President Obama: Bad News For the New Atheists and Other Fundamentalists

The Obama presidency is great news for almost everyone. It's bad news for some odd ideological bedfellows: the Religious Right and the so-called New Atheists.

Into the all or nothing culture wars, and the all or nothing wars between the so-called New Atheists and religion the election of President elect Obama reintroduces nuance. President elect Obama's ability to believe in Jesus, yet question, is going to rescue American religion in general and Christianity in particular, from the extremes.

There is no way to understand President elect Obama's victory as anything less than the start of not just a monumental political change but a spiritual revolution as well.

Full disclosure: I was raised by American missionaries -- Francis and Edith Schaeffer -- who became leaders within the American Evangelical subculture. When I was in my twenties I was their sidekick. We Schaeffers had a lot to do with the formation of the Religious Right. (Sorry!) In the mid 1980s I escaped my tribe's literal-minded religion and currently go to a Greek Orthodox Church. I've also been one of President elect Obama's most vocal and prolific -- judging by the amount I've written -- supporters.

The pro and anti God industry churns. I know. I've worked this turf for years. But there is a new sheriff on the religion beat. He's smart! President elect Obama is a knowledgeable fan of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, has lectured seriously on his faith and the relationship of church and state, and is not a nominal Christian for political purposes, but someone who actually prays, believes and lives his faith.

To the New Atheists who think that with the resounding defeat of the Religious Right, we are entering a secular age, think again. Obama will block your path. He'll do it for the same reason he'll make the Religious Right's paranoid fantasies about him soon seem shamefully ridiculous. That's because President elect Obama is that rarest of all rare people: a thoughtful, compassionate and likable statesman who also is a thoughtful, compassionate and likable religious believer.

In the last few years there has been a spate of best selling books published that are for or against religion. All of them are by literalists who speak in fundamentalist tones. On the pro-religion side we find A Purpose Driven Life and the Left Behind series extolling a Jesus-solves-everything one note evangelical born-again message. On the flip side are the equally evangelistic one note New Atheist books including Sam Harris's The End of Faith, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great.

The New Atheists' books provided a context for Bill Maher's movie Religulous, the most blunt instrument imaginable. Maher's documentary expands what Harris started in his book The End of Faith. Harris begins his book with a scene of a young Islamic terrorist in Jerusalem smiling as he commits suicide while blowing up a bus full of innocent people. In Religulous, Maher gleefully includes many more images of look-how-crazy-God-makes-everyone, religion-inspired violence. The Harris/Maher message is as clear: the world would be better off without religion.

There is another message in the Maher/New Atheist oeuvre: everyone must think in categories stripped of allegory. Forget the idea that perhaps one may hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, say that none of the stories in the Bible happened as written, but that they are true in more subtle ways than mere historicity, or that we're nothing but jumped up chimps, but are also connecting to a deeper reality when we say, "the Lord is my shepherd" and hope that he is.

The New Atheists don't seem to "get" grown up allegory any more than the fundamentalists of the Religious Right do, let alone literary imagination. And both the Religious right and the New Atheists also seems oblivious to serious religious thinkers from Confucius to the Sufi poets, from Reinhold Niebur to one of Reinhold Niebuhr's biggest fans; President elect Obama.

Maher's world contains no Pastor Deitrick Bonhoffer (martyred for trying to assassinate Hitler, and who defined the intellectual and theological terms for resistance to state tyranny based on Christian ethics), or the intellectual man of letters and convert from atheism to the Roman Catholic Church, Malcolm Muggeridge, let alone an awareness of the prayers written by the "atheist" W.E.B. Du Bois for his students, a poignant demonstration that faith is not so easily abandoned.

But President elect Obama has spoken of the need to meld religious ethics with the philosophical underpinnings of statecraft, when for instance he says that the Democrats have been mistaken in not understanding that the abortion issue is first and foremost a moral issue.

On June 28, 2006, Senator Obama spoke at the Call to Renewal Conference sponsored by Sojourners. President elect Obama said:

"For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines... Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap... Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait... At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word 'Christian' describes one's political opponents, not people of faith...

"I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

"And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people... This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers... I speak with some experience on this matter.

"You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

"That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans -- evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values."

Pre the Religious Right take over the traditional focus of the Republican Party had been on foreign policy issues, the economy, military preparedness and a generally libertarian laissez-faire view of the world-things William F. Buckley, and Barry Goldwater would have recognized. This was replaced by the "religious ethics" of what I imagine as the Saturday Night Live Church Lady's older, stricter, uglier, dumber and terminally self-righteous big sister. This humorless desiccated hag remade the Republican image as the anti-everything party. And in doing so this hag also took down all religious people through guilt by association. And that is the context in which the evangelistic New Atheists emerged.

Okay, so a lot of religious people are nuts, or worse, intolerant. That still doesn't address the baby swirling down the Maher/New Atheist anti-religion drain along with the right wing bathwater they're flushing.

President-elect Obama brings another perspective to faith . It goes something like this:

How do cultures define themselves if not through ritual? In the "big moments" of life; birth, marriage, sickness, death "who" -- in the inimitable words of Ghost Busters -- "you gonna call?" As President elect Obama has said, and I paraphrase: Strip the human race of our spiritual language and what do we tell each other about hope?

As President elect Obama has pointed out, a world of all math but no poetry is not fit for human habitation. If everything feels flat and dull, stripped of mystery and meaning who will bother to do the science? Why bother, if all we're doing is serving those selfish genes for another round of meaningless propagation?

So does this faith always make "sense?" No. Because our perspective is from the inside, something like paint contemplating the painting of which it's a part. We're all in the same boat, all stuck on the same "canvas."

So let's admit we all share the problem that was best articulated by Darwin in his dairy: "Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?"

As our new president recognizes, self-awareness and mortality are already such a mutually exclusive (and terrifying) contradiction that accepting a few more contradictions is par for the course! And President elect Obama has a generous enough spirit and a large enough intellect so that he can do with his spiritual life, what the Religious Right and the New Atheists have not done: understand that there is no shame in embracing paradox.

President Obama is about to make reasoned faith fashionable again. It's about time.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back. Now in paperback.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer

Comments

[twofish]

I've been urging people today to join Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Your post makes me realize how much we need organizations like this.

http://www.au.org

[BobLaverty]

I don't agree with the "New Atheists" label. Maybe the internet and other forms of media have provided a more popular means to discuss skepticism in all of its forms, just as it was used in this past political campaign cycle to challenge myths from the left and right. But there's nothing new about atheism.

I can "get" allegory just like I can understand the lessons of Aesop's fables. I don't think that the existence of a god was essential to the evolution of morality in human society. But I don't fear religion.

The problem I have with the religious right is their definition of moral issues that seem to require government intervention (abortion, right-to-die) and those that don't seem to warrant that kind of attention (poverty, discrimination, equal opportunity).

[Libsmasher]

Schaeffer, and Obama, have much more in common with Hitchens and Maher than with real Christians. Neither Schaeffer, nor Obama, nor Hitchens, nor Maher actually believe anything the Bible says, or believe anything it records actually happened. Schaeffer and Obama are just dressing their unbelief in religious garb, while Hitchens and Maher are happy to let their unbelief stand naked.

[ObjectiveAutismDad]

I saw a great bumper sticker yesterday: "Atheists are Beyond Belief".

From a fake Virginian.

[LDS50]

"Real Christians?". Sounds typical of the neoconservatives. No one else but them... How can you claim to know what is in another man's heart? Isn't that blasphemous?

[HeevenSteven]

Yawn!

[Ponzipuppet]

Obama's commitment to helping the disadvantaged is the best evidence that he is a truer Christian than we have seen in government in a long time.

If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
--John 13:14-15

Perhaps, Libsmasher, it is time for you to question deeply your own "us-versus-them" convictions in order to know the essence of Christianity.

Proverbs 28:26 states that the human heart is unreliable and that in order to walk a good life, one must question one’s own "incontestable truths" and sense of infallibility.

"He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.­"
—Proverbs 28:26

James 4:1-5
In James' time there were many factions in Christianity, as there are now. James emphasized that in church everyone feels like God told them that the way they do things is the right way to do it. Quarreling is the result of people's desire to have things their own way. However, God seems to have told many people many different things. It is best not to assume you have the ONE truth. Perhaps you misinterpreted God. Perhaps someone else heard correctly. Perhaps God has not yet told anybody anything! That might be the conclusion you have to come to. Humility. You can't go wrong in humility.

[jsm2112]

Fourth your view of beauty and mystery in life is only apparent with faith and when looking through the world from the view of science you see no beauty is a lazy and narrow-minded view for lack of a better description. Most of modern day technology and medicine has come from people who see beauty and mystery in the cold-hard-facts of mathematics and the rigors of science.
I believe reading the works of Einstein, Sagan, Russel, Dennet,Pop­per,Griene­,and many other scientist/­philospher­s can do what you did for me. Introduce you to a world that you havent been apart of. To view from a different perspective and not to fall into some of the traps I wrote above. I dont know if you read the comments to your blog, but I hope you read this one.
I look forward to your next post,
Jordan

[jsm2112]

again sorry for it being broken up...
With that said just because a candidate isnt and Atheist doesnt mean "our group" will be unhappy with the presidents faith. If anything the non-religious secular community has been waiting for a candidate like Obama that understands his relationship with his faith and can express it in such clear and academic tones. Obama understands faith as deeply personal and evovling. He understands the reading the bible literally is a waste of time. He understands that although faith may work for him and others it doesnt for everyone so it must remain personal and behind closed doors(something that I believe Jesus once said,but really who ever really listened and obeyed his teachings anyway). Obama may not be an atheist but he as much of secularist as he is religious. Which in the end is all I can ask for. He understands religion is only one answer to a very narrow set of questions but when policy and real world issues are at hand,experts who study scientific priniciples are the ones he turns to. That is what will make Atheists happy about Obama.

[jsm2112]

I was unable to write the whole message in one comment:

Second i understand your grouping of New Atheists as fundamenta­lists.By definition they adhere to strict adherence to a set of basic principles. But when that set of basic principles is based on scientific reality are they really the same as what the connotation of Fundamentalism has meant to become, a group of radicals who have dogmatic adverse reactions to modernization of our world. I think in the end the grouping is again semantic and not based on solid evidence but on wishful thinking.
Third, again I believe you have missed the point on how "New Atheistist" will view an Obama presidency. For the most part the atheists in this country understand the probability of electing an Atheist president is almost zero. We rank as the most distrusted group in America,behind homosexuals and Muslims. There has only been one openly Atheist elected official in american history.

[jsm2112]

Mr. Schaeffer,
I have begun reading your column here at huffpo over the past year and must say I find your posts very enjoyable and insightful. You have given a Liberal-Elite-New York-Atheist a view into the religious right I haven't found anywhere else. You have opened up a nice dialog to explain the views of a group in America that I have never fully understood or for that matter interacted with. However, In this post i believe you have stepped beyond your realm of knowledge.
First this label of New Athiest is a fun one for the religious or for that matter anyone who is not an atheist to throw around. There is nothing really new about these "New Atheistist" except for the fact that their books are being read by a larger audience. These types of views have been around since the 19th Century and continued into the 20th with the works of Bertrand Russel and other philosphers. To fall into the semantic trap used by the "Religious Right" to label these atheists as "New" or "Militant" is just name calling without doing your research.

[xyoungblood]

Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it?

[highsticking99]

Shades of Epicuris!!!!!!

[Mikal]

What you say Obama will accomplish fits well with the philosophy of the New Atheists. For those that have succeeded in the leap of faith, we wish that they would practice their religion in moderation and not at the extremes that threaten all those who are not of the same faith. Re-read Sam Harris and you will understand that Atheists are not against religion for those that believe and the meaningfulness it brings to their lives. We are happy for them. At the same time we desire the freedom to think and believe as we wish and to participate as full citizens in our democracy.

[AThinkingBUM]

"say that none of the stories in the Bible happened as written, but that they are true in more subtle ways than mere historicit­y... The New Atheists don't seem to 'get' grown up allegory ... let alone literary imaginatio­n."

So...How many Christians think that their salvation is allegorical? Metaphorical?

Or perhaps they think their personal salvation is literal, but the physical resurrection of Jesus was metaphorical?

I haven't met many people who actually think that they are going to "actual, literal" heaven because of the allegorical resurrection of Jesus.

When people talk in vagaries -- "literal interpretation is silly; the higher approach is to take a nuanced, metaphoric­al/allegor­ical interpretation" -- without writing down a single specific belief that would demonstrate exactly what this means, I get fairly skeptical. I really want them to actually write a full example of what such a nuanced person believes. Because I don't think that even the writer of this article would be able to write it down: what is allegorical, what's metaphorical, what's literal, and how did you choose?

Noah's flood gets marked under "literary imagination" because it's just plain silly...
Jesus' being born of a virgin -- metaphorical because... well, it's just plain silly...
Jesus dying and coming back to life again 3 days later... that happened because... ???
How is any miracle in the Bible more or less silly than another?

And if they're all equally silly -- and you admit this -- what do you believe if you maintain that you're

[LARichardson]

Excellent article. Personally, I enjoyed Religulous a lot. I think Bill Maher is a reasonably smart, and extremely funny man. He does his job very well. The evangelical right is completely bonkers, and Maher's satirical critique of them stands on its own. I can appreciate and enjoy his work while still holding the belief that his ultimate conclusion, that religion itself is evil, is incorrect. The most memorable parts of his film, for me, were the scenes from the Christian amusement park. I don't remember the name of the place, but anyone who has seen the film knows what I am talking about. A crowd of people, looking like caricatures of American tourists, are watching a reenactment of the crucifixion. They all have this dulled expression on their faces, and are applauding the actors playing out this gruesome scene. It was truly awe-inspiring to watch. It was also disappointing and extremely sad. For me, the disappointment does not come from the fact that so many people are so religious, but from the fact that this is, apparently, what "spirituality" means to so many people. In other words, it is my belief that the words in the Bible do, in fact, point to something real that makes the apparent ascendancy of the religious right so sad. I would never claim to "know God", but I have had enough experiences with meditation, and met enough truly "spiritual" people in my life to know that what the religious right practices is BS.

[kpostero]

Very well said. Organized religions are so offputting to me. I have spent my life seeking and developing my own spirituality. When asked what my religion is, I always say, "Kindness.­"

[highsticking99]

Isn't the bottom line that the religious believe in something that cannot be proven, has no empirical proof to its existence and isn't that inherently irrational? Just because you can dress jesus up as a nice guy doesn't belie the fact no proof of any god exists. Belief in jesus in no different than belief in santa, superman or the great pumpkin.

[lcats]

I would define myself as a spiritual, almost religious atheist. That is no contradiction in terms. I am religious in my focus on broad humanistic cultural moral claims about reality, and our human place in the cosmos. And I believe that humans are spiritual beings. I am an atheist because I do feel an aversion to requiring or needing any deity.

If a deity (or deities) exists, I'd be shocked and offended.

From what I've read about Sam Harris, I think his thoughts and feelings are similar.

Please don't consider my position a fundamentalist one. I don't.

[ObjectiveAutismDad]

Amen [sic] to what OtayPanky said.

Also, regarding this paragraph: "As President elect Obama has pointed out, a world of all math but no poetry is not fit for human habitation. If everything feels flat and dull, stripped of mystery and meaning who will bother to do the science? Why bother, if all we're doing is serving those selfish genes for another round of meaningless propagation?" I think this demonstrates that you don't understand most atheists. We like art, music, poetry and science. The world is not a dull place without God in it; and it is still full of mystery that begs for unraveling. This is what drives us.

Faith is not a means of acquiring knowledge -- which is what we seek. Faith is a means of helping people who think they need kind of help. And I'll for that, if that's what they choose. If some others choose otherwise that should be their business and everyone should be tolerant of that. This is, after all, what this country was founded on.

[mwestorca]

Frank Schaeffer, whatever you may have contributed to the rise of the religious right is certainly being mitigated by your current writing. I am so impressed with how you write as a man of faith, but without dogmatism.

I think you're one of the few who, when faced with the loss of certainty, didn't throw the baby out with the bath-water. You kept the wheat and discarded the chaff. And you make a fine loaf of bread with what you kept.

Thanks!