I should probably start by apologizing if this post seems disjointed. I’m writing it in spurts while taking care of a very ambulatory two year old who likes to climb on furniture and get himself “treed”.

One thing I’ve seen prevalently (is that a word?) on the atheist blogs I read is that Christians are subjugating the rights of atheists and that religion shouldn’t be tax-supported.

Huh?

I thought that we had freedom of religion in the U.S. and that people were free to believe as they chose. I also know that the U.S. doesn’t have a state religion and that clergy are considered self-employed so it begs the question of how religion is supposedly tax-supported. Reading further, I saw that those making that argument cite the fact that churches have 501(c)3 status which means that contributions to them are tax-deductible. In essence, they have the same status as charities and foundations do.

So…

On The Subject of the Subjugation of The Rights of Others
This is kind of a weird idea to me because I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area in a non-theist family. We did sing religious music in my choirs in middle school but it was more in the tradition of sacred classical music than “let’s convert the kids” and we did both Christmas and Hannukah music in December. In high school, we had to read the Bible for my honors English classes but it was for the purpose of having background knowledge for discussing American literature (i.e. Genesis and the Steinbeck novel East of Eden). My high school *did* have a baccalaureate service but it was completely voluntary and held at a megachurch off-campus with a variety of clergy leading it. I went to a very secular university and was a minority on campus as a moderately-conservative practicing Christian. My Christian group wasn’t nasty about the fact that it existed and one of the things that was very much ingrained in us was that we needed to be tolerant of others. (My church even baked cookies for the LGBT center on campus after the Matthew Shepherd killing to show that we weren’t evil.)

I would completely dismiss this idea of Christians persecuting non-Christians if I hadn’t moved to Ohio after graduation and lived in small-town rural America (Minnesota and Montana) from 2004-2010. It showed me that my experiences in California aren’t how it is normally and it did cause me to think about the effect that my church and its programs had on the community. I don’t know that we really had an atheist/agnostic/non-theist presence anywhere that I lived during that time — religion is pretty ingrained in rural culture and it’s hard to evangelize to one’s church because doing so is effectively “sheep-stealing” from another place. The local radio station in our small town in Minnesota broadcast church services on Sunday because it’s what the populace wanted — it was a public service to shut-ins and those who missed church due to planting/harvesting/hunting.

The one place I could totally see Christianity being a complete irritation to more secularly-minded people was Ohio. When I lived in Columbus, it was a metropolitan area with enough diversity that I think people could practice their right not to believe in peace. The year and a half I spent in Newark was another story. I don’t know that the high school had its baccalaureate on campus but the choirs at the local high schools did a whole lot of sacred music. Singing Handel’s Messiah is one thing — it’s classical music and a piece that is recognized as much for its musical amazingness as much as it is for the subject matter. Singing solely Christmas music in December is another. I don’t know if there was a synagogue in the county, I’m sure there wasn’t a mosque, and I can’t think of other religions that were present unless one wants to count Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses as non-Christians (which I’m not). What made me really wonder about how “tolerant” people were was some of the comments made at one of the Bible studies we attended where someone (in their 60’s) talked about how his government teacher gave him the choice of memorizing the Lord’s Prayer or the preamble to the Constitution. That struck me as odd and given my background, a violation of the separation of church and state. If it had been a Christian school, that would have been one thing. This was a public high school, however, and I felt like it was wrong. (Being the vicar’s wife, I had to choose my battles and reacting to comments from this Bible study was not a battle I really wanted to fight.) The culture was very much in favor of a more evangelical flavor of Christianity and it was really strange to be in the majority for a change.

Those who have spoken out on this issue have been from rural areas like Jen McCreight (Indiana) or have lived in the south (Hemant Mehta). Having not lived in the South (though Ohio was close), I can’t speak to the amount that religion entangles itself with the culture and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find non-theists that feel persecuted there. One of the characters in a series of murder mysteries by author Margaret Maron talks about going to worship and Sunday School when she was campaigning as a judge in rural North Carolina. While these are, of course, works of fiction, I can see it actually being pretty accurate because if you’re going to run for office in a place like that, you have to go where the people go.

So what can non-theists do if they feel persecuted by Christians? One thing would be to somehow network with other non-theists so that you don’t feel like you’re completely alone. Leah at Unequally Yoked has posed the question on atheism and community and I’d love to know exactly how this works for people not in metropolitan areas. Another thing is to do as Hemant Mehta does and be the friendly atheist so that people can get to know you and maybe your connections with people can help create some dialogue. I’m not saying that this is the easiest thing to do and that it will work, but it’s worth a shot.

Above all, please know that the VAST majority of Christians out there are not interested in making your lives hard. Would we like it if you accepted Christ and became Christian? Yes, but that’s more because we love you as people and not because we’re gleefully happy that you may/may not be hellbound. (My official position is that your salvation is between you and God and I’m not the one who makes the decision.) We’d be more than happy to not trample on you but YOU HAVE TO SPEAK UP. (Doing it respectfully helps.) I’d be more than happy to help non-theists find ways to integrate their beliefs (or non-beliefs) into their communities.

So… could my atheist readers tell me how you’re being subjugated? I promise to listen and see what I can do to help.

I guess my commentary on tax exemption for churches will be another post…