Month: October 2023

Several months ago, I encountered an interesting newspaper column entitled “America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists” (Washington Post, 10-3-23).  The author, Kate Cohen, said that Americans needed more atheists since atheists “demand that truth claims be tethered to fact.”

It is unfortunate, Cohen notes, that atheists are not popular in our public culture.  A recent Pew Research Center poll listed the number of self-proclaimed atheists at 4 percent.  Several psychologists, using a different polling technique, were able to raise that to 26 percent of people who refused to say they believed in God.

Americans seem to have a built-in distrust of atheists.  We don’t want to vote for them or want our children to marry them, and we even associate lack of belief in God with criminal behavior.  We refer to God in our pledge of allegiance and stamp it on our currency—this, for many of us, is part of the notion that we are “a Christian nation,” something that is not true legally, sociologically, or even behaviorally.

And this brings us back to Cohen’s claim that we need more publicly professed atheists in order to raise the level of honesty in our public life.

Cohen cites a recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll in which 29 percent of Americans said they believed that President Biden was not legitimately elected.  22 percent of those polled “think there is solid evidence of fraud” while 7 percent said there wasn’t such evidence but still said Biden was not a legitimately elected president.  

Eighty-one percent claimed to be Christian in a 2022 Gallup poll. How many of them, I wonder, might also be among those who deny Biden’s victory in 2020?  I suspect it was more than a few.

Being affiliated with an organized religious group, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or other, does not make you immune to political falsehoods.  Of course, neither does being an atheist. Cohen argues, however, that atheists are more “tethered to facts” because they do not accept religious stories or “myths,” as she calls them.

Cohen also claims that atheists are more likely to be active in and donate to political campaigns and are 30 percent more likely to vote than religious people. She believes atheists “understand that, without [belief in] a higher power, we need human power to change the world,” but also admits that there are are social and political activists are who are religious. “You don’t have to be an atheist, she notes; you just have to act like one” she says.

Having said that, she is still critical of religious believers for not “pushing back against the outsized cultural and political power of religion itself.”  By this she means all the religious exemptions that have been given by recent court decisions.  These include rulings that the state of Maine must “pay for a parochial school. . . and that a website designer can reject same-sex clients.”

Cohen’s article raises some interesting and legitimate points.  Religious groups now have more legal, social, and political power than appropriate in a nation which has long valued separation between church and state. 

The second major point this author makes (beyond claiming that it is easier for atheists to be more honest and that there are more of them in hiding in religious communities than you might think) is that America would be stronger if more atheists “came out of the closet.” If this happened, she says, would reduce some of the pain which evangelical Christians inflict on our country by supporting people like Donald Trump. 

“So ask yourself: Do I think there is a supernatural being in charge of the universe? If you answer ‘no’ you’re an atheist. . . .But if you go further, you’ll be doing something good for your county.”

Now this is where I get off the train that Ms. Cohen is driving, even though I am willing to ride with her criticisms of the damage done to America by the type of “Christians” she deplores.  While I believe in God, I do not accept Cohen’s definition of God as a “supernatural being” running the universe.

In my last post I summarized the argument of Washington Post columnist Kate Cohen claiming that American politics would become more honest if we had more public atheists among us. In it Cohen repeatedly referred to God as a “Supreme Being” and “a supernatural being in charge of the universe.”

While I agreed with much of her criticism of our political dishonesty, I wish to propose an alternative form of Christian honesty. God is not a being, supernatural or otherwise.  While I know many Christians are shocked by that assertion, calling God a being suggests that God is some bearded old man in Heaven making judgments about events and people on earth.

            Several years ago I wrote, at my daughter’s request, a brief essay for my grandchildren on my religious views. In it, I rejected belief in the traditional views of Heaven and Hell, the image a judgmental God in the Old Testament, and even the more recent view that Jesus’ death was necessary to save us from sin and condemnation to Hell. 

            Instead, I told my grandkids, I believe in a Divine Creative Spirit (not a Being) existing in all of creation, including humans, and that we all have access to this creative Spirit to the extent that we become conscious of the “God” within us. All life is thus ultimately One and ultimately good.

            While this view would be rejected as heresy by my evangelical Christian friends, it is not anti -Christian. A good Christian, for example, can believe that evil is not caused by God but is a part of life and often a consequence of human decisions. A good Christian can also believe that God needs our help to create the “kingdom of God” on earth. This makes active love of others and the earth most important.

Here is a simpler definition of my version of Christian attributed to South African bishop Desmond Tutu: “Without God, you can’t.  Without you, God won’t.”

            This way of being a follower of Jesus boils down to belief in a God or divine force that helps us do the right things—including being truthful politically—but who does not control or manipulate us—a relational god rather than a judgmental one. 

This divine spirit is not the all-powerful, all-knowing, judging “being” many of us were introduced to as children.  This ultimate source of creativity is an all loving and all-forgiving power that “invites people to align their wills with spirit and to partner with him/her/it to create and spread beauty throughout the world.” (Benjamin Corey, Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith (2017), p. 174.) 

This thumbnail sketch of an alternative to traditional evangelical Christianity does not deny the divinity that exists in Jesus, that Jewish boy who Christians claim as their founder. Jesus, in the words of 19^th century theologian and churchman Friederich Schleiermacher, had a higher level of “God-consciousness” than the rest of us. By following him as he requested—he never asked his disciples to worship him—and imitating his life of love, we can develop a higher level of that consciousness of divinity within ourselves. 

By following that path, we can make America a better, more honest, place, without worrying unduly about the various doctrines and dogmas that many churches use to control Jesus and make him into a God whom we often either fear or dismiss.  We too often make Jesus into a God with whom it is hard to identify. That is unfortunate, since his message is more about unconditional love than it is about power, obedience, and fear of Hell.

Christianity should be more about sharing love than judging others. If we viewed it that way, we might have the positive effect on our society that atheists like Kate Cohen would like us to have.  We would be more compassionate in our social and political policies and behaviors.  We might also learn how to accept imperfections in ourselves and others, but still “love our neighbor as ourselves.”

That approach might, with divine help, keep us from being manipulated by power-hungry political or religious leaders—and that would allow Christians to join with atheists and others in creating a better world for all.

Several months ago, I encountered an interesting newspaper column entitled “America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists” (Washington Post, 10-3-23).  The author, Kate Cohen, said that Americans needed more atheists since atheists “demand that truth claims be tethered to fact.”

It is unfortunate, Cohen notes, that atheists are not popular in our public culture.  A recent Pew Research Center poll listed the number of self-proclaimed atheists at 4 percent.  Several psychologists, using a different polling technique, were able to raise that to 26 percent of people who refused to say they believed in God.

Americans seem to have a built-in distrust of atheists.  We don’t want to vote for them or want our children to marry them, and we even associate lack of belief in God with criminal behavior.  We refer to God in our pledge of allegiance and stamp it on our currency—this, for many of us, is part of the notion that we are “a Christian nation,” something that is not true legally, sociologically, or even behaviorally.

And this brings us back to Cohen’s claim that we need more publicly professed atheists in order to raise the level of honesty in our public life.

Cohen cites a recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll in which 29 percent of Americans said they believed that President Biden was not legitimately elected.  22 percent of those polled “think there is solid evidence of fraud” while 7 percent said there wasn’t such evidence but still said Biden was not a legitimately elected president.  

Eighty-one percent claimed to be Christian in a 2022 Gallup poll. How many of them, I wonder, might also be among those who deny Biden’s victory in 2020?  I suspect it was more than a few.

Being affiliated with an organized religious group, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or other, does not make you immune to political falsehoods.  Of course, neither does being an atheist. Cohen argues, however, that atheists are more “tethered to facts” because they do not accept religious stories or “myths,” as she calls them.

Cohen also claims that atheists are more likely to be active in and donate to political campaigns and are 30 percent more likely to vote than religious people. She believes atheists “understand that, without [belief in] a higher power, we need human power to change the world,” but also admits that there are are social and political activists are who are religious. “You don’t have to be an atheist, she notes; you just have to act like one” she says.

Having said that, she is still critical of religious believers for not “pushing back against the outsized cultural and political power of religion itself.”  By this she means all the religious exemptions that have been given by recent court decisions.  These include rulings that the state of Maine must “pay for a parochial school. . . and that a website designer can reject same-sex clients.”

Cohen’s article raises some interesting and legitimate points.  Religious groups now have more legal, social, and political power than appropriate in a nation which has long valued separation between church and state. 

The second major point this author makes (beyond claiming that it is easier for atheists to be more honest and that there are more of them in hiding in religious communities than you might think) is that America would be stronger if more atheists “came out of the closet.” If this happened, she says, would reduce some of the pain which evangelical Christians inflict on our country by supporting people like Donald Trump. 

“So ask yourself: Do I think there is a supernatural being in charge of the universe? If you answer ‘no’ you’re an atheist. . . .But if you go further, you’ll be doing something good for your county.”

Now this is where I get off the train that Ms. Cohen is driving, even though I am willing to ride with her criticisms of the damage done to America by the type of “Christians” she deplores.  While I believe in God, I do not accept Cohen’s definition of God as a “supernatural being” running the universe.

Are You a CHINO: Christian in Name Only?

            A friend of mine, whose identity remains anonymous for his/her/their own protection, shared this title phrase with me some time ago.

            Stealing the title of the famous book by Jeff Foxworthy, “You Might be a Redneck If…”  I would argue that you might be a CHINO if:

• You associate being Christian more with what you believe than with how you behave;

• You believe that the Biblical phrase “the poor you will always have with you” means that you do not have to help them become less poor;

• You believe that Jesus requires only a personal relationship with him, one that does not extend to groups of people or other individuals who are not like you in some important way(s);

• You believe that the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” is and should be obeyed only after you have carefully defined and narrowed the term “neighbor;”

• You think followers of Jesus are only found among churchgoers or, worse yet, that all churchgoers follow Jesus;

• You believe that the death of Jesus on the cross was the only important thing in his life, and thus overshadows everything else Jesus did and said during his ministry;

• You believe that most social teachings of Jesus–especially those putting the poor and oppressed ahead of self–should never be “mixed with politics,” yet that is exactly what you do when you support walls (real or psychological) to separate us from asylum seekers and the poor and tell churchgoers to vote for Trump and against “evil” Democrats; 

• You think being pro-life only requires that you oppose abortion. Life after birth (see gun violence, capital punishment and poverty), on the other hand, are not important life or death issues for you;

• Your behavior suggests to others that you are more interested in power and money than in philanthropy and compassion;

• You believe that the United States was created as a Christian nation.

It is true that, while CHINOS may be more prevalent among MAGA Republicans, it is also true that we are all infected with CHINOISM. It is part of the sinful human condition.  

However, CHINOISM among MAGA Republicans has become more important over the past several years as red state leaders have become more aggressive in arguing that America is a Christian nation, something not evidenced by our behavior and clearly not a belief of our founding fathers, most of whom were Deists (belief in a distant rational god) rather than Christians.

            In the generations during and after the creation of the Constitution and new nation, a large number of Americans were not religious in thought or behavior. For many Americans in the early decades of our Republic booze was more important than the Bible.

Even though several religious revivals known as “Great Awakenings” occurred in the 18^th century, Americans have been religious, ethical, and spiritual in a variety of ways throughout our history. The U.S. could be considered a religious nation, given our willingness to create and/or provide homes to many new religious groups such as Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists.

None of these groups have matched the anger and tenaciousness of today’s Christian nationalists,

who want a state ruled by their understanding of God, instead of by votes and human lawmakers.

            Today’s evangelical MAGA Christian nationalists want to go far beyond the founding fathers in attempting to merge some conservative Christian values and some CHINO values and use them to created laws and government policies, something most of our earliest leaders, especially Thomas Jefferson, would have feared and deplored.

            Today’s MAGA Christian nationalists want their CHINO views to be reflected in all areas of our lives, especially health care and education.  This is a clear threat to democracy since religious laws are not subject to the will or votes of the people. God, at least for many of my conservative religious friends, is a judgmental and authoritarian ruler, quick to punish, slower to forgive.

            Think about that last paragraph as you prepare your letters of rebuttal to this column.