An Atheist’s Perspective: An Unholy Alliance

The town of Greece NY, a few miles from my home, recently won a Supreme Court decision that would allow them to continue to open their town meetings with religious prayer provided that the prayer is not exclusionary (e.g. no praying for the souls of X because they aren’t in religion Y). While I emphatically disagree with the majority opinion, especially basing it on an appeal to tradition; I think the consequences of that decision are more than what the town and/or the religious people that consider this a victory are going to be willing to accept. One of my problems with the decision centers around the idea that “freedom of religion” also means “freedom from religion.” The state is not allowed to make you adhere to any particular religion, nor is it allowed to make you adhere to any religion at all. The Constitution, in article Six expressly forbids the use of a religion as a requirement of any public office or trust in the United States; not to mention the first Amendment’s prohibition on the respecting of a particular religion by Congress in particular which has then been extended by the 14th to government in general.

The Greece case was brought about because two women (one Jewish and one atheist) felt that the opening prayer was exclusionary. I for one find it more troubling the Greece town board thinks that only a god being can solve their issues, but as I don’t live in Greece I don’t know how bad it is there (it’s not that bad), rather than trust in their own abilities at governance. In general this country is populated by Christians. The last poll puts Christianity at around 75% dominance with all other beliefs and non-belief filling out the remaining 25%. So if a Catholic has to sit through a minister’s prayer, it might be strange but it won’t be foreign, and vice versa. If you aren’t a Christian, then the appeals to Jesus can be quite off putting a feeling that most people in the US won’t understand unless they attend a Jewish wedding or similar situation.

Aside from the Greece ruling, there have been other lawsuits regarding religious symbols–all of them Christian, in public squares and every time the ruling by the respective courts is roughly the same: all or nothing. It’s why you can’t teach Creation in schools: it’s a myth favoring one particular religion. And while I would rather have the “nothing” be the result I understand the “all.” Since the backbone of this country protects the citizen from religious favoritism by the government we end up with all religions being equal in the eyes of the law.

We must remember that the point of the establishment clause was not to protect Christians from the oppression of Islam, Atheism, or Judaism. Rather the genesis of the establishment clause was to protect Christians from Christians. Thomas Jefferson’s “Wall of separation” in his letter to the Danbury Baptists was addressing a concern that the Baptists would have their right of free exercise stripped by the majority religion of Connecticut at the time. It’s worth repeating that the term “Christian” refers to not one belief system but to many. It is a recent phenomenon to lump all of them together as one religion, but in the time of the revolution until some point in the 20th (I’m working to identify it) century it would be very strange if we considered a Mormon, Catholic, and a Baptist to all be members of the same religion. Sure they all believe in a Jesus figure, but Mormon rites differ from Catholic and Baptist rites so distinctly that it seems wrong to say they are members of the same thing. It’s one reason that Presidential candidates John Kennedy and Mitt Romney had to specifically address their religious differences.

Why does any of this bear mentioning? Because most people think that the minor differences among Christian sects, as well as Jewish and Islam, are going to be satisfied with statues such as the ten commandments or that appeals to the god of Abraham can’t be too offensive since these majority religions all pray to the same being. A Christian paying for and placing a statue of the ten commandments ought to be just fine, it’s part of their religion (minus the graven image part). Yet we’ve seen in Florida as a response to the manger scene at the state capital, a festivus pole erected. Now, in Oklahoma in response to a Ten Commandment statue we see a submission from the Church of Satan a Baphomet statue in honor, their words, “Our monument celebrates an unwavering respect for the Constitutional values of religious freedom and free expression.”

Their point is that if one religion gets a statue, then they get one as well. I for one, get their point, and like the decision of the Supreme Court in the case against the Westboro Baptist church’s right to protest a funeral, this is one of those tests of free speech. The Oklahoma government rushed a ban on statue submissions but it doesn’t matter as their submission made it in before hand, one of the troubles with hindsight laws. Attempting to ban their goat headed chair statue is essentially saying that state of Oklahoma respects one religion and not another–a move forbidden by the law.

What concerns me though, is the support of the church of Satan by other atheists. The position that I assumed I would hear the most was that it was another statue celebrating another religion going up in the public square, and then a bunch of diatribes against superstition. Part of what I expected came from my own ignorance. My experience of what Satanism is, comes primarily from my experience in watching television shows in the 80s and the moral panic that ensued as the now discredited and falsified stories of ritual abuse by Satanists. I expected this to be another religion, albeit a heretical Christian one (given that stereotypically the believe in Jesus, God, the Bible etc. they just worship the other side of it). Modern Satanism, at least the group proposing the statue, is more like Buddhism with regard to gods, i.e. they don’t believe in any substantive deities. We must also realize that the so-called “black mass” of the Satanists can be attributed to a Christian fear mongering in the book “malleus maleficarum” or “hammer of the witches,” which described it as the behavior of witches, Satanists, and humanists. It has more akin to the blood libel against the Jews as a slander rather than an actual reported event.

All that aside the problem is one of image. Those in support of the statue were more likely to support it because it represented a troll against Christians, a way to stick it to them. This should not be representative of atheism since it represents anti-Christianism being so specific in tone. It’s the exact brush that the extreme right wing likes to paint atheists with anyway and now a whole bunch of assholes just gave them a new can. It would be like supporting a Muslim image going up because that sticks it to the Republican state representative who helped get the commandment statue–and it misses the point just the same. The reason to support the Baphomet statue is one of free speech and free religion, not anti-Christianism or any kind of hate. This action may do more to shut down the erection of statues than the court cases because it is a direct test of those who say they support religious liberty, and now we will see if they are hypocrites or not.

PS. It should be noted that no new statues are going up in OK due to an official suspension by the OK government due to a lawsuit by the ACLU to remove the Commandment statue.