I never can resist
God it’s a gorgeous afternoon. Bright and clear so that all the new leaves and flowers all but hit you in the face with saturated color.
Somebody did a little parody letter/award to Chris Stedman, the point of which is that gnu atheists are picking on him. Wayull, after that hatchet-job by Karla McLaren on his blog, is it any wonder? If you post stuff saying gnu atheists are violent bullies, gnu atheists may react. Them’s the breaks.
To thank you, we’d like to give you the Watch Yourself award. With this award, every socially responsible cause you, your immediate family, or anyone you tag or like on Facebook or Twitter, gets involved in will be appropriated as a debate about Atheism, specifically from a New Atheist perspective. You want to promote LGBT issues? Don’t worry, New Atheists will be there to critique those causes on the basis of how inclusive they are to New Atheists…If you prefer, we can just assign a Task Force of New Atheists to follow you around with a megaphone, helping to contextualize everything that you do in terms of New Atheism, whether or not you ascribe to that movement.
[shrug] What I said. Chris does tell gnu atheists what’s wrong with them a lot, so some of us push back. So it goes.
And if the idea is that we’re bossy – well what is he? Check out this “event” at something called “Faith House”:
(F)a(i)theist: How One Atheist Learned to Overcome the Religious-Secular Divide, and Why Atheists and the Religious Must Work Together
He’s always telling us what we must do. Well, I don’t take orders from him, oddly enough, so to work off my feelings of rebellion and insubordination, I sometimes dispute what he says, sometimes on Facebook. [shrug]
It’s funny how the idea is apparently supposed to be about healing divisions and whatnot, but in fact Stedman has created some new divisions. It’s kind of like the deal where people who piss off former friends by the hundreds set themselves up as experts in communication. It’s a lesson to be cautious about what one claims for oneself.
“You want to promote LGBT issues? Don’t worry, New Atheists will be there to critique those causes on the basis of how inclusive they are to New Atheists”
The irony here being that Stedman has no problem with playing down LGBT issues if it helps him look more moderate and stuff. Didn’t he just do a HuffPo bit criticizing others for criticizing Sojourners for not supporting full equality?
This is not “Stedman thinks that other progressive causes are more important than atheism.” This is “Stedman cares more about his bridge-building strategy than about whether or not his allies are consistently treating others in a fair and reasonable way.”
Quite. Actually that question would be more accurate if it were
“You want to play down LGBT issues in order to defend Jim Wallis and Sojourners for rejecting an anodyne ad that recommends acceptance and caritas? Don’t worry, New Atheists will be there to point out that that’s a peculiar set of priorities.”
As far as I can tell this person was responding to a very specific discussion that has been going on over the past two days, and this was directed at me and one other person rather than at you. I don’t think it’s cause enough to start another thread about your disagreements with Chris.
Ah…really? Could be I guess, and you’d know a lot better than I would. But I didn’t think those people thought of you as a New Atheist, really, whereas I generally announce that I am. And I certainly do monitor Chris!
I saw the discussion you mean, I think…or maybe not, but I saw a couple.
I think the one this guy’s letter is referring to is not one of the many that happened on Chris’ page but, whatever. It’s a snide little letter that I think misrepresents the issue I think he’s commenting on.
Gosh, another one!
Oh please no. Did he really?
Ohhhhhhhh yes. Search box at top of page should find my commentary on that, which will have the links.
I changed my mind, I don’t think Stedman is leader material after all, nor a threat. I think he’s a follower, and so are the other accommodationists. I do think that they could change their minds, but of course it’s not based on any conviction but on whatever culture they so happen to be embedded within. I don’t think they have strong moral convictions or any understanding about what new atheists are talking about. I do think they’re strongly influenced by status and approval, and that is basically how they roll.
Who is this Chris Stedman person anyway? Why would I care what he thinks? I’ve never heard of him except on your blog.
(Not a criticism, genuine curiosity. Did I miss something?)
Cheers for calling out the use of “must.” It’s like when some senator talks about what other countries must do—“Palestine must do this…the Russian government must do that…” Obnoxious.
Would it be possible to just ignore this Chris Stedman person? Since all he really wants in attention and praise, we can easily deny him both by leaving him to his theist “friends.” After all, he obviously likes it better when people smile in his face and hate him behind his back, rather than us folks who criticize him but otherwise don’t wish any harm on him.
@Cath
Until just recently I would have described him as a gay- rights activist with strong acommodationist leanings. But given his comments about Sojourn i’d amend that to an uncle tom best left ignored.
Sorry guys, but this one was my fault. I posted a link over on the facebook group for GAY FAITH that they should change their name to something that doesn’t alienate Atheists, Humanists, Secular Jews, Buddhists, and Agnostics.
It didn’t go well.
Apparently my advocacy for gay rights in rural Montana when I was an AmeriCorps VISTA doesn’t give me the right to have a public opinion about whether or not the term “GAY FAITH,” is exclusionary.
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” – Susan B. Anthony
Oh, apparently I’ve been banned from their Facebook group, despite telling the “President” of their “organisation” that we wanted to partner with them on common causes, such as challenging the Conservative position in Minnesota’s gay rights ballot initiative this year. Apparently my lack of belief in fairy tales is a sufficient condition for not being an ally in fighting for gay rights.
#profound.interfaith.fail.
Also, I love the exclusion, coming from someone who claims to be a Christian. You know how much Jesus focuses on how important it is to exclude others, especially when they’re different from you…
#you.don’t.understand.your.own.religion.
Hey, that’s not just any “somebody.” That’s Chris Luna, the author of the follow-up on Stedman’s blog to the McLaren hatchet job. They’re three-of-a-kind.
Luna doesn’t know how to spell “shenanigans,” either.
Jonathan: Kudos on your bannination (and plenty of us Minnesota atheists will be on the case regarding the 2012 anti-gay ballot initiative, no worries about that), but:
C’mon, now. Highly contestable liberal interpretations of Christianity ≠ Christianity.
Not all of those are about “excluding others,” precisely, but some are (gotta love the last one, in which Jesus denies health care to a desperate mother on racist grounds, eh?). And the rest, among many others from the Gospels, make it clear that the Jesus character is no moral exemplar. If “understanding.your.own.religion” means being the kind of nasty asshole the Gospels’ Jesus is, I’m reasonably happy that the Christians I know don’t.understand.it.
(Which prompts the tiresome Gandhi quote: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” He was right about that last part: I know very few Christians who are disgusting reprobates. THe first part leads me to believe he never actually read the Gospels, though.)
What are you expecting me to defend their silly book? I totally agree with your critique of Jesus. But I do believe that if there is one message that runs “somewhat consistently” throughout the Bible (except when it is radically contradicted by the bit about how to keep slaves, not so good, that part) is that Jesus stood for the poor and oppressed. That and occasionally raving about being the son of god. Hey, nobody’s perfect…
Actually, Jonathan, according to Matthew 15:21-28, it took some convincing for Jesus to consent to healing the daughter of a lowly Canaanite:
21Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
22And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
28Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Yeah, I don’t know if Jesus should be held up as an exemplar of inclusiveness. Sure, you can produce other verses where the king of kings seems downright neighborly, but as the old saying goes, the bible’s like a violin, you can play any tune you want. So I don’t buy the whole, “no TRUE Christian could be so unwelcoming/mean/violent/intolerant/[insert negative adjective]”-fallacy. They can be and they often are, so let’s stop suggesting that “Christian” is synonymous with “good/tolerant/inclusive/[insert positive adjective],” or that a “true” Christian is necessarily any of these things.
While we’re on the topic though, isn’t the,”Interfaith Challenge,” just as exclusionary as “Gay Faith,” and for the exact same reason that it singles out religious faith for special praise and recognition? Strangely, you and your organization fairly regularly enjoin your affiliates to participate in the “Interfaith Challenge,” one of the arguments being that the faith-boosting title of the program is merely an issue of semantics that should be overlooked in order to have a seat at the interfaith table – which makes about as much sense as a Jew or a Muslim rushing to join in a program specifically for Christians.
Damn! Too slow. Well played as usual, Rieux.
Thanks D. Finney. With respect to the Interfaith Challenge, we have been making the point that if they’re going to call it the interfaith challenge, they should endeavour to try to be as inclusive as they can, by saying things like “people of all faiths, and none,” or otherwise mentioning that non-believers are valued allies. Keep your eyes on press releases about the Interfaith Challenge and let us know how our lobbying is working.
As for the term “interfaith” in general, I am performing some experiments to see how welcome we Atheists, especially we New Atheists are in Interfaith conversations. I must say, at Harvard, we have been extremely successful and have been welcomed with open arms by our excellent fellow Chaplains. That said, I have had some disappointing interfaith engagements as well, and don’t really have enough evidence to say with certainty that Interfaith is either good or bad. Right now, I see both good aspects of it, and problematic aspects of it. Please let me know if you’ve had bad experiences with interfaith, as they represent valuable data points. Also, please feel free to come visit the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard if any of you folks ever find yourself in the Boston/Cambridge area.
Ha ha! Gotcha, D. :-)
Jonathan:
But you did. You accused exclusionary Christians of not “understand[ing].[thei]r.own.religion.” When in fact they arguably “understand” it better than the liberals whose gloss on Christianity you sure seemed to be declaring is more legitimate.
Again (apropos D. Finney’s “violin” metaphor), it sure looks like you’re engaging in the usual liberal-Christian cherry-picking to get there. Never mind slavery; how about the Syrophenician “dog” mother both D. and I have referenced? She was “poor and oppressed,” and Jesus told her to fuck off in overtly racist terms. And c’mon: Hell! Who’s more “oppressed” than the bazillions of infidels Jesus gleefully declares will be roasting in the “furnace of fire,” “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Okay. I recognize you’re Our Guy in the interfaith arena (not being sarcastic, just trying to be witty), so I hope you can take this like a Burgess Meredith-type cornerman pep-talking his boxer: Now go out there and give ’em Hell (literally!), Tiger, and don’t let them push you around with this “right-wing fundy freaks don’t understand their own religion” nonsense.
Rieux,
To be fair, that’s not necessarily what Jesus said, it’s what 2nd-century Greek bishops said Matthew said Jesus said.
The accommodationist are fearful old-ladies cowering in their bowers. Their criticisms are noted and are stupid as no ‘polite’ social movement has ever won a damn concession by reaching for second-class citizenship.
Second, if they think the ‘four horsemen’ are foaming-at-the-mouth polemics, these clowns are as dumb as their arguments. I’ve read all of them. They’re, collectively, about as threatening as a box of damp tissue.
I will add I think they failed to understand this point in MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Truth is, as has been recognized through-out history, social change must be forced. And these clowns are the exact kind of ‘white moderates’ that would have kept the black man down in the 1960s. The clowns that refused to support the end of segregation because ‘the time wasn’t right’ and they ‘did not wish to offend.’
Chris:
I don’t think that has anything to do with anything, actually.
As has been fairly well established, the historical Jesus, if he ever existed, is long since lost. We have no idea what he believed, said, or did, and spare little chance of ever finding out.
The Jesus I’m talking about is the one that matters: he’s a character in an uncommonly influential book, not a person who was or was not misrepresented by Second Century Greek bishops. The character matters. The historical Jesus doesn’t, because he’s either a fantasy or a tree falling in the forest with no one left to hear it.
I support the theological liberals because they’re at least on our side about the importance of science education, gay rights (well, some of them at least…), abortion (fewer of them), and even about the importance of having a serious conversation between people of faith and us Heathens. At least some of them invite us to the table. Rick Warren stopped sending me Christmas cards years ago, but my old liberal Presbyterian minister made a donation to the AHA for my graduation. I was pretty proud of him being willing to give money (a fair bit too) to an irreligious organisation and still think of it as a great attempt to reach across the faith divide.
As for the Biblical interpretation, I’ve heard fairly strong arguments (although I have no Ancient Greek training) that suggests that some of the more onerous statements from jesus were later additions, and not necessarily his own words. I mean, they’re obviously not his own words because a bunch of monks played “telephone” with the Bible for a few centuries, selectively editing, rewriting, etc.
Come, now. You know perfectly well that that’s not what’s at issue. All the political friendliness in the world does nothing whatsoever to make their theological ideas less nonsensical, or their scriptural arguments more persuasive. A tolerant liberal who’s badly wrong about something is still badly wrong about it.
And I grew up in a liberal-leaning Protestant church myself. It was (and presumably still is) full of nice, caring, generally reasonable people. They’re still wrong.
Oy. I refer you to my comment #27. The whole “later addition” thing is a bad joke. The entire Gospels have effectively (and, more to the point, equally) zero credibility as history. There’s nothing more trustworthy about the nice passages than the nasty ones; you’re just repeating liberal-Christian wishful thinking.
Again, the historical Jesus is long gone, if he isn’t a total fantasy. There’s no reason to believe that any passage of the Gospels is more accurate than any other; very possibly it’s all fiction.
And the fact that it’s nice liberals who pretend that “love thy neighbor” is on solid historical ground but “why should I care about your sick daughter, you Greek bitch?” isn’t doesn’t get you anywhere, either. We’re talking about a character in a book, not a historical guy that we can’t honestly know anything about. And the character in the book really did say the “Greek bitch” thing, and a lot more besides. Liberal believers’ routes around that truth don’t deserve the respectful attention you’re giving them.
First, lets dispense with the myth that accommodationists are ‘nice’, they’re not. They’re conformist, and when you don’t conform to the in-group, then you see their nasty side. They will tell you nicely at first, that you must conform okay? And if you don’t then you’re bloody well a social pariah, an unmutual who isn’t playing by the rules and must be expelled.
That is why Moses’ quote about MLK is so apt, because accommodationists or moderates are in fact conformist rule followers, respect worshippers, social status seekers, and are not battling for justice and are certainly not motivated to change anything.
Secondly, lets dispense with the myth that gnus are not nice. Gnus are kittens and puppies (sometimes with their liddle claws out) but they’re not playing the respect and social status game within faith-based groups. Hence, the appearance of the shrill, aggressive and strident non-game player, and who just won’t shut up and therefore must be expelled!
Gnus are also ‘accommodating’ in a diplomatic sense, in it’s true and proper sense when necessary, we can all get along fine with religious people, without having to respect their stupid and ignorant beliefs.
When atheism actually gains social equality, the accommodationists will disappear. They may in fact start doing the opposite, complaining about how faithists should just keep quiet and shut up and stop being so damn obnoxious and unharmonious.
If I understand you correctly, Jonathan, you seem to be saying that, in the case of, “Gay Faith,” you are asking that they change the title to be more inclusive, while with respect to the, “Interfaith Challenge,” the occasional token shout-out to non-believers will suffice to compensate for a title as explicit in its exclusion of atheists as GF. This has the appearance of a double-standard. Why would you choose a battle with GF over its name while showing a perfect willingness to acquiesce in your dealings with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships? Seeing this, what reason would GF have to take seriously your concerns or trouble itself to accommodate them?
Anyway, the White House name-dropping non-believers doesn’t negate your organizations’ complicity in propping up an unconstitutional “faith-based” bureaucracy created with religious organizations specifically in mind and with religious organizations remaining the prime beneficiaries. Neither will it take back the millions of tax-dollars disbursed to religious right groups like the Indiana Family Institute, whose resources are then freed up to finance anti-gay legislation (http://www.secular.org/fairclothfaithbased) and who knows what other sectarian intrigue. I fail to see how your organizations’ vested interests in the government’s illegal faith-based initiatives are not inimical to the basic principles of secularism and an insult to those who value them.
Well said. Egbert. Bookmarked.
[catching up] Oh that discussion – no, I had seen that one, I just hadn’t participated. Read-only.
Cath – who is Stedman – he writes regularly for both the Huffington Post and the Washington Post “On Faith” (gag) blog, and he works for the Harvard Humanist chaplaincy. This makes him pretty visible, and he’s energetic about self-promotion, so I think he’s going to become steadily more visible. He’s got a crowd-pleasing angle, and he’s making the most of it. That’s why I think he’s worth disputing.
[still catching up] Rieux – oh that’s where I’ve seen Luna before. I couldn’t remember. Mind like a sieve. Mind you, I never did really read that piece of his…Couldn’t get interested.
They’re not, actually – they’re young gentlemen.
Thanks Rieux. You’ve minded me wht a thoroughly unpleasant man yeshue bar yussef must have been. One part of the gospels always intrigued me though; where yeshue is arrested and one of his followers draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the high priest’s slave. Obviously these guys were not exemplars of peace and love for all. Rather they were armed insurrectionists and their leader was dealt with by the romans accordingly
It’s interesting how far back the YNH argument goes. Polybius (active in 2nd C BCE) and Strabo (active in !st C BCE and CE), both of them philosophers and historians, jumped all over Eratosthenes (active 3rd C BCE) – probably the greatest polymath of the Hellenic world, he who calculated the polar circumference of the earth to perhaps 200 or so kms of current values – for advocating that people should not depend on Homer as an accurate source of history, geography and morality. He declared that the pantheon of Olympians was, in fact, a collection of thugs and frauds, without basis in reality. He wasn’t helping, and they wished he had just STFU.
Are we sure Polybius and Strabo are different people? Were they active at environmental conferences?
D. Finney: I guess I have different standards for the two programs. For one GayFaith existed for about 12 minutes before I found it, so it wasn’t like it had an extensive history with its name (it had 12 likes or something like that). Rebranding the President’s Interfaith Challenge would cost a huge amount of money and would undo a huge ad campaign. Furthermore, this issue isn’t really a priority for me. I work with student groups, providing Humanist community for Atheists, Agnostics, and the non-religious at Harvard and beyond. As far as I know, our participation in the Interfaith Challenge was organising a light-bulb exchange in a low-income neighbourhood in Cambridge. I don’t see how getting people together to exchange people’s inefficient light bulbs for CFLs is inimical to the cause of Atheism.
Hamacher,
it was obviously Eratosthenes tone that caused them their concern. I’m sure he was dexcribed as strident and shrill as well.
Quelle horreur!
“Branding”=more important than substance. “Ad campaign”=that which must be preserved once we’ve sunk money into it.
I mean, do you want your tax dollars wasted? If it means enough to you, I guess YOU could start advocating against it.
Of course not. They’re being inclusive by using the term that excludes you, while you’re being divisive by pointing out that people like you are being excluded.
ckitching gets it.
Jonathan:
No, I don’t want to see tax-dollars wasted, especially not promoting irrational wish-thinking in defiance of the Constitution, which is precisely my point. That a, “huge amount of money,” has been spent on, “a huge ad-campaign,” to showcase, ‘the power of faith,’ is itself the problem. I don’t understand how the difficulty of this situation eludes you. Religion is being promoted at the highest level of government, at an undisclosed cost to tax-payers, in violation of the Establishment Clause, as meanwhile, the same student organization that once stood on the Supreme Court steps to protest the government faith-based initiative:
. . . now pesters its affiliates to hop aboard the “interfaith” bandwagon:
As yet, no explanation has been forthcoming for why selling out the basic premise of secularism to the White House faith council is necessary to accomplish community service or dialogue with the pious, neither of which ideally – constitutionally – should require government intervention or funding. Another thing that’s kind of interesting, is your comment on this thread that you, “don’t have enough evidence to say with certainty that Interfaith is either good or bad.” Yet, less than three months ago, you obviously thought you had enough evidence to go singing the praises of, “Interfaith Service,” on Hemant’s blog:
Yeah? Like what? I see nothing on your list that couldn’t be achieved without promoting faith, government-sponsored faith, and the fallacious (and irritatingly frequent) assertion that atheism is, “just another faith.”
I think I’ll close with a quote from SSA board member, Frank Bellamy, whose view, unfortunately is not the prevalent one within his organization’s leadership:
[1] http://www.secularstudents.org/node?from=360
[2]http://www.secularstudents.org/interfaith/whygetinvolved
[3]http://www.secularstudents.org/interfaith
[4]http://www.secularstudents.org/node/3634
[5]http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/03/29/why-should-new-atheists-engage-in-interfaith-service/
[6]http://www.secularstudents.org/node/3025
Quite, D. Finney. I have an impossible time understanding how any secular person fails to see that the waste of tax-payer dollars is precisely the expensive ad campaign and program. It beggars belief.
Tax-dollars wasted, Jonathan? You’re indulging in the gambler’s fallacy. They were already wasted the minute a cent was spent on this program. Continuing to pour money into continues this waste, it does not retroactively make the program less wasteful.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether this is a battle that’s tactically worth engaging, of course. But that wasn’t your retort, and I don’t think your retort was reasonable (it wasn’t even logical). “Doesn’t push my buttons enough to make it worth fighting” doesn’t give one license to make up erroneous defenses of the thing that doesn’t push one’s buttons enough.
Thanks Julian & Ophelia. I appreciate the background – it was something I missed. As an Aussie who doesn’t read HuffPo, I probably wouldn’t have stumbled on him without you.
D. Finney: I agree with you in principle. I think that we should all be working towards the end of removing government subsidies for religion and to start taxing religion. But given the fact that the vast majority of America overtly approves of government subsidies of religion, you’re not going to get anywhere arguing this electorally. And if you haven’t noticed, we’re not winning all of these “Separation of Church and State” lawsuits. A lot of conservative Justices have started taking less heed of this legal principle, so if you wanted to start doing something to cause a change, you could challenge those judges. Either way, we’re not going to achieve the end of government subsidies of religion any time soon electorally or legally. So given that these certain subsidies exist, the question is, “how best can we assure that these subsidies are given equally to all Americans, regardless of faith or lack thereof?” That’s why I see participating in the White House Interfaith Challenge as worthwhile for Atheists and Humanists. It raises our profile. It causes a change in language (the inclusion of nonbelievers in Presidential speeches and IFYC statements). It challenges the belief that atheists are selfish people who don’t do service. Sorry for not spelling all this out at first, but I’ve repeated these same arguments time and time again. If you don’t like my arguments, feel free to offer your answers to my pragmatism. But if your answer is “John, you and team atheism must die on the hill of protesting government subsidies,” I’d say your priorities are out of balance. I want to create an Atheist/Humanist/Secular Jewish/Agnostic/etc. majority in this country, and I want to do that by creating communities for those people. You may think that this is an utter waste of time, and smacks too much of “organised religion” for you. That is fine. There are many ways to be a secular activist.
If you’re one of those folks who argues that “atheists shouldn’t do interfaith ever,” there are tons of threads on Ophelia’s site and others where that topic has been discussed ad infinitum. If you want to only promote that line of thinking, you can check out American Atheists, or Freedom From Religion Foundation, maybe. They are both great organisations. As a member of both, I get the sense that they’re not terribly involved in the Interfaith conversations. As a result, unfortunately, they have no voice and most of the other Interfaith Representatives at Harvard have no idea that they exist.
If you agree to come to the interfaith table, you at least get a voice in the discussion, instead of them continuing on these interfaith dialogues with no representation from atheists.
Josh, I don’t really understand your argument here. No one is disputing that government dollars spent on interfaith are wasted. But they’ve been spent already. We can’t go back in a time machine and change that. We can, however, advocate for changes in the future. But you can only do that advocating from the interfaith table if you want to reach the 80%+ of America that is overtly religious. Trust me, they’re not all reading B&W, Pharyngula, and Friendly Atheist.
Also, it would be nice if everyone were to realize that “my opinion is different than yours, and here are my reasons why I think my argument is better,” is more likely to persuade someone than trying to call them unreasonable.
And I would much rather that the money the White House is going to spend on Interfaith go towards service, as opposed to pure “dialogues.” If I’m going to discuss the possibility of there being an invisible magical man in the sky who grants prayers, we better get a park built or a meal cooked for a homeless shelter so that something productive happens.
I’m getting awfully sick of you making stuff up. No one said that. They specifically criticized you for poo-pooing the concern itself. No one said you have to make it your top priority. This isn’t even controversial – go read the thread.
Sweet Jesus. That’s exactly what I said. Plus the fact that continuing to pour money down that rabbit hole doesn’t retroactively redeem the project (which you definitely implied upstream when you implied it was tilting at windmills to protest this ad campaign). What are you not getting?
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Don’t tell me or others here who think as I do what we “can” and “can’t” accomplish. You have zero evidence that the only way to make headway is “at the interfaith table.” If I followed your advice when I was heavily campaigning for gay rights in the 90s, I would have been sitting around hobnobbing with people who took it as a default given that I’d have to convince them I was a full human being. Nope, none of us loudmouth protestors or lawsuit-filers, or polemical op-ed writers ever accomplished one thing with all that. It was all for nought because we wouldn’t sit around the Socially Sanctioned Tea Time Table.
Seriously – what history have you been living if you believe this? Note that I’m not telling you that you can do no good in your interfaith efforts. Really. Read that sentence again and note it. But you are – you just did, in plain terms – telling people like me we can’t accomplish anything unless we accept the very paradigm—faith as a common medium—that we seek to de-privilege.
I was hoping you weren’t going to turn out to be another bossy, blinkered interfaith/accommodationist person because I’ve enjoyed many of your posts. Now I’m disappointed. You are acting like precisely that.
Do not presume to lecture me on what works and what doesn’t in social activism. Do not flippantly dismiss the vital contributions of firebrands. I very strongly suspect you are quite a bit younger than me, and you weren’t there for a lot of this recent history. If I’m wrong, then tell me, but your obliviously “you don’t know what works” attitude is characteristic of the young and inexperienced. I’ve been there, done that, and lived it. This isn’t my blog, obviously, but I have no intention of putting up with more of that crap in a place I consider friendly territory.
<blockquote>Also, it would be nice if everyone were to realize that “my opinion is different than yours, and here are my reasons why I think my argument is better,” is more likely to persuade someone than trying to call them unreasonable.</blockquote>
Sniff, sniff, harummph. Take the beam out of your eye. Do you think I enjoyed being lectured by you about what was and wasn’t worthy of my campaigning time? Do you think I enjoyed being taunted by you with the suggestion that I shouldn’t complain if I weren’t willing to spend my time advocating for this and that?
Jonathan, it may be opaque to you, but you were fucking substantively rude and condescending. Jonathan Figdor is not the only person who doesn’t react well to that.
And I’m not going to cop to what you’re accusing me of, either. I said:
<blockquote>and I don’t think your retort was reasonable</blockquote>
You find that insulting enough to complain that I was “calling” you “unreasonable?” Really? Yeah, I think your response was unreasonable. Just like I think many political and public policy proposals are unreasonable. And just like you do. I didn’t make a joke at the expense of your mother, for goodness’ sake. If that’s really too rough and tumble for you—a conversational opponent calling one of your statements unreasonable—how in the world have you managed to avoid this in academia?
I’m not saying that blogging on these blogs isn’t effective. No one has ever said that. What I said was that it wouldn’t reach a significant group of religious folks. Please don’t twist my words into me ordering you what to do or not to do. You do atheist activism your way, I’ll do it my way. I even said this in my last post!
Please tell me where I was rude and condescending. Nothing could be farther than my intention. Also, as far as the “stop telling me how to do atheist activism” argument, you’re trying to paint me as an accomodationist-type who wants to tell loud and proud atheists to be quiet. This is so far from my agenda that you clearly have no idea who I am. I am a New Atheist. I constantly defend other new Atheists like Ophelia, PZ, JT, Hemant, and others.
Where did blogging come from? You were talking about sitting around at the Interfaith table. I responded with examples of other kinds of activism.
Because I might have been unclear: What I meant to say was that it doesn’t matter to me if I “reach” overtly religious people (I don’t even know what that means, because it’s vague. Do you mean “persuade” them? Do you mean merely make sure they hear my message? What?), so long as I can do something that furthers my ultimate goals. Those goals include dethroning religion, stripping the word “faith” of its holy discursive aura (thereby rendering unnecessary “interfaith” anything), and putting a stop to the dehumanization of atheists and secular people.
I don’t care if that alienates/enrages/puts off religious people in the short term. Don’t care. I care about the long-term goal. And my experience—as well as that of other activists on a variety of issues—is that it is necessary to alienate/enrage/put off the privlieged majority to make social progress. Of course, other, more diplomatic maneuvers are also necessary (but they are not sufficient alone).
Whether it should matter in the slightest to me whether I “reach” religious people depends entirely on what you mean by that. If it means sitting around and having a superficially polite conversation that manages to offend no one too badly and manages to do nothing to shift voter behavior or public perception of the secular situation, then no, I don’t care if I reach them. In fact doing so would be a waste of time.
But if you really, truly mean “You do atheist activism your way, I’ll do it my way” then we have no quarrel. But that means I’d ask you to please be a lot more careful about making pronouncements about what we can and can’t do without explaining them. It veers right into bossy accommodationism territory whether you mean it to or not.
No, I’m going to leave this be for tonight, Jonathan, because I’m too heated up about it (that’s my admission of human and egotistical fallibility), and I don’t think you’re willing/able right now to see any merit to my criticism. It would just become an even longer flame war. Perhaps better for both of us to look at it tomorrow.
No, I really mean that in order for me to get anything effective done at the interfaith table, you really need to be out there, holding their feet to the fire, making your impassioned New Atheist arguments to religious folks. The only way we’re going to change the culture is with some of us being diplomatic, and others of us being more confrontational. I was confrontational as a student at HDS, and to some lesser extent, as expressed by the original reason for the post, the GAY FAITH controversy, am still somewhat confrontational, within the limits of my position as a chaplain. So please, keep up your activism. And remember, even though good cop and bad cop pretend to have different agendas, they still want the same thing.
It is too bad my original phasing gave you the idea that we disagreed about the need for both types of activism, diplomatic and confrontational. I hate arguing with people I agree with.
I’m sorry, Jonathan, but it’s hard for me to take seriously the proposition that you mean to solicit government subsidies for atheist groups in hopes of thereby – someday – more effectively arguing for an end to government subsidies of faith groups. In reality, your participation in the faith-based initiative gives every appearance of a whole-hearted endorsement, not least because of the zeal and frequency with which you and the other officers have pitched it to your campus affiliates. The effect of your endorsement is to make arguments against the faith-based initiative more difficult for its opponents, as now, if we protest, our detractors can point to the SSA and the Harvard Humanists and say, “That’s funny – the SSA and the Harvard Humanists don’t seem to mind, and they’re avowed non-believers at the forefront of your movement.” Further, the longer you remain entangled with the faith-based initiative, the bigger hypocrite will you appear should you ever challenge its faith-premise or its legality under the Constitution.
As far as raising our profile and dispelling negative stereotypes about atheists, it remains to be shown why this must necessarily, much less ideally, be accomplished at the price of our firm commitment to secular government, a claim to which – make no mistake – your involvement in a government faith initiative, of all things, seriously undermines if not entirely discredits. How will you at your hypothetical future date of sufficient popular empowerment, ever go about contesting a program from which you have benefited during all the intervening years? If the faith-based initiative is the engine of your ascent to prominence – raising your profile, changing the language, challenging the view of atheists as selfish – then, in what position will you ever be to push for its dissolution and will this position really be more advantageous than at present? Again, I’m highly skeptical.
I wish you could see that there is a fundamental conflict of interest at bottom of any such arrangement between the White House faith office and any organization professing to advocate for state/church separation or the advancement of reason. “Secular” actors in a faith-based initiative are placed in the peculiar position of having a stake in the success of a program the goal of which is the buttressing, the propping-up of faith traditions in a world where they are fast becoming irrelevant, their falsity and potential to incite discord and violence, ever more widely acknowledged. We – and you, our representatives – should be working to hasten this collective epiphany of the intrinsic division and danger of dogma, not glossing over the undeniable with a thin veneer of faux-ecumenism.
Ultimately, the interfaith movement is a diversion of time and resources better devoted to building our own secular institutions, not reinforcing existing, faith-based ones. It’s also a government-led attempt to divert attention from the more pressing aspects of religion; its propensity to polarize our society and sully our discourse, to impose further arbitrary divisions on people already fractured along lines of race, politics, class, national origin . . . , to incite hatred of women and sexual and racial minorities and to spark violence, warfare, and terrorism. If our goal is bring about a sea-change in the public consciousness away from dogma and toward rational, critical thought, then what interest have we in an official campaign to mask the worst features of faith with a disingenuous show of hand-holding, all so that religion can keep up its facade of morality and benevolence while reaping a windfall of cash and official recognition from the government?
If folks who happen to be religious would like to work together on a shared goal, then I’m all for it, but for its own sake, not under the banner of multi-, inter-, or any other kind of faith or dogma. After all, if it weren’t for the hideous artifice of faith, we would have no need of this “interfaith” folly to try to prove how harmless it is – an effort at whitewash that is contrary to the Constitution and to my aims and an effort in which I have no interest in being involved.
I’m sorry D. Finney. It looks like we both have different ideas of how best to advance the cause of Atheism. I think it is important to change religious people’s minds from the inside, while at the same time, the more confrontational folks keep the pressure on from the outside. As far as your claim that we would weaken the Secular Movement’s case against government subsidies for religion entirely ignores my analysis of why such as hard line stance is unlikely to cause change (a very strong percentage of Americans overtly approves of religion getting a government subsidy). I’m saying, let’s also try this new strategy. I hope you can be open-minded enough to realize that there is more than one way to advance the cause of Atheism. It seems to me like you’re saying that the only way to do atheist activism is your way.
In a way, John, this disagreement here kind of stands for why some of us think the interfaith approach won’t work: it looks like atheists endorsing or valorizing faith, and it takes a lot of arguing and explaining to convince people otherwise. That’s why we think the whole idea is at best risky. You know what you mean by it, but can you be confident that everyone else will know what you mean by it? Obviously not, since we see right here that not everyone does. I do only because we had a real-world conversation about it.
So the idea is not that “there is only one way”; it’s just that this idea looks (at least) dubious.
I guess I now need to know what sort of evidence would satisfy folks like D. Finney. I’ve already suggested that diplomats have achieved important successes, such as getting IFYC and the White House to change some, if not all, of their language among others successes, such as the fact that the Harvard Interfaith Group is currently run by two Atheists. If that’s not enough evidence of the success of the program, you’ll have to give me some more time to collect positive anecdotes. Personally, I’ve only been of the opinion that interfaith is a good thing for about a year and a half. Through my entire time as a student at HDS, I was firmly convinced that Interfaith posed problems for the very same reasons you folks are now throwing at me. So its not like I’m unaware of these concerns and I don’t take them lightly.
I think I actually addressed this quite directly by offering that you’re no likelier to bring an end to government subsidies of religion by making of yourself a vested interest in their continuance than by refusing them on the very reasonable grounds that secularism – namely, the principle of government neutrality and non-interference toward religion – is supposed to be your central platform. I think in fact, it is you who is being evasive by not addressing the basic conflict of interest entailed by atheists’ participation in and promotion of a program whose aim is to showcase faith.
No amount of evidence for your progress in the, “Interfaith Challenge,” – not the atheist leadership of the Harvard Interfaith Group, not the shouts-out of the IFYC – will sway me in this regard because I don’t accept the premise that helping the government and its sectarian partners maintain the image of faith as a positive concept serves the goals of the secular movement, one of which, we might presume, is opposing just such unconstitutional state/church arrangements. With respect to the White House’s acknowledgment of non-believers, this we received from the president before ever any, “Interfaith Challenge,” was mentioned, so I don’t see how positive developments in this respect can be attributed to your participation in the latter.
I admit the need for a varied approach but not the proposition that we can simultaneously boost faith and non-faith, or advocate state/church separation while participating in state/church entanglement. The absurdity of this should require no explanation since, in either case, the one can only advance at the expense of the other. For every park built or mouth fed on behalf of the interfaith movement, a chance to accomplish the same on behalf of your own is sacrificed alongside a fair portion of your institutional credibility and for every church/state entanglement you contest, its proponents have every reason to wonder at the crucial distinction making it okay for you to break your own rules in the case of the, “Interfaith Challenge.” There’s an appearance of having literally sold out your cause in exchange for a government subsidy.
I would agree with Ophelia’s comment except that I will take it a step further and say that you are, in fact, endorsing and promoting faith, whether that is your intention or not.
I don’t think I’m going to end government subsidies of religion (even though I think that’s a good idea). I do think I’m going to make them irrelevant by making sure that Humanists and Atheists get their fair share of the pot. If we can’t end the government subsidy in this generation, my goal is to make sure all Americans, regardless of belief in god, benefit from that subsidy. I understand that your point is that that government support is evil intrinsically, but your position leads to the unfortunate consequence of godless Americans continuing to subsidize the religious activities of religious Americans. At least in my case, we secular Americans also benefit from this subsidy.
As far as your argument that “No amount of evidence for your progress in the, “Interfaith Challenge,” – not the atheist leadership of the Harvard Interfaith Group, not the shouts-out of the IFYC – will sway me,” it seems to me like you’re just not open to evidence. You reject the evidence by saying that you think that interfaith is always bad because it “maintain(s) the image of faith as a positive concept.” However, this ignores my argument that we are seeking to get them to change the name and to be more generally inclusive of Atheists with their language. If we succeeded and got the name changed to “Interperspectival Service,” or “Inter-World-View Service,” your argument that such service is bad because it promotes faith fails since such service wouldn’t promote mere faith. Furthermore, it seems unfair to argue that because we have not yet succeeded in changing the name of IS to IWVS (or something similarly acceptable to us Atheists and Humanists), we will inevitably fail to do so. We are in the process of trying to make change. If the Interfaith movement doesn’t evolve and become more inclusive in say, five years, then I think one could reasonably claim that Interfaith Service is counterproductive. But to demand such evolution in one year is a little unfair. Finally, in order for it to be true that Interfaith Service is always bad, you would have to know in advance that we will fail to enact a name-change, and since you, like god, are not omniscient, you can’t know in advance that we will fail. If you think we will, I would love to hear your reasons, as I myself have questions about the efficacy of Interfaith. But I’m willing to give it a try. Chris Stedman and Greg Epstein have both argued (persuasively, in my opinion) that atheists are being accepted into Interfaith organisations, and that we are accomplishing change from the inside. I feel like I owe it to them, having heard their arguments, to put them to the test. I don’t see why you’re opposed to testing out their claims?
In short, I am experimenting with Interfaith. Some of my engagements have been positive (such as the Harvard Chaplains ditching their previous name “The Harvard United Ministry” and my students’ acceptance with open arms into the leadership of the Interfaith Council), and some have been negative. But I just don’t think that any of us have enough evidence yet to draw an informed conclusion that interfaith is definitely good or definitely bad.
I would love to hear your stories, both good or bad about Interfaith Service. My email is available on my page at the Chaplaincy’s website.
Take care and have a great weekend.
What do you folks think about “The Moral Compasses” as a replacement for Interfaith? I think it is suitably inspirational, while remaining totally secular. What do you think?
No, Jonathan, I accept the evidence, just not your conclusion that it warrants our continuing peonage as the outcasts in a faith-based initiative that I daresay, taking a look at the names listed on the president’s advisory council and considering his own overt religiosity, won’t be removing the emphasis from faith anytime soon, certainly not within the five years you allot for achieving such a goal. That you have succeeded at Harvard in changing the name of the, “Harvard United Ministry,” to the, “Harvard Chaplains” (a designation with arguably as much religious connotation as the former), I’ll grant, but it doesn’t begin to convince me that it’s becoming or proper to forfeit our basic principles in exchange for cash. It should go without saying, too, that appeals to the authority of Chris Stedman are unlikely to persuade me, he being such an almost-perfect embodiment of everything I find disgraceful about the accommodation of religious privilege and homophobic bigotry.
I wasn’t appealing to Chris’s “authority.” I simply suggested that I was going to put his claims to the test. Thanks for your comments!