Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions

by Phil Zuckerman

  When Scott came home from Iraq, he initially planned on pursuing a career as a police officer. But the new GI Bill paid for college, and at the behest of his wife, he decided to check it out. He enrolled at the local state college, and he loved it. He ended up majoring in anthropology. And he also decided to found a new student group, a chapter of the Secular Student Alliance. “We’ve got this big campus, and every day you have to walk across it, from building to building. And this one day, last February, I was walking along and I passed three different religious groups that had tables set up in the quad area. And I wondered if there was a secular organization for students like me. There wasn’t. So that night I went online and found the Web site for the national Secular Student Alliance and I e-mailed them and I said that I wanted to start up a chapter here and they helped me out and so I did it.”

  That was last year, when Scott was a junior. Forty students signed up within a week of the group’s founding. At the school year’s end, they were up to a hundred. Now Scott’s a senior—and the group’s president—and membership is up to about 150. “To get that many people to willingly sign their name on to such an organization—here in the middle of Texas—I couldn’t be happier.”

  What does the group actually do?

  “We host events—you know, panels and things like that. We show movies. We bring guest speakers to campus. We have a table out on the quad with pamphlets and information. And we meet twice a month in a room in the student center. We hang out. Play games. And we’re all involved for different reasons. There’s one guy in the group who is an ex-Mormon. He was a Mormon but he quit the church and he was really missing the fellowship, the community aspect. So that’s why he comes.

  “I guess we’re a community with the goal to just exist—to exist as a group—to have a group for people who aren’t religious. And some people have a problem with that. They say, ‘Why do you need a group? Just to sit around and say that you don’t believe in anything?’ Well, no. It’s about more than that. We feel like a minority—most people on campus and in the surrounding area are just so religious here—so it is nice for us to be with people who aren’t. To be with people who are like-minded and to be able to just talk about things.

  “And there is also a little bit of activism in there, too. People want to feel like they are doing something. There are a lot of issues—in the last election there was Governor Rick Perry holding big prayer rallies here in Texas, and Rick Santorum being against contraception and homosexuality, and Newt Gingrich and all of those types. The whole separation of church and state is a biggie for us.”

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  GROUPS LIKE SCOTT’S are sprouting up just about every other month these days. According to the Secular Student Alliance’s national executive director, August Brunsman, while there were only forty-two affiliated campus chapters nationwide back in 2003, by 2008 that had grown to 128, and in 2010 it was up to 234. As of their latest count, there are over 365 such secular student groups on America’s college campuses.

  There’s even one in America’s only naval academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. The name of this particular group is NAAFA—Naval Academy Agnostics, Freethinkers, and Atheists. It was started in 2011 by Ken Forsi, age twenty, from Bridgeport, Connecticut. “I was raised in a fairly liberal religious environment. My mom is a Unitarian and she’s pretty involved in her church—my dad not so much. I’ve always had friends who weren’t religious. And I never really put a finger on my own orientation until I went to the Naval Academy. I had never felt a need to label myself an atheist or be out there about not being religious. But when I got to the Naval Academy, there was definitely a heavy presence of Judeo-Christianity.”

  As Ken explained, during his first week at the academy, there was a huge assembly in the main auditorium, with all the new plebeians present, and at a certain point they were instructed to identify their religion and gather with their coreligionists in specific sections of the auditorium. “They said, ‘Okay, all the Catholics go there, all the Baptists go there, if you’re Jewish go there.’”

  It was very uncomfortable for Ken, as he didn’t affiliate with any religion, and yet didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb and feel different; he ended up just going over to the Baptist group because that’s where his roommate went. The permeating presence of religion at the academy continued to make him uncomfortable, especially during the structured, chaplain-led prayers that were held several times a week at lunchtime in the cafeteria. And the ethics class Ken took his first year was extremely religious in orientation, as well as the leadership class he took as a sophomore. And then his roommate started pushing the Bible on him. It was all a bit of a culture shock. “It’s not like my home back in Connecticut. A lot of people are really religious down here. Coming to the Naval Academy opened my eyes. I was like, ‘Wow. People really believe this stuff. And there are a lot of them!’”

  It was the sanctioned, structured lunchtime prayers that really bothered Ken the most, and he soon found out that he wasn’t alone; there were several others who felt the same way. “We started talking about the constitutionality of the prayer thing at lunch and we got very enthused about it. We talked to legal officers and we talked to some of the chaplains. We didn’t really get very far, but I did come up with the idea of starting up a group for nontheists. I just thought it would be healthy—especially in this environment. So we sent out an e-mail to the entire brigade just saying, ‘Are you interested in joining this nontheist group?’ and that was it. We thought we’d be lucky if we got twelve guys responding to our e-mail—but we ended up getting fifty.”

  The U.S. military has a reputation for being a bastion of religiosity, generally manifested in the form of evangelical Christianity, alongside a pervasive antipathy for atheists, agnostics, humanists, and assorted non-Christians. Several cases in recent years have bolstered this reputation. For example, it was revealed that the army has mandated that all soldiers fill out a survey called the “Soldier Fitness Tracker.” One component of the survey is meant to measure soldiers’ “spiritual fitness,” and if soldiers’ scores indicate that they aren’t adequately spiritual/religious, they could be designated unfit for duty; this happened to several nonbelieving soldiers, including Sergeant Justin Griffith of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. A couple of years before that, former Air Force Academy officer Mikey Weinstein filed suit against the U.S. Air Force, claiming that those in charge failed to prevent persistent, ongoing Christian proselytizing. And while serving in Iraq, soldier Jeremy Hall was harassed for being an atheist and then subsequently threatened by officers for his part in organizing a group of nonbelieving soldiers; the situation got so bad that he eventually filed a lawsuit against Major Paul Welborne and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And although there are hundreds of thousands of nonreligious men and women in the military, the government will not allow secular humanists to serve as chaplains.

  So the fact that groups like NAAFA are forming in numerous military academies and bases is significant, signaling a trend of collective resistance to this religious hegemony. However, most of the plebeians from the Naval Academy that I spoke with didn’t experience any overt harassment or aggressive proselytizing. Rather, there was just sort of an accepted, taken-for-granted Christian culture that made them feel ever so unwelcome, ever so alienated.

  Recently, NAAFA has been meeting once a week. They talk about dealing with religious roommates and coping with religious family members, they look at constitutional issues concerning the separation of church and state, they discuss what they’re learning in their classes and the books they’re reading, they contemplate philosophy and science, ethics and values, and they recently managed to pull off a small party celebrating Darwin Day. They’ve also been in touch with the national coalition organization MAAF—the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers—which is helping them with various programing ideas for the future.

  Their biggest accomplishment so far has been to link up with a local Unitarian Universalist chur
ch in Annapolis that runs a weeklong humanist summer day camp for kids, named Camp Beagle (the name is in homage to HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin sailed during his trip to the Galápagos Islands). The camp emphasizes secular humanist values, nature awareness, and scientific thinking, and Ken and several of his friends from the Naval Academy have volunteered as counselors at Camp Beagle for two summers now, something they find extremely enjoyable. As Ken said, “I love doing something positive in the community.”

  Humanists Doing Good

  When it comes to doing something positive in the community, a newly formed group in Sandy Cliffs, Colorado, is definitely noteworthy. They call themselves Humanists Doing Good. Affiliated with the American Humanist Association, this new manifestation of secular communal life was founded by June and Jim Webb, a couple in their late thirties. June, who works as a clerk at the county courthouse, was born into a very religious Lutheran family (Missouri Synod), and while she couldn’t stand the doctrines and beliefs of her parents’ religion, she did enjoy the strong sense of community that church provided. Once she had a family of her own, she felt a real lacuna. “I missed feeling like I had that strong social bond with other people. And I especially wanted the kids to have that.”

  So she and Jim decided to check out the single small atheist group in Sandy Cliffs that met once a month in a back room of a public library. But it just wasn’t what Jim and June were looking for. As Jim explained, “The vibe was too negative. It was a lot of criticizing religion, and that’s not what we we’re about. There was a lot of ‘rage against the nativity scene’ stuff—there is a nativity scene in front of city hall, and they were against that. Or it was ‘rage against the bumper sticker’—someone had seen a religious bumper sticker on a city vehicle and they wanted it removed. You know, that sort of thing. And that’s just not what we were looking for. We wanted something positive. And it was also a lot of talking. But where was the doing? We wanted to be out doing things, being motivated by our humanist values. And we didn’t want to be in a group that was solely defined by its opposition to something. That feels too negative. We wanted to be for something, to be our own thing, and to find opportunities to be doing good.” After talking one night about what their “dream” group would look like, Humanists Doing Good was born. Flyers were printed up, ads were placed in the local paper, a Web site was created—and people joined.

  This past year, Jim and June have been good-deed-doers, with a vengeance. Along with about fifty other freethinkers, they have raked the leaves and shoveled the snow off the front lawns and porches of elderly people, they have done trash cleanups at various parks and rivers, they have volunteered at homeless shelters, they have painted animal shelters, they have arranged for elderly and disabled people to get transportation to and from the grocery store or pharmacy, and they have even spread humanist cheer on Christmas Day. “A bunch of our members baked hundreds of goodie bags for Christmas, and we drove around the county on Christmas Day and took them to every person who was working in every business that was open on Christmas Day. Because if you celebrate Christmas and you have to work that day, that sucks. And since we don’t celebrate Christmas—for us it is just a day that you sleep in, watch some football, eat some enchiladas—you know, it’s not a big day for us. So we ended up with hundreds of bags of cookies and we split up into two groups and we spent the whole day delivering them and it was so much fun. And it meant so much to the people—one of the ladies at Rite Aid wanted to take a picture with us.”

  It isn’t easy to create community from scratch. It isn’t easy to get a group of disparate individuals to come together, especially when the larger goal is not to play competitive sports or collect stamps or hunt geese but simply to do good deeds. But June had wanted her daughters to be a part of something akin to a religious congregation, and now they are. In addition to all the positive work they do in their local neighborhoods, the members of Humanists Doing Good get together twice a month for various social events: picnics, movie nights, Ultimate Frisbee games, and “universi-tea” nights, where they sit around drinking tea and discuss a book together. Fostering fellowship has been achieved.

  Black Nonbelievers, Inc.

  Fostering fellowship is also the key reason that Mandisa Lateefah Thomas founded Black Nonbelievers, Inc. of Atlanta.

  Mandisa is thirty-five years old and works as an events services manager at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. She was raised by a single mom in the South Jamaica housing projects of Queens, New York. When Mandisa was twenty-one, she and her husband moved to Atlanta. “The first question we got when we moved down here was, ‘What church do you go to?’ That’s just one of the first questions you get asked, especially if you are black in Atlanta.” It was hard to be secular in such an environment. People didn’t trust you if they found out that you weren’t a Christian. Some people didn’t want their kids playing with your kids. And on top of that, there wasn’t much in the way of opportunity for purposeful community if it wasn’t within a religious context. Feeling somewhat alone as an atheist, and simultaneously feeling the need to make friends and be a part of a group of like-minded people, Mandisa initially decided to check out an atheist meet-up event. It was okay. But it was almost all white people, and being one of the few persons of color was awkward. So she went online and started connecting with a few other black nonbelievers, and they shared similar stories. “The meet-ups and conferences and conventions were predominantly white, and you would feel singled out or just kind of isolated.” Did she or any of her online friends endure actual instances of overt racism, or was it more just a feeling of being exoticized? “All of the above.”

  Mandisa realized that there was a real need out there—the need for black nonbelievers to find one another and create community. Black Nonbelievers, Inc. was born. Although she juggles her time between work, family, and her singing, Mandisa couldn’t be happier with this new addition to her life. “It has just been an awesome experience. It has been great. We have general meetings the third Sunday of every month. We do different things—people read poems, we sing songs, we have discussions. We have a lot of food. Lots of socializing. Bowling nights. Holiday dinners. And we signed up for an adopt-a-highway program. We also offer lots of moral support to some of our members who have problems with their neighbors or families or friends—people who are ostracized for being atheists or nonreligious. And we have had some of our members who have had some financial problems, and we have tried to all pitch in and help them out.”

  While there have certainly been many prominent black atheists and agnostics throughout American history—such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Butterfly McQueen, and Morgan Freeman—most African Americans are very religious. Indeed, African Americans are arguably the most religious racial/ethnic group in the United States.

  For example, according to recent findings from the Pew Research Center’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, African Americans have the highest rate of weekly church attendance compared with any group. Nearly 80 percent of African Americans say that religion is very important in their lives, while nearly 90 percent say that they are absolutely certain that God exists. Both percentages are significantly higher than for any other racial/ethnic group in America. Furthermore, only 8 percent of blacks claim to be nonreligious.

  Thus Black Nonbelievers, Inc. represents a real minority within a minority. So far the group has about twenty members who regularly show up each month, but special events throughout the year usually attract between thirty and forty people. And Mandisa is sure that there are many more secular men and women out there within the black community. “I’ve had so many black people say to me, ‘I thought I was the only one who didn’t believe. I thought I was the only one who questioned.’”

  Secular Community Within Church

  One more newly formed group to highlight is AAHS—pronounced “Aaahs,” like the sound a group of thirsty people would make aft
er taking a collective swig of cold lemonade. It stands for Agnostics, Atheists, Humanists, & Secularists, and it was recently founded by Ian Dodd in Santa Monica, California.

  Ian is fifty-three, married, the father of two, and he works as a television cameraman. He’s also been an active member of a Unitarian Universalist church for nearly ten years now—something he would have never seen coming. “A churchgoer? No, not me.” Ian has always been an atheist, he was raised by atheist parents, and he never had any inclination to be involved with religion. However, despite all this, he has found himself becoming quite involved with church life; he’s served on a ministerial search committee, he’s taught a church youth class for three years, and he’s there as a congregant every week. What happened? Why wouldn’t an atheist like Ian just stay home on Sundays?

  “To be honest, I would stay home. But I like my wife, and I like my wife’s company, and my wife is much more of a joiner, she’s much more of a people-oriented person. So she was the one who first made the bid to check out the Unitarian church. She had gone to a funeral at the Unitarian church and was very impressed by it. So she came home after that—and this was just before her birthday—and she says to me and the kids, ‘Okay, here’s what I want for my birthday: I want for us to go to the Unitarian church for four Sundays in a row.” By the end of the second Sunday, Ian’s wife was ready to join. She felt like “these are my people, these are my values.” So Ian agreed to join too. In addition to making his wife happy, a big draw for him was the programs that the church had for the kids, especially a class for those in middle school that explored values, beliefs, identity, and “the big questions.” Their daughter enrolled and got a lot out of it. Ian eventually became one of the teachers.