I’m really tired of media depicting atheists as joyless, grouchy people whose lives are characterized by a lack of human connection, and a disdain for other people’s happiness.

Some of us laugh and are silly and enjoy being social.

At The Debate Link, I found a reference to this quote from Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz.¹

In the U.S., Christian, like white, is an unmarked category in need of marking. Christianness, a majority, dominant culture, is not only about religious practice and belief, any more than Jewishness is. As racism names the system that normalizes, honors and rewards whiteness, we need a word for what normalizes, honors and rewards Christianity. Jews designate the assumption of Christianity-as-norm, the erasure of Jews, as “anti-Semitic.” In fact, the erasure and marginalization of non-Christians is not just denigrating to Jews. We need a catchier term than Christian hegemony, to help make stark the cultural war against all non-Christians.

Christianism? Awkward, stark, and kind of crude - maybe a sign that something’s being pushed. Sexism once sounded stark and kind of crude. Such a term would help contextualize Jewish experience as an experience of marginality shared with other non-Christians. Especially in this time of rising Christian fundamentalism, as school prayer attracts support from “moderates,” the contextualization is critical for progressive Jews, compelling us to seek allies among Muslims and other religious minorities.

I’ve been longing for just this word for quite a while. I’d add that this should include not only religious minorities, but atheists and agnostics too. (Although we have to remember that the categories overlap; a Jewish atheist may have a different relationship to Christianism than a Catholic atheist, although either may be harmed by Christianism.)

1. From “Jews in the U.S.: The Rising Cost of Whiteness,” in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity (1995), edited by Becky Thompson & Sangeeta Tyagi. (back)

“Alas” reader Joe pointed out this article to me:

Proposition 8 passed because of religious folk. There is no question about it. Church-going Black Americans, tithe-paying Mormons, mass-attending Latinos, and Evangelical whites all joined forces in “protecting marriage.” The underlying reason religious people voted to revoke from gays and lesbians the legal right to marry is doggedly theological: God doesn’t like it. And when a society or culture does things that God doesn’t like, that society or culture will suffer.

We’re seeing this going on now, as some fundamentalist Christians are saying that wildfires in California are God’s judgment on fags.

And it simply isn’t true. If God punishes societies that violate his commandments and rewards those that do, this just isn’t apparent by looking at the state of the world today. The sociological fact is that the most irreligious nations right now are among the most successful, humane, moral, and free, while the most religious nations tend to be among the most destitute, chaotic, crime-ridden, and undemocratic. A similar pattern also holds true within the United States: those states and counties that boast the greatest numbers of strong believers and regular church attenders tend to have higher poverty rates, child abuse rates, violent crime rates, and lower educational attainment rates than those states and counties characterized by more secular populations.

And so the richest, healthiest — and most pro-gay — nations are in the godless Neatherlands, whereas the most religious nations in the world, while reliably anti-homosexual, also tend to lack for freedom and money. (The exception, in the state to state comparisons: Utah.)

The writer, Phil Zuckerman, points out that there is a catch to this phenomenon, which is that forced atheism just brings about sucky totalitarian atheist states; the good effects of godlessness only happen when “secularism is not forced upon a captive citizenry by dictators, but emerges organically and freely over several generations.” And, of course, the direction of causation — or if there’s any causation here at all, rather than just correlation — is a real question.

But the fact remains — if you want to find a healthy, wealthy, free society, you’d do very well by just choosing any democracy where people don’t go to church very often.

From the Pew Global Attitudes Project:

Pew also notes:

Throughout Western Europe and much of the Americas, there is widespread tolerance towards homosexuality. However, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Israel stand apart from other wealthy nations on this issue; in each of these countries, fewer than half of those surveyed say homosexuality should be accepted by society. Meanwhile, in most of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, there is less tolerance toward homosexuality.

At the Statistical Modeling Blog, Andrew creates a similar graph for states of the US, and finds similar results — less religion equals more wealth. But he also notes an interesting result from within states:

…Overall we see a positive correlation between income and religiosity in poor states and a negative correlation in rich states: To put it another way, in Mississippi, the richer people attend church more. In Connecticut, the richer people attend church less.

Apparently they are fighting over a nativity scene.

The problem erupted after a Columbus man apparently complained about equality of religions in displays at state parks.

After a letter to the business manager of Ohio State parks regarding symbols of religion, an order came down to remove the nativity scene which the Garden Club has provided. the letter told all start parks in the state to take down their nativity decorations.

On Friday, Dec. 7, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland intervened.

Under current law, government entities (city halls, courts, public schools, etc) can generally acknowledge religious holidays so long as they do not create an impression of endorsement of religion by the government, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Strickland issued an order mandating that Shawnee and all state parks continue their traditional nativity displays.

And he appears to be well within the law, according to the ACLU. “Just because a nativity scene or other religious display appears on government property does not necessarily mean that it is owned or is being displayed by the government, using tax dollars. Many local and some state governments have within their boundaries public areas whereby citizens are permitted to erect displays, including those of a religious nature, of their own choice” says the Ohio ACLU web site.

This is right in my parents’ backyard. This lodge is really fancy (at least by southern Ohio standards), and most of the folks who stay there are upper middle class folks, who come from places like Columbus and Cincinnati to explore the wilderness in the luxury of fancy hotel.

I wish somebody I know would go up there and put up a Menorah, and see how the locals respond. In my experience, a very large majority of southern Ohio folks are all for freedom of religious expression, when it in involves Christianity. But if somebody went up there and put up a Menorah or any other non-Christian symbol, they’d throw a fit.

I remember around the time I graduated from high school when there was some court decision about prayers at graduations. The administrators and students really wanted to have a prayer (of the Christian variety, of course), so they decided that the graduating seniors could vote on whether or not to have a graduation prayer. I bet I was the only person to say that I didn’t want a prayer. Of course, this was a school was everyone was a Christian or person like me, who was tired of Christianity. Nobody was Muslim; nobody was Jewish,;and if anyone was an atheist or any other religion, they wouldn’t say it publicly.

This is one nice thing about living in a town with a noticeable non-Christian population. There seems to be a great deal more tolerance.

From Feministe:

Projection, anyone?

A boy scout leader who opposed allowing gay men and atheists serve as troop leaders — and who even sued the city of Berkeley over it — has been arrested on felony sexual abuse charges. For sexually abusing boys in his troop.

But at least he kept the gays and the atheists out.