the British monarch is also head of the Church of England, the nation’s established church), but aside from such exceptions, we usually associate modern democracies with secular government. Secular democracies support religious tolerance and freedom of conscience, and for this reason they are almost universally seen, at least in the developed world, as enlightened and desirable.

Unlike secular government, to be personally secular means that an individual is personally without religion. Thus, while most Americans support the general notion of secular government, a smaller number are personally secular, living as individuals without theistic religion. These Secular Americans identify in various ways. A very small percentage of them openly identify as atheists, meaning they do not believe in the existence of any gods. A similarly small percentage identify as agnostic, which is commonly defined as a view that nothing can be known about the existence of a god. Agnostics often say that they don’t believe there is a god, but they don’t necessarily have an affirmative belief that there isn’t one either, because they simply concede that they don’t know. Generally speaking, however, most agnostics are functionally atheists, because they have no affirmative belief in a divinity and they typically have little use for organized religion.¹

Other Secular Americans, again a small percentage, prefer to be called humanists. Unlike atheism and agnosticism, both of which address only the single issue of the existence of a divinity, humanism is a broad philosophy that includes affirmative values and ethical principles without relying on belief in a supernatural deity. Humanism is sometimes divided into two categories: secular humanism and religious humanism. The difference between the two has nothing to do with their views on the existence of a god (both secular and religious humanism are not theistic), but they may have significantly different practices. Secular humanists generally have no need for any kind of religious structure, such as membership in a church, whereas religious humanists usually find value in belonging to some kind of religious institution, whether it be a Unitarian-Universalist church or fellowship, a congregation of Humanistic Judaism, an Ethical Culture group, or some other religious entity. Thus, religious humanists are a puzzling category to some, as they are nonbelievers who nevertheless consider themselves religious. But since the word secular can also mean without theism, religious humanists can still be considered Secular Americans.²

Finally, there is another segment of the population that also fits under the Secular American umbrella, and this is by far the largest: those who are without religion or without theism but do not identify as atheist, agnostic, or humanist. These Secular Americans will often answer none when asked for religious identity, or many will even continue to identify with the religious category of their upbringing despite having long ago rejected the tenets of that religion. Many are simply apathetic to the question of whether deities exist, seeing the issue as unknowable and irrelevant to daily life, and still others may even acknowledge some kind of vague belief akin to Deism. What is similar about these individuals is that they typically approach daily life without supernatural beliefs, don’t rely on an interventionist god, and have little use for traditional theology.

Calculating the number of Secular Americans is difficult because, like many questions relating to religious categorization, the answer depends on whether we define the term according to religious belief, religious identity, or religious practice. We can see this dynamic by considering other religious categories, such as the Catholic demographic. Currently, about fifty-seven million Americans, or 25.1 percent of the adult population, identify as Catholic.³ There are, however, many Catholics who are less than devout in their belief, often to the point of rejecting most or all of church doctrine. Many never attend mass, for example, and many routinely use birth control even though the church considers contraception not just a sin, but a mortal sin. It is not at all unusual to hear ordinary Catholics say that they question the authority of bishops and cardinals, have serious doubts about life after death, and even doubt the divinity of Jesus. The point is not to suggest that Catholics are more uncertain than others with respect to their core religious convictions, as surely inconsistencies and outright contradictory views can be found among the adherents of most religions; rather, the point is that precise categorization is an impossible