For the last several years, my work as an interfaith activist has been largely defined by a single question: "Wait -- you do interfaith work, and you're an atheist?!"
That question, posed by religious people (to be fair, I've gotten that question from many atheists, though usually for a different reason-for more on that, check out this recent piece I wrote on atheists and interfaith work), is usually followed by a confession that the individual offering it hasn't met many atheists. I often push back on this a bit, inviting them to think about whether they truly don't know any atheists. Even after further consideration, most cannot think of a single atheist they know personally.
It isn't much of a surprise that many claim to not know any atheists; surveys demonstrate that atheists constitute an incredibly small percentage of the population. While some 15 percent of Americans report having no religion, only about 2 percent of Americans use labels such as atheist, agnostic, Humanist, and less widely-recognized identifiers like "freethinker," "bright," or "Pastafarian," to describe themselves, suggesting that the majority of nonreligious Americans don't identify as nontheists.
Because we represent such a small sliver of the American population and are often seen in a negative light, I believe that it is imperative that atheists make themselves known. A 2010 Gallup poll demonstrated something the LGBTQ community has recognized for some time: people are significantly more inclined to oppose gay marriage if they do not know anyone who is gay. Similarly, a Time Magazine cover story last year featured revealing numbers that speak volumes about the correlation between positive relationships and civic support; per their survey, 46 percent of Americans think Islam is more violent than other faiths and 61 percent oppose Park51 (or the "Ground Zero Mosque"), but only 37 percent even know a Muslim American. Another survey released around the same time, by Pew, reported that 55 percent of Americans know "not very much" or "nothing at all" about Islam. The disconnect is clear-when only 37 percent of Americans know a Muslim American, and 55 percent claim to know very little or nothing about Islam, the negative stereotypes about the Muslim community go unchallenged. The same logic can be extended to atheists-the fewer relationships we have with people of faith, the worse our image will be.
But it isn't enough that religious people know atheists -- the quality of the relationships that exist between atheists and the religious makes a significant difference in undoing anti-atheist attitudes. As Robert Wright wrote in the New York Times last year, the LGBTQ community has learned that engaged relationships change people's hearts and minds, and this is a model that can be applied to the issue of anti-atheist bias as well.
This is one reason I, as an atheist, believe that interfaith work is imperative. Humanizing those with different religious and philosophical worldviews is essential to ensuring that pluralism is upheld for all communities. Engaged diversity breeds the idea that all people's rights must be protected; through positive and productive relationships, we learn that another has value, worth, and the right to dignity.
Based on my experiences as an atheist and an interfaith activist, I have confidence that building diverse coalitions will alter the negative public perceptions about atheists. I'm working on a book about this, tentatively titled (F)a(i)theist: How One Atheist Learned to Overcome the Religious-Secular Divide, and Why Atheists and the Religious Must Work Together (Beacon Press, 2012), and I've been fortunate enough to speak about it and the work I do at nearly twenty colleges and universities across the U.S. this year. At these speeches, I've met more religious people than I can count who've told me that they'd never considered that atheists might hold similar hopes and aspirations, and that they were going to make an effort to get to know more atheists so that they could better understand a group of people they had previously seen as radically unlike them. I'm daily inspired by the willingness of religious people I meet to challenge their beliefs about atheists, and by atheists I know who are dedicated to building constructive relationships with the religious.
The other day I had dinner with my grandma, and we got to talking about the work I do. As a progressive Christian, she has long been supportive of my queer and interfaith activism, but she's never seemed to fully understand my atheism. After some discussion, she surprised me by asking directly how I can offer the nontheist students I work with a sense of purpose and hope. I talked to her about my habit of finding a quiet outdoor spot to sit and consider the wonder of the natural world and the joy of making meaning alongside others, and the satisfaction I've gotten from sharing that practice with others. Speaking excitedly, I explained that the community of atheists I work with at The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard is a diverse group of people interested in having a positive impact on the world and living lives of fulfillment. Sipping her tea, she smiled and said, "We may not believe the exact same things, but I think I finally get where you're coming from."
I'm sure I will continue to get questioned about my atheism as I persist in this work, but as I build more and more positive relationships with people of faith, I'm also sure that those questions will lead to increased understanding.
Engaging in interfaith coalition-building efforts requires a certain level of vulnerability and humility -- to be understood, we all must work to understand. To understand our privileges, our pasts, our prejudices, and what we each bring to the table in order to strengthen ourselves as a community and as a country, we must be willing to challenge the beliefs we have about "the other."
It begins with a relationship. To atheists and religious people alike: Are you willing to put yourselves out there and meet one another in the middle?
This post originally appeared in the Washington Post On Faith.
Follow Chris Stedman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChrisDStedman
Eliot Daley: Welcome, Atheists. But, Really, Why Are You Here?
John Shore: The Inevitability of the Rise of Progressive Christianity
Dori Hartley: The Soulful Atheist
Nigel Barber: Why Atheism Replaces Religion In Developed Countries
The reason for that is those not having a belief system disqualifies them, in the opinions of those who believe, as really having any fundamental morals or ethics. In other words, atheists are viewed as being "shallow" and "hallow" individuals. Maybe, it is not the case that they are those things, but at the very least they are seen as apparent hedonists living for the moment due to the lack of any real future, (i.e., afterlife plans).
Since, atheists think they are the result of a cosmic accident which somehow led to evolution, and that they are just one of the "lucky" ones who evolved up to the highest order of creatures - it is difficult for those who believe otherwise to attach much worth to them. Because, in essence they place a high value on themselves when in reality, having no past and no future, they are of no more value than a garden slug whose evolution got thwarted along the way.
Believers feel that atheists think that even "love" itself is just an acquired trait that evolved to maintain the survival of the species. When the most basic of emotions is degraded to that extent social acceptance of atheists is a long ways off.
As an atheist and an intellectual I find your statement here odd at best. I am an atheist because I find the ideas about god presented by ALL the religions to be wanting. I disregard a formless unknowing god (deism) only because I feel it add nothing to our understanding of the world around us.
Lets face it "god" is no where to be found "out there" the concept lies only within ones own mind. There is no empirical evidence and likely there never will be. That is why ALL faiths profess such a high regard for faith.
I know many atheists and none of them would claim to be SURE there is no "higher power", only that it lacks the extraordinary evidence one should require to believe in something like that. Were that evidence ever to come forth all my atheist friends would then evaluate it value and decide what to believe from there. None of them would just up and say I'm so sure there is no god that I don't believe in the new evidence. That would make us just like the religious people we finds logic is so flawed in the face of evidence.
The fact that religious people seem to try and degrade us by claiming WE have "faith" in something is ridiculous and ironic because that is what they praise in themselves.
I too am an atheist and I've been examining my need to become involved in the inter-faith movement, because I know there are those in the inter-faith movement who are of a more liberal, open-minded mindset that are at least willing to learn. After all, that's the hallmark of the inter-faith movement, to learn about the faith of others and to uncover what they each have in common: a desire to work for the good of others, to seek a world that is better tomorrow than it is today.
Thank you for your article. It encourages me to be more steadfast in our common goal!
Other people aren't. They need for it to make sense or have a purpose, and whatever they use to satisfy that need is what works for them. Belief systems are ultimately about feelings, and when the subject is someone's feelings or beliefs everyone else is entitled to their own worthless opinion.
Knowing that there are no miracles, makes the world we live in that much more miraculous to behold. But that's just how I feel.
It can happen to others too. Please be open to the possibility that those in a belief-system such as Christianity can in fact finally question their beliefs when their own doubts and conflicts arise to a level that belief can no longer suppress.
But in general, I'm profoundly disillusioned and think that the barriers to interfaith fellowship are a bit higher. How do we create interfaith fellowship in an environment where atheists are singled out, even by liberal religious writers, as amoral, hostile, deaf, and blind? Without a willingness to consider atheists moral and spiritual peers, a kindness rare outside of a handful of congregations, how can interfaith collaboration work?
As far as "meeting in the middle..." I can and do respect other's views, and respect their choice not to believe in God. But my own beliefs are firm, and aren't going anywhere towards the middle... my beliefs are staying firmly rooted in the Bible. However, I can respect those who choose not to believe, even if I don't agree.