New Atheism didn't beget the 'nones'

New Atheists can take credit for the recent increase in religiously unaffiliated people, the so-called "nones," according to Daniel Dennett. The movement of best-selling books and their readers took a country where religious identity was de rigueur and made is possible to announce one didn't have any such religious identity.

In a recent five minute debate with Guardian editor Andrew Brown, arguing for New Atheism's accomplishments, Dennett says:

It was important to turn the tide and I think we've done that. I'm really very proud to say that the New Atheism has changed the face of America, as far expression of religious belief or disbelief .... What we gave [the religiously unaffiliated] was permission to declare their lack of interest in religion, which was something people were rather afraid to do before we wrote our books. 

There are several obvious problems with this claim.

The first and most obvious problem with saying that New Atheism made it possible to "declare a lack of interest in religion" is that significant numbers began making that kind of declaration a full decade before New Atheists' wrote their books. As a matter of simple chronological fact, the claim of a link is hard to support:

There isn't a New Atheist book that can take credit for a social trend that started in the 1990s.

Dennett should know this. After all, when he was arguing people should come out and call themselves "brights," he noted that a significant number of people -- 27 million -- already didn't consider themselves religious. He was attempting to organize those people with a new name, and encourage others to take on this name too. But it wouldn't have made sense in 2003, just when New Atheism was becoming a thing, to take credit for those people's freedom to be not religious.

Nor does it really make sense now. The evidence doesn't support it.

For another thing, religious disaffiliation isn't the same thing as "lack of interest in religion." This has been extensively documented. Belief hasn't notably declined; affiliation and identification have. It's easy to misrepresent this demographic, and Dennett seems to listing into that territory.

Thirdly, it doesn't seem like an accurate representation of Dennett's own ideas to say that he worked for or was interested in getting people to not be interested in religion. In his book Breaking the Spell, one of the main targets is actually tolerance of faith. He doesn't just want people to not have faith themselves, but to reject the idea that other people's faith is good or even benign. He writes,

Are we like families in which the adults go through all the motions of believing in Santa Claus for the sake of the kids, and the kids all pretend still to believe in Santa Claus so as not to spoil the adults' fun? If only our current predicament were as innocuous and even comical as that! In the adult world of religion, people are dying and killing, with the moderates cowed into silence by the intransigence of the radicals in their own faiths, and many afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe for fear of breaking Granny's heart, or offending their neighbors to the point of getting run out of town, or worse.  

If this is the precious meaning our lives are vouchsafed thanks to our allegiance to one religion or another, it is not such a bargain, in my opinion. Is this the best we can do? Is it not tragic that so many people around the world find themselves enlisted against their will in a conspiracy of silence.

It's not at all clear how that argument connects at all to people saying they're not religious.

Even if the "nones" were, as Dennett implies, disbelieving, rather than just disaffiliating, and even if it were possible that a movement that started in the early 21st century could be credited with social change that started in the end of the 20th century, the New Atheists weren't advocating religious disinterest. They worked to end religious accommodation, the casual acceptance that faith is a fine thing to have.

To say that New Atheism "changed the face of America," making it socially safe for "nones," is a misrepresentation of the facts, a misrepresentation of the "nones," and a misrepresentation of New Atheism. Dennett's just wrong here.

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Reza Aslan's outrage

Among scholars of religion, there's no consensus on the relevance of scholar's personal religious beliefs and practices to their scholarship.

Some scholars are quite open. They mention their religious identity in the classroom, affiliate themselves in their books, explain their interests in terms of their religious identities, and even on occasion write from the position of a believer. Others are open but private. They're willing to talk about themselves and their beliefs, but keep it separate from their scholarship. This is where I'm at: I sometimes talk with students or colleagues about my own faith and religious history, but it's not something I talk about in class or in my writing, mostly because it seems like it would cause more confusion than clarity. Others, still, are entirely private, and simply refuse to answer any personal questions.

When scholars are open about their religious identities, though, it is entirely fair to ask them about their religious identities.

This seems to me to be commonsensical, but perhaps it isn't.

There's a big loud kerfuffle right now about a recent FOX news interview with Reza Aslan, author of a popular book about the historical Jesus. The interviewer, Lauren Green, started the interview with the question, "you're a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?"

Aslan was outraged at the question and went on the offensive. The clip went viral. People got pretty excited ("Reza Aslan is superhuman"; "Hats off to Reza Alsan"), and expressed their outrage at the question.

It's bullshit.

There was nothing wrong with the question.

One can assume, as many have, that the subtext of the question was that Muslims don't have the right to write books about Jesus, but that's an assumption. One can assume the question is Islamophobic, but that's an odd assumption that would need to be defended. There's nothing necessarily biased about mentioning a scholar is Muslim, especially when the scholar has regularly talked about his own religious biography in relationship to his work.

The question could also be taken at face value, as a question about this scholar's personal interest.

Aslan choose to treat the question as hostile, but he didn't have to.

He could have responded by talking about how historically important Jesus is, or talking generally about how he's interested in various religions' origins, including Christianity's. He could consistently defer personal questions, as many scholars do (saying something like "my personal beliefs aren't that interesting or important; what I want do is try to understand this subject in it's historical context").

Aslan also could have talked about his own changing relationship to Jesus -- which he has, actually, in numerous interviews. On Fresh Air, he told Terry Gross that he grew up a secular Muslim and converted to Christianity when he was 15, but left the faith shortly thereafter. On The Daily Show, he told John Oliver that his mother and wife are Christians and his brother-in-law is a Christian minister. Aslan told the Huffington Post he's been "obsessed with Jesus for a very, very long time," adding "I heard the Gospel when I was 15 years old and it just blew me away." On NPR's Weekend Edition, he explained his current religious position by saying,

I wouldn't call myself a Christian because I do not believe that Jesus is God, nor do I believe that he ever thought that he was God, or that he ever said that he was God. But I am a follower of Jesus, and I think that sometimes, unfortunately -- I think even Christians would recognize this and admit it -- those two things aren't always the same, being a Christian and being a follower of Jesus.

Aslan is clearly open to talking about his own religious beliefs, and talking about how they shaped, informed, inspired and contextualized his scholarship. He's repeatedly said that his own biographical position -- for instance, that his wife and mother are Christians -- should inform readers' opinions. It's reasonable, then, for him to expect to be asked how his religious beliefs should affect readers' opinions.

In this case, though, he opted for outrage.

It's feigned bullshit.

It's another manufactured scandal, which makes for good TV, I guess. If you're into that. It appears to be pretty irresistible on the internet, where we all apparently troll around looking for clips and snippets that confirm the stupidity and/or evilness of those we believe to be stupid and/or evil. Smugness reigns, as always, and controversy is good for sales.

This isn't an example of attacks on Muslims or attacks on scholarship. It's evidence that this is an age of viral marketing, and that publicity stunts are pretty effective marketing tools, even if they are pretty tiresome and generally shady, conning people into an emotional response that makes someone money.

The outrage, if there is an outrage, is that so many people bought into fake outrage.

"Bought" literally.

Forgive me if my distaste for FOX and for right wing anti-intellectualism doesn't compel me to rush to Aslan's defense. If he doesn't want his personal life and religious identity to be a factor in how his scholarship is seen, he's entitled to keep those things private. If he talks about them sometimes, though, and other times acts like it's outrageous to ask about what he regularly talks about, I'm going to be fairly short with my sympathies. When that inconsistency isn't just idiosyncratic, but appears to be part of a book marketing scheme, I'm not going to share the "outrage."

When, in addition to all that, the man misrepresents his scholarly credentials, he's not a hero of academic freedom. He's not a champion of scholarship in the face of the forces of anti-intellectualism. He's yet another creature of the culture of fake outrage, manipulating cultural divisions for the sake of sales of his book.

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Atheists' spiritual experiences

Philosophy professor Dan Fincke on the errors atheists make when they imagine they have no bodies:

When confronted with claims about immaterial spiritual souls or spiritual lives or practices, the first mistake is to imply that people’s experiences that they call 'spiritual' are not 'real.' 'Spiritual' experiences are real events that happen in the real world. Superstitious reifications are just hastily (and with all sorts of cultural and religious encouragement) naively misinterpreting them as somehow evidence for something otherworldly or something which puts them in touch with otherworldly things. It is useless and sounds woefully psychologically ignorant to question whether they refer to something real when they talk about spiritual experiences. We do much better to engage them about what their real experience really indicates.  

The parallel superstition among some atheists is a tendency to conceive of people as minds that respond to reason alone and that can only reason well if they are not being influenced bodily.

Finke concludes that atheists -- and he counts himself in that number -- should evaluate "emotional mechanisms" based on end results, rather than rejecting such mechanisms and practices altogether.

There's nothing inherently wrong, for Fincke, with atheists singing songs. Not singing songs, on the other hand, is often evidence of a philosophy deeply uncomfortable with human embodiment.

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Even in secular Australia, some don't accept scientific consensus

Australia is pretty thoroughly secularized. Nearly a quarter of Australians say they are not religiously affiliated, about 70 percent say religion isn't important in their lives, and less than 10 percent are regular in church attendance, a number that's declining. More than 80 percent of Australians said the world would be better of without religion, according to one study, and another report found that half of those born between 1976 and 1990 have no belief in God.

Australia is irreligious, and has secularized pretty much exactly as one would expect if one held to the secularization thesis.

A new study on scientific literacy shows that some Australians struggle with the ideas of evolution, though. This shows it's not true that the United States is the only industrialized country where creationist ideas persist. It also raises questions about the relationship between religiousness and science education.

As Adam Laats writes, "Significant percentages of Aussies, for whatever reason, do not agree with fundamental tenets of mainstream science. Sorry, Bill Nye, but creationism is not 'unique' to the United States."

According to the study, more than 30 percent of Australians don't think evolution is currently occurring. Of that group, 9 percent said they don't believe in evolution, 10 percent they didn't believe evolution was happening now, and 12 weren't sure whether evolution was only historical or not. There are also 27 percent of Australians who think dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.

The study doesn't do a good idea of contextualizing these survey responses. There have been occasional reports of creationism and Intelligent Design taught in Australian schools, but whether or not these poll's findings can be connected to committed anti-evolution thought or just generally to ignorance isn't clear.

The lack of knowledge wasn't just evolution specific. There were 42 percent of Australians -- and half of all women -- who could not correctly say how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun.

Australians still have a much higher rate of support for the scientific consensus than one finds in the US. But it seems scientific ignorance persists at significant rates regardless of religion's influence in society.

It's been a long, long time since any dominant religious group anywhere has opposed the heliocentric model of the solar system, for example, and yet in the late '90s Gallup found that 18 percent of Americans thought the sun revolved around the earth -- and 19 percent of British people thought that too, as did 16 percent of Germans. In each of the three countries, there were not-insignificant portions of people who didn't know what Nicholas Copernicus knew in 1543.

It's clearly true that sometimes, in some places, knowledge of science is retarded by religious influences.  It turns out, though, that even when religion is marginal or irrelevant, scientific knowledge isn't universally accepted.

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And so the semester ends

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'Conjuring' belief in demons

Forty years after The Exorcist made $441 million and lodged itself in the American imagination, the latest cast-out-demons based-on-a-true-story film hit theaters this weekend. The writers and director are hoping the $20 million production called The Conjuring makes some money -- and gets some viewers seriously considering demonic realities. 

"People should never be ignorant of demonic forces and think it can't happen to them," said Chad Hayes, one of the screenwriters. 

Chad and his twin brother and co-writer Carey Hayes have been adamant about the connection between their faith and this horror film, a connection which has pretty seamlessly blended with some of the studios' promotional efforts. The film's distributor, New Line Cinema, has subcontracted with Grace Hill Media for a specific faith-market campaign. The company arranged advance screenings for faith groups, including groups of priests, and has made the writer-brothers and the real-life exorcists available to the religious press.

The people behind this film hope those who believe in demons go to theaters and watch. Chad Hayes, for example, said, "Men and women of faith should see this film because they will see the power that only God holds to overcome evil. They can be witnesses to that moment of darkness that only the power of God can defeat."

The people behind the film don't only want believers to go and see it, but one way to market it to believers it to talk about how the product will be powerful and especially spiritually useful for those who don't believe. This is part of why there's all this talk about the reality of demonic forces. It's aimed at those who like their scary narratives to teeter on the question, "is it real?," and also at those who think it is real and want to believe that such a film could transform the beliefs of others.

That evangelical message is clear enough that some reviewers are reacting to it. At Salon, the film has been dubbed "one of the cleverest and most effective right-wing Christian films of recent years," which is not framed as a compliment.

At a recent screening, the director reportedly spent some time trying to persuade incredulous critics of the film's serious intent. The final words on the screen, too, from one of the real-life exorcists involved in the real-life version of the film's fictionalized events, emphasize this point:

Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.

Whether or not they believe in The Conjuring, marketing a movie to people who believe in demons isn't a bad idea.

For one thing, there's a good number of them. There's not a lot of really solid information on exactly how many, but one poll reported that 41 percent of Americans agreed with the the idea that demons exist, and another, which just looked at self-identified Christians, put the number at 64 percent of Christians, which is about 48 percent of the general population. That works out to more than 150 million Americans as the potential market for this marketing campaign of this movie, plus, presumably, the people they know and think might be somewhere on the edge of possible belief.

For another thing, appealing to religious audiences has paid off in recent years. There are success stories inspiring this marketing drive: The Passion of the Christ, The Blind Side, Fireproof, and others. Add the successes of faith-"infused" TV shows that have fared so well lately, Duck Dynasty, The Bible, etc., and the people who decide what movies get made are going to pay attention. And they are: At this year's Annual Faith and Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry, a Hollywood affair celebrating films pitched as faith-friendly and making lots and lots of money for it, marketing strategists were saying they could sell anything that is faith friendly. It was reported that in the last 21 years the number of films classified as having "at least some Christian, redemptive content" has grown from about 10 percent of the movies produced to nearly 57 percent, but there is still demand for more.

It turns out religious right's efforts to demonstrate the economic strength of conservative Christians actually worked. If not with boycotts, then with theater tickets and big buckets of popcorn.

According to Carey Hayes, "the essence of this movie is, God wins."

One could say the same of The Exorcist, of course. That's what these movies do: God wins, demons are dramatized, some segment of the audience wonders if maybe that fictionally depicted reality is really real, and others say yes, yes!, and a bunch of money is made and more such stories are put into production.

The Conjuring continued that tradition this weekend, pulling in box office receipts worth $41.5 million,  earning more than twice what it cost with just it's North American debut.

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Homeschoolers take asylum claims to the Supreme Court

A German homeschooling family seeking asylum in the United States will take its case to the Supreme Court, the Home School Legal Defense Assocation announced Monday.

A lower court ruled against Uwe and Hannalore Romeike in May. Their appeal for a re-hearing has now also been denied, leaving the Supreme Court as the family's last option in the US legal system. The federal court said there weren't grounds to re-hear the case, as the issues that the homeschooler's lawyers raised in the appeal had already been dealt with.

The lawyers defending the family disagree. They announced they will take the case to the Supreme Court because "we firmly believe that this family deserves the freedom that this country was founded on."

The Romeike's have become something of cause célèbre on the right. The case is seen as a defense of freedom and of parents' rights to educate their children. Legally, however, as the judge pointed out in the ruling rejecting the Romeike's claims, the case doesn't hinge on whether or not homeschooling is a right or a privilege. The legal question is whether or not homeschoolers in countries where homeschooling is illegal qualify for asylum in the United States, whether or not they should be considered a "particular social group" as defined by asylum law.

The Home School Legal Defense Association asked the Romeike's to come to the United States explicitly to challenge the law. The aim was to get homeschooling recognized as a grounds for asylum, and to put pressure on German courts and lawmakers, possibly embarrassing them, possibly stirring up some public sympathy for homeschoolers and getting the laws changed.

The organization has long lobbied for homeschoolers internationally, and helped organize a German counterpart to HSLDA in 2000. When homeschooling families lost high profile court cases in Germany in 2000 and in 2007, the American group worked to politically organize German homeschoolers, but also began looking for alternative defenses. It was in that context that the HSLDA approached the Romeike's with the idea of a legal battle in the US Federal Courts.

"We analyzed the legal battle for freedom in Germany and concluded that prospects were not promising," HSLDA lawyer Michael P. Donnelly wrote.

We knew that laws would have to be changed if there was to be freedom for German homeschoolers. This would require changing public opinion and getting the attention of legislators. Because there were so few homeschoolers in Germany, there was no way they could exert any kind of political influence. And in the face of the German Supreme Court decisions, we knew that officials would need heavy prompting to confront this issue.

In further developing the new strategy, Jim Mason, HSLDA Director of Litigation, suggested considering a political asylum case. He contacted former HSLDA Legal Assistant Will Humble, who was now actively practicing immigration law and who agreed to assist with the Romeike’s political asylum claim. Humble outlined the arguments that would have to be made for such a case, and HSLDA began to look for the right test case.

The first opportunity came in the form of a case that had started back in 2006 .... Our thought was that this test case, if successful, could pave the way for an American asylum claim as well as start the process for creating public awareness in Germany.

To date, this strategy hasn't been successful. The Romeike's case has received only the slightest media attention in Germany, and hasn't generated any groundswell of support for the country's few homeschoolers. The case was also not successful in court. In May, the judge ruled that the family had not met the legal burden of proving they were persecuted in Germany for being homeschoolers. He argued, further, that:

The United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment, even treatment that our laws do not allow. That the United States Constitution protects the rights of 'parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control' does not mean that a contrary law in another country establishes persecution on religious or any other protected ground [legal citations removed].

The HSLDA will continue their fight, though. The deadline for an appeal to the Supreme Court is in October. Whether or not the court will hear the case is another question: only about 75 to 80 cases are heard annually out of the approximately 10,000 petitions.

If the court declines to hear the case, the Romeike's will be forced to leave the country. They could resettle in one of the many Western European countries where homeschooling is allowed, including Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.

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The First Amendment legal battle in Texas politics

The politics of the legal battles over the public religious displays and the vagaries of what it means for a government to respect an establishment of religion are playing out in Texas, now, in the governors' race that's just getting started.

Gregg Abbott, Texas' attorney general, announced on Sunday he is running for governor. If he wins, he'll succeed Rick Perry and George W. Bush, likely becoming a Republican Party leader and someone talked about, at least, as a possible presidential candidate. Political observers expect him to win: He has $20 million in his campaign war chest, the blessing of the Republican party establishment, and a reputation for being a fighter.

As attorney general, Abbott has sued the Barack Obama administration 27 times. He has said that's his job, suing Obama.

But perhaps the most important example of his fighting is one Supreme Court decision on the First Amendment question of a Ten Commandment monument. It's evidence that some Texans take quite seriously, evidence which may well be parlayed into lots of votes.

Part of that reputation for fighting comes from Abbott's personal biography. He was paralyzed by a falling tree 29 years ago, and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. Despite that challenge, he's had a successful career as a lawyer, served as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court from 1995 to 2001, and has been the attorney general since 2002.

In his gubernatorial race announcement, Abbott said, "You know, too often you hear politicians get up and talk about having a spine of steel. I actually have one, and I will use my steel spine to fight for you and Texas families every single day."

The other part of his fighter's reputation comes from Abbott's successful legal defense of a public display of the Ten Commandments. In 2005, the Supreme Court decided the case of Van Orden v. Perry in Abbott's favor. That's not incidental to his campaign announcement. His political ambitions are underwritten by how Texas voters view that victory, and his role in that victory. The court ruled that, though on the grounds of the capitol, the monument of the decalogue -- which was erected by a fraternal order in connection with the promotion of Cecile B. DeMille's film, The Ten Commandments -- did not signify a government endorsement of religion.

From the opinion, written by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist:

The Capitol Grounds, as a whole, form the proper context in which to determine the effect of the Ten Commandments monument upon a reasonable observer. And this overall, museum setting precludes any reasonable perception of official endorsement of the monument’s religious content .... In its museum-setting context, this monument would not convey to the reasonable observer any official en- dorsement of religion. This is simply not a context in which the State is reasonably understood to be taking sides. The many monuments commemorating veterans do not communicate disapproval of pacifists; the Tribute to Children does not reflect negatively on older Texans; the Hiker and horse-riding Cowboy monuments send no message concerning motorized transport; and the Volun- teer Firemen monument reflects no official disapproval of those who pursue firefighting as a paid profession. The monuments, memorials, and commemorative plaques on the Capitol Grounds are not reasonably perceived as creating 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in the Texas political community.

Rehnquist also wrote that the monument was not exclusively religious, as it has a civic meaning, says something about the history of the laws of the state, and can also be seen as a tribute to the fraternal order that put up the monument in the first place. Those who want Christianity honored in the public square have not seemed dismayed by the claim that the publicness depletes the religiousness.

In his campaign bio, Abbott's role in Van Orden v. Perry was highlighted as an example of the kind of person he is and the kind of governor he would be. The official statement says, "Attorney General Abbott believes there is no higher power than God, and in March 2005 he personally appeared before the United States Supreme Court, where he successfully defended the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments display that adorns the Texas Capitol grounds."

Another lawyer representing Texas in the case has already built a political career on the Van Orden v. Perry decision. Ted Cruz, now a U.S. senator, references the court case regularly in his speeches. He cites "Preserving Religious Freedom" as a major reason to support him. The Supreme Court decision that the Ten Commandment monument isn't an endorsement of religion is listed as the first bullet point evidencing that commitment. Cruz's campaign literature says "that U.S. Supreme Court victory set a vitally important precedent for the right to display similar monuments across the nation."

Legal scholars are not as persuaded of the significance of the court case. They have pointed to the case as an example of how confused the jurisprudence on the First Amendment's establishment clause is, at the moment. But if the precedent is not as clear as it might seem, politically, the political value of the victory is clear enough for Cruz's stump speeches and for Abbott's gubernatorial campaign.

It's a win. It's the victory of fighters. It's the basis of a reputation to run on.

Abbott faces a long-time Republican operative and venture capitalist in the GOP primary. Some expect the recently famous Wendy Davis to go up against the Republican candidate in the general election, though no Democrat has won the governorship since George W. Bush took it in 1994.

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Even Christian conservatives are critiquing capitalism

There's been a resurgence of critiques of capitalism since the financial crisis of 2008.

Or, to phrase it as a Guardian headline writer did, "Karl Marx is going mainstream." Last Summer, the British paper reported:

Sales of Das Kapital, Marx's masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse (or, to give it its English title, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy). Their sales rose as British workers bailed out the banks to keep the degraded system going and the snouts of the rich firmly in their troughs while the rest of us struggle in debt, job insecurity or worse.

The resurrected interest isn't just British, either. It's here in Germany and can even be found in the US, where "socialist" is a popular political slur. The slur, though, isn't quite as much of a slur as it once was.  During the last midterm election cycle, a Pew poll found that the 29 percent of Americans said they had positive feelings about the word "socialism." That number was much higher when only younger Americans were considered. Nearly half of those under 30 respond positively to the idea of socialism, the poll found.

Bhaskar Sunkara -- who is one of those younger Americans, and is also the editor of one of the newest leading left-of-liberal journals, Jacobin -- thinks this new interest can be attributed to the financial crisis, the time that's passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union ("The cold war era conflation of socialism with Stalinism no longer holds sway," he writes), and with capitalism's failure to deliver the promised future.

The resurgent critiques of capitalism aren't just coming from the left, though, either.

There's also an apparent new willingness to raise questions about capitalism from the right. Even in quarters where there's little tolerance for Marx's thinking, little sympathy for socialism, one can find what appears to be a new openness to critical questions about capitalism. The resurgent, post-2008 critique of capitalism goes beyond the Marx revival.

First Things
At First Things, for example, a journal that can't credibly be construed as leftist, it has recently been argued that "out political challenges mostly flow from the triumph of capitalism. And American conservatism is in trouble because it can’t acknowledge much less respond to this fact."

The editor, Catholic theologian R.R. Reno, clarifies that such criticism is not an attack on capitalism, per se, any more than warnings about the dangers of sunburn on the beach are attacks on sunshine. Nevertheless, it is a critique, an argument for fetters on the "free" market.

Reno writes,

The triumph of economic freedom is a good thing. It’s made possible a global economy that has lifted and promises to continue lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But that’s only part of the story. If American conservatism is unwilling to face the fact that economic freedom creates social and therefore political problems -- political problems that will require in one way or another limiting economic freedom -- it will be irrelevant to our age.

There is, of course, a Catholic tradition here that Reno is continuing. To a certain extent this is not new, and doesn't date from the financial crisis. Catholic theologians have long argued and the church has regularly taught that the logic of markets leads to certain immoralities, injustices and oppressions, while at the same time reaffirming the rightness of many of the basic conditions and functions of capitalism. The argument is an argument against excesses. It's not a novel argument that Reno is re-raising.

It's my impression, though, that this argument hasn't been made in public very much, and Reno's article is a change in that regard. It's a critique that has been easy enough to find in theological circles, but it's been confined in those circles to some extent. In the US, Catholic concerns about capitalism have been marginalized, while concerns about abortion, the family, the death penalty, and even questions about the justice of a war like the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been much more prominent.

When Reno raises the issue of capitalism, then, and says capitalism is a problem, it's not a new argument, but may be considered a sign of new openness to critiques of capitalism on the right. It's a conservative instance of this cultural moment where the claims of a "free" market are being called into question.

It could also be just a quirk of the editorial policy of First Things. That magazine is not averse to trolling it's core audience. And yet, there are other conservative religious journals which one wouldn't associate with leftists or Marxists where there also seems to be a new openness to these sorts of questions.

Front Porch Republic
One relatively new journal -- Front Porch Republic -- is more or less dedicated to this kind of critique. It has been a platform for various arguments about right-of-center alternatives to capitalism, especially distributism, and also versions of localism. The journal hasn't invented these alternatives and the associated critiques, but it has done a good bit to promote them. The journal has worked to popularize anti-capitalist thinkers, such as Hilaire Belloc, who haven't been very popular in the past, as well as to call attention to traditional conservative arguments for restraints on the "free" market.

Front Porch Republic, notably, started in 2009, right after the financial crisis, at the very same moment Marx was "going mainstream." The editors note the historical moment's import in the journal's founding:

The economic crisis that emerged in late 2008 and the predictable responses it elicited from those in power has served to highlight the extent to which concepts such as human scale, the distribution of power, and our responsibility to the future have been eliminated from the public conversation .... We come from different backgrounds, live in different places, and have divergent interests, but we’re convinced that scale, place, self-government, sustainability, limits, and variety are key terms with which any fruitful debate about our corporate future must contend.

This isn't Marx, and it's a long way from Sunkara's Jacobins, but it is a critique of capitalism.

Cardus
This can also be seen in other religious conservative journals. The most recent online edition of Comment, for example, the journal of a  Neo-Calvinist think tank Cardus, which is "dedicated to the renewal of North American social architecture," includes an article arguing for a "biblical" alternative to capitalism. (Full disclosure: I wrote for Comment under a previous editor). In that article, Paul Williams writes:

In the biblical tradition, economic activity is depicted as something that is intended to bring together and sustain a relationship between God, humanity, and creation. In Genesis, for example, the work of humanity in cultivating the earth, making it fruitful, guarding, keeping, and caring for it is described in exactly the same language as that used later of the priestly tasks in the temple. Economic life is inherently religious because it is a form of worship taking place in the temple of God's creation. The fall of humanity into sin is a failure to guard, keep, and care for this place of intimate relationship safe from the evil of pride and autonomy -- sin fractures all the relationships that work and economic activity cultivate: those with God, with one another, and with creation itself. Redemption thus involves restoring these fractured relationships, and the primary biblical motif for redemption in the economic realm is 'Jubilee.'

The idea of "Jubilee," according to Williams, conflicts with what he calls "capitalism-as-ideology." He calls for a critique of capitalism -- or at least the ideology associated with it -- that challenges the idea that the mechanisms of the capitalist markets are morally neutral, and challenges the "sense that there is no alternative to our current system" (emphasis original).

Though the comparison would likely horrify both parties, Williams arguments are in some senses similar to those made by the French philosopher Alain Baidou. Baidou argues that "the existing world is not necessary," that it is only because "we accept the inevitability of the unbridled capitalist economy" that we "cannot see the other possibilities that are inherent in the situation in which we find ourselves" (emphases original). Baidou calls this claim, that things can be other than they are, that a politics of emancipation is possible, "the communist hypothesis." Williams clearly isn't talking about communism when he speaks of an alternative, yet he, like Baidou, starts his critique with an attack on the idea that capitalism is inevitable, alternatives impossible. The common starting point is that things could be different, and that those possibilities should be thought.

The alternative being entertained in the pages of Comment is not a Marxist one, and not something that could be described as "left of liberal." Williams holds a chair for Marketplace Theology and Leadership at a Christian graduate school in Vancouver, Canada, and he's previously worked as an economic advisor for major global corporations. The publisher of Comment, Ray Pennings, recently wrote that "growing sense of class identification" in Canada is a "reason for concern," and suggests economics shouldn't be a major, central political issue. No one would confusing Pennington for a mainstreamer of Marx. Nevertheless, there is a critique of capitalism happening at Comment.

There's a tradition here, too, that's being continued. This also is not exactly new. North American Neo-Calvinists have long critiqued capitalism, making arguments for the necessity of the values of stewardship and vocation. The market is good, according to Neo-Calvnists, not to the extent that it's totally unfettered, but to extent it is shaped and limited -- in a real sense, disciplined -- by Christian morality.

In many cases, though, this argument has not been articulated as a negative, a warning about capitalism, but as a statement about potential, and possibility. It has been a critique only in the softest, gentlest version of that term. Neo-Calvinists have generally made their arguments via statements about the good that Christians can do in business.

For example, the previous editor of Comment, Gideon Strauss, wrote,

The whole world of making products, providing services, buying and selling, building companies, establishing relationships of trade -- marketplaces filled with businesses and their customers -- can be a vibrant expression of what it means to be human in God's wonderful creation .... the original promise of business activity and market relationships is being redeemed, and we can work with courage, lead with love, and expect our efforts to bear fruit of very long-lasting value.

One can also find authors in Comment praising the important work of sales, calling for Christians to recognize the sacred in their office cubicles, calling for reconsideration of cubicles, and listing "50 things I love about business."

The critique, such as it was, was more like a call for a value supplement to capitalism. That's quite different than talk about jubilee.

The argument that Williams is making can be detected in each of these pieces, and one can connect what Williams says about the need for an alternative that arises from "jubilee" with these other articles. But the tenor is different. The negative point is much sharper. The shift may only be a shift in tone, a shift of emphasis, but such shifts are still important. What seems to be happening is a new willingness, a new need to critique capitalism.

That openness seems to date from 2008. Whether or not this is all a matter of passing grumblings or something more significant remains to be seen, but there is, right now, a broad and diverse range of sharp critiques on capitalism. It's broader, even, that has generally been noted. There's a lot of public interest from a lot of different quarters. Such arguments have seemed more palatable, more possible, and certainly more popular in the last few years than they have been for a long time.

It does seem that Sunkara's right about the historical causes of this, too. The financial crisis and the broad consensus among the political class about how to respond to the financial crisis ("too big to fail") opened up the possibility of serious critical questions. The counter argument for the necessity of capitalism, the boogie man of Stalinism, isn't as powerful as it once was. And, for a not insignificant number of people, the promises that capitalism makes about the future now kind of all sound like the same sort of fantastical sales job one heard from the hucksters of the housing bubble, the huskers of the dot com bubble, and from all the masters of the universe who stood to profit from the financial crises they helped create.

It's even more true, it seems, than Sunkara suspects. The resurgent critiques capitalism aren't just happening among the left-of-liberals: there are even a number of North American Christian conservatives of various stripes raising protests against the existing economic order.

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'He beat out a cadence with his fist'

A Detroit News Tribune illustration of Billy Sunday's preaching, published Oct. 29, 1916. Sunday preached in Detroit from September to November, that year, in part advocating for prohibition, which was on the ballot. 

A description of one of his Detroit sermons, from historian Larry D. Engelmann:

He appeared on the platform high above the sea of clean shining faces like a wispy cross between a businessman and an angel. Attired in a light gray suit and white shoes, a white negligee shirt of the finest linen and a white silk tie to match, Sunday feinted, walked and ran, crouched and jumped, from one end of the stage to the other, sweating from his gyrations until he was wet as a rag held under a pump. 

By his actions he kept the audience transfixed, hanging upon his every word and movement. He jumped on a chair; down on the floor again. He beat out a cadence with his fist upon the platform in order to emphasize a series of points; on top of the pulpit, he tore off his coat and collar and threw them to the stage .... 

Wild-eyed at the climax of his address, like an addict going cold turkey, Sunday told his God to help old Detroit. Throw your arms around her. Go into her barber shops, Lord, into the hotels, factories, and saloons. Help the man in the street, the floater, and drunkard. The devil has him almost out. He's on the ropes and groggy, Lord. One more stiff uppercut will finish him. Help him, Lord, to square his shoulders, raise his dukes and cry, Yes, Lord, I'll come when Bill gives the call.

The texts of some of Sunday's sermons can be read at biblebelievers.com. There is also video of his preaching from a period later in his life. The energy and style are still there, though.

The statewide ban on sale of alcohol passed in 1916. It was the first in nation. In 1933, Michigan also became the first state to ratify the twenty-first amendment to the Constitution, which overturned federal prohibition.

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American Ramadan

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Mis-measuring American irreligion

Americans, polls report, are convinced that America is fast losing religion.

Earlier this year, Gallup found that 77 percent of Americans agree with the statement, "religion is losing its influence on American life." Some thought that was good, others bad, but most agreed it was happening.

Part of that belief, at least, is due to the Pew studies and subsequent headlines that have trumped the recent, rapid rise of the religiously unaffiliated, the "nones," in the United States. This has been one of the big stories in religion in America in the last few years.

Those reports are problematic in how they simplify the "nones," which is something I've looked at.  What it means when someone says they're not religious should be interrogated more fully that it usually is. But the studies do show a change. The question is what the change means, not whether or not there is something shifting in American religiosity.

Or maybe not. Maybe the studies aren't to be trusted.

The methodology of the studies that have reported on a rapid rise in American "nones" has recently been called into question. Perhaps, it has been suggested, American religiousness isn't changing, it is just being mis-measured.

According to Rodney Stark -- a sociologist of religion who's done important work but who has also been "out in left field" on some things -- there are serious problems with the major studies that shows a decline in American's religious affiliations. It's a serious problem that he suggests undermines the whole story of "the rise of the 'nones.'"

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Stark writes:

When I was a young sociologist at Berkeley's Survey Research Center, it was assumed that any survey that failed to interview at least 85% of those originally drawn into the sample was not to be trusted. Those who refused to take part in the survey or could not be reached were known to be different from those who did take part. Consequently, studies were expected to report their completion rates. 

Today, even the most reputable studies seldom reach more than a third of those initially selected to be surveyed and, probably for that reason, completion rates are now rarely reported. The Pew Forum researchers are to be commended for reporting their actual completion rates, which by 2012 had fallen to 9%.

Given all of this, only one thing is really certain: Those who take part in any survey are not a random selection of the population. They also tend to be less educated and less affluent. Contrary to the common wisdom, research has long demonstrated that this demographic group is the one least likely to belong to a church.

As the less-affluent and less-educated have made up a bigger share of those surveyed, so has the number of those who report having no religion.

Maybe the much touted change is a matter of mis-mesauring?

Or maybe not. There are reasons to be believe that the measurements are reliable.

This isn't a new or unheard of issue that Stark is raising, and current polling practices are calibrated to deal with the issue. Dropping response rates and completion rates have been documented by pollsters, including Pew. Polling experts have been thinking about this problem for a while, and have developed methodology they think counter balances the possible problem of bias and over or under sampling certain groups.

They have done this, according to statistician Nate Silver, "mostly through the 'magic' of demographic weighting."

This means that the people who do respond are taken as representative for their demographic. Perhaps a poll reaches and gets responses from fewer hispanics than there are in the population. The pollsters can re-calibrate, valuing each hispanic response as representative for three, ten, etc. This is logic by which polls work anyway -- i.e., they're "representative" -- so while it might seem that demographic weighting is "cheating," it's part of the process, part of the analysis that's necessary to produce those numbers.

The people at Pew, where the questioned study was done, have thought about this question that STark is raising and have responded at length. Citing multiple studies on the matter of response rates, Pew concludes that "carefully conducted polls continue to obtain representative samples of the public and provide accurate data about the views and experiences of Americans."

Where polls accuracy can be checked, for example with elections, this methodology, which is really a defense mechanism for what Stark is criticizing, has be shown to work. Silver calls it the "uncanny accuracy of polls." Looking at voter surveys prior to elections specifically, Pew found "there is little to suggest that those who do not participate hold substantially different views" than those who do.

Perhaps questions of religious affiliation are different. Stark, at least, seems to think so. Given the research that's gone into the methodological question he raises, though, and the continued good-enough accuracy of polls in other, more easily verified, areas, the declining poll response rates aren't enough, in and of themselves, to seriously call the reports of declining religious affiliation into question.

It's necessary to be careful and thoughtful in interpreting the reports of rapid rising rates of irreligion. They probably don't mean as much as they're commonly thought to mean. However that change should ultimately be understood, though, it seems likely that the reports that there is a change are reliable.

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The triumph of Darwin's Doubt

One might think that getting a negative review of a recently released science book in a high-profile magazine would be a bad thing for that book. In the case of Darwin's Doubt, though, it's not. Getting trashed in the New Yorker is actually something of a triumph.

Gareth Cook writes in the New Yorker that this book, the latest big splash for Intelligent Design, has an "inspired-by-true events feel," and is a "masterwork of pseudoscience." For author Stephen C. Meyer, for the Discovery Institute where he works, and for advocates of Intelligent Design and criticisms of evolution more generally, this is a good thing.

The negative review is a positive sign.

As David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, wrote:

What's important is the way the logjam against intelligent discussion of intelligent design in the mainstream media is finally unjamming .... Real scientists and thoughtful, open-minded laymen are paying attention right now to a genuine and fascinating disputation about biological origins. The endorsements from scientists in relevant fields that Darwin's Doubt has already received is itself confirmation of that. I've said already that I don't know how the debate will be resolved, if it ever will. But make no mistake: the debate is happening.

Debate has long been the immediate goal of the Intelligent Design movement. The goal has been to legitimate the possibility of the Intelligent Design position by generating controversy. Meyer's book, which looks at the "Cambrian explosion," a relatively rapid diversification of organisms in the fossil record, where new and more complex forms of life appeared, will be seen as achieving that goal precisely to the extent that there's public pushback, take-downs and criticism.

Controversy -- such as claims the book is "holed beneath the waterline on the key issues of Cambrian paleontology, phylogenetics, and the information argument" -- are opportunities for Intelligent Design advocates. They're opportunities for rebuttal, but more, they serve as evidence that there's a controversy. And if there's a controversy, then there are sides to that controversy, and the rules of fairness dictate that both sides should be taken seriously. The case can be made for "teaching the controversy," which doesn't resolve it or end it in the way Intelligent Design proponents might want, but does give them a public hearing.

Meyer has long been a proponent of teach-the-controversy. This book isn't a break from that modus operandi. 

Since the late '90s, organizations such as Meyer's Discovery Institute have explicitly pushed the policy of "teach the controversy," a phrase Meyer apparently coined. Intelligent Design advocates have not mainly sought to debunk evolution and neo-Darwinian understandings of life, but to start a debate, and make the case there is a debate.

The strategy has been clearly outlined in Discovery Institute policy documents, including the "Wedge Document," a fund raising proposal that was leaked in 1999. In the "Wedge Document," the outlined ultimate goal is "To defeat scientific materialism and it's destructive moral, cultural and political legacies." The first objective, in accomplishing this, is to start a "major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists."

Meyer has been one of the very public advocates pushing for that objective, though he generally argues that he doesn't want to start a debate, put get some acknowledgement that a debate is happening.

In 2002, he wrote, "When two groups of experts disagree about a controversial subject that intersects the public school curriculum students should learn about both perspectives"

In 2003, he wrote, "Teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory will engage student interest and teach them to weigh evidence -- a key skill in scientific reasoning. "

In 2005, he co-authored an opinion piece repeating the argument. It said,

We encourage teachers to present the case for Darwin's theory of evolution as Darwin himself did: as a credible, but contestable, argument. Rather than teaching evolution as an incontrovertible 'truth,' teachers should present the arguments for modern neo-Darwinism and encourage students to evaluate these arguments critically. In short, students should learn the scientific arguments for, and against, contemporary evolutionary theory.

The negative review of Meyer's book on Intelligent Design should be understood in this context. Victory, for Meyer and his compatriots, does not necessarily look like convincing people, though of course they're interested in that too. The main goal, the primary goal, is for there to be a debate.

Mostly, the advocates of Intelligent Design have pushed for this debate to happen in public schools. As the New York Times reported in 2005, they "mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive." That same strategy works in the public square -- and is possibly even more successful there, given the commercial possibilities of controversy.

This book is being promoted prominently at 300 Barnes & Nobel stores, where there are special displays of Darwin's Doubt. That's not inconsequential in getting on the bestseller lists and stirring up controversy. The book also, like Meyer's last one, was published by a mainstream commercial publisher, HarperCollins, through the imprint HarperOne. Jerry Coyne, an active opponent of Intelligent Design, has critiqued the publisher for its participation in this, asking "have they no shame"?, but the publisher, along with the booksellers, are obviously mostly interested in the question of profits. They stand to quite literally gain from the very same public debate that Meyer and those who agree with him wants to generate.

Negative and even hostile reviews will likely help that cause.

According to Klinghoffer, the generated controversy, and the fact that a mainstream publisher is happy to contribute to this specific controversy, may be the true triumph of Darwin's Doubt. He writes:

The publication of Meyer's book marks the moment when the theory of intelligent design -- love it or hate it -- has solidly joined the mainstream discussion about biological origins. We of course can't say how the debate will ultimately be resolved. No one can. But we take great satisfaction in knowing that it is definitively engaged. The hunt for a replacement theory for Darwin's noble but crippled idea is now unmistakably on -- not only in the professional, peer-reviewed scientific literature, as Stephen Meyer documents, but in the public square as well. 

Even if one agrees with the New Yorker that Meyer's work and Intelligent Design generally are matters of pseudoscience, it's hard to dispute that the debate over evolution has entered the mainstream of American culture. The Discovery Institute and others have been quite successful, perhaps not at changing minds, but at starting a debate than can then be pointed to as justification and legitimation for "hearing both sides."

As Rick Santorum, then a US senator, said in 2005, "My reading of the science is there's a legitimate debate. My feeling is let the debate be had." The debate, as it's happening, validates the debate happening.

With Darwin's Doubt, this long established strategy can be seen at work.

On Sunday, Darwin's Doubt made the New York Times bestseller list, coming in at number 7. It has also made Publisher Weekly's bestseller list, where it is ranked 10th in sales for the week, with more than 6,000 copies of the more than 400-page tome sold.

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Running

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The face of one man who fought in the American Revolution

Jonathan Smith was 93 when a chemically treated copper plate was exposed to light, recording his image for posterity. He gave the image to his granddaughter along with a personal note in 1854, the year before his death.

That image is now one of the very few existing daguerreotypes of Revolutionary War veterans.

Smith was 14 when he first joined the revolution in 1776. It was for a two-month stretch with a Massachusetts militia. He joined another regiment in May of that year, and was enlisted, on and off, in the irregular manner of the time, until 1779. Early in the war, he helped seize a supply ship on its way to Boston loaded with pork and butter. Towards the end, he was at the Battle of Rhode Island when the Americans were attacked while retreating from their failed siege of Newport.

The year after the war he joined the Baptist church, and spent 19 years as a self-taught lay preacher,  before getting ordained in 1899 and taking a pulpit in Rhode Island.

By the time he sat for his daguerreotype, the old reverend was a thrice-married industrialist, who was a lauded local symbol of the revolutionary generation, propped up and paraded out for political speeches. He was often misidentified as a military chaplain.

Smith's story and image, as well as eight other images of aging veterans of the Revolution can be found in Joseph M. Bauman's e-book, Don't Tread on Me: Photographs and Life Stories of American Revolutionaries. Buaman is a former reporter and a collector of antique photographs. He spent three decades tracking down, documenting and verifying these few existing daguerreotypes of Revolutionary War veterans.

According to Time Magazine:

Bauman used markings on the images and their cases to locate corresponding pension, tax, and other records in order to find what, if any, role these men played in the Revolution. In one such case, Bauman obtained an image of an elderly gentleman only marked with a note to his granddaughter, signed J. Smith with the date of the photograph, October 20, 1854, and his birthday, March 10, 1761. Bauman headed over to the Salt Lake City genealogical library, to dig through census records for all J. Smiths still alive in 1854 who would have been old enough to have served in the Revolution. After gathering a list of candidates, he began looking through pension documents until he came across one who signed his name J. Smith, in the same way as on the back of the daguerreotype. When he checked the date of birth he found exactly what he expected -- March 10, 1761. He had found the match.  

Thus began the historical digging.

Given how far away and mythic the men who fought for American independence often seem, the results of the digging are well worth checking out. The peculiarities and concrete details -- both biographical facts and the lines on aging faces -- are good reminders of the human complexity of the patriots. These aren't the men who signed their names to the words Americans annually intone, "We hold these truths...." But these are old men who, in their youth, dug the ditches, carried the guns, suffered the cold and hunger, and fought the actual war that those words were about.

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'So pray to God for a lil' more spring'

It just got warm out, its this shit I've been warned about.
I hope that it storm in the morning; I hope that it's pouring out.
I hate crowded beaches; I hate the sound of fireworks.
And I ponder what's worse between knowing it's over and dying first.
'Cause everybody dies in the summer.
Wanna say ya goodbyes, tell them while it's spring.
I heard everybody's dying in the summer, so pray to God for a lil' more spring.

I know you scared, you should ask us if we scared, too.
If you was there, then we just knew you'd care, too.

-- Chance The Rapper

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Secular Jesus

A statue of Jesus at a ski resort is not religious, according to a federal court ruling. Or at least not religious enough to matter.

"Big Mountain Jesus," as the statue is called, has become secularized, and over the years has lost the potency it might have once had to seem like a religious message to any passersby.

In the ruling, Judge Dana L. Christensen, an Obama administration appointee, wrote that the statue is "unquestionably a religious symbol" but is not really very religious, lacking any significant symbolic power. Because, "for most who happen to encounter Big Mountain Jesus, it neither offends nor inspires."

The symbol is secular because it's impotent.

Christensen explained:

the statue does not convey any message that individuals visiting Big Mountain whether in the summer or winter might be treated more favorably or less favorably depending on their religious beliefs or affiliation.

and,

The statue's secular and irreverent uses far outweigh the few religious uses it has served. The statue is most frequently used as a meeting point for skiers or hikers and a site for photo opportunities, rather than a solemn place for religious reflection. Big Mountain Jesus is one of the last remaining remnants from the original Big Mountain Ski Resort, and many individuals in the community value its historic significance. For many, it reflects the evolution of the town of Whitefish from a lumber town to a tourist attraction .... Typical observers ofthe statue are more interested in giving it a high five or adorning it in ski gear than sitting before it in prayer.

There are other reasons for the court's ruling that the statue on land leased by the federal government does not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The Lemon test was applied, there questions about what a "reasonable observer" would infer about the relationship between church and state from the statue, issues of standing, and so on.

This aspect of the case is quite strange, though. It's come up several times now, where those who defend religious symbols in public spaces defend them on the grounds that the symbols are meaningless. You have to wonder about how the Knights of Columbus that went up to the top of the mountain to put of a statue of their Lord and Savior would feel now that that statue is official recognized as a symbol of a town's tourist economy.

Don Byrd, of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said the secularization of the Jesus statue is one reason religious people should be committed to the separation of Church and State. He writes,

The idea is disturbing that a monument to Christ can lose its religious significance, and become an appropriate government monument in the process, due to years of 'frivolity.' This line of thinking underscores why we should not allow government to co-opt religious monuments. In so doing, government doesn't honor religion, it systematically secularizes its expression.

The ruling will likely be appealed.

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Atheists make peace with public monuments

There was some reticence.

Among the atheists who organized to erect an atheist monument at a Florida courthouse, there was some ambivalence about the idea of having a monument. It was a compromise. They had wanted a 10 Commandments monument removed from the courthouse grounds, and had argued against such displays on government property in principle. Such a monument, they said, signaled the exclusion of some citizens. Such a monument meant an implicit government endorsement of religion.

They settled for denying the 10 Commandments its exclusive position in Starke, Florida.

David Silverman with America's first atheist monument.
Credit: American Atheists

According to the Associated Press, "It's a case of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Maybe that's a win for pluralism, and equal access, but it's also at least a little bit of a de facto endorsement of the idea of monuments on government land. It would seem to be accepting the idea that a monument in can exist on public property, at least in certain contexts without signaling government endorsement or making some feel like second-class citizens.

The internal conflict can be seen in the public statements about the monument made by the American Atheists. The man who designed the monument expressed this reticence. Ken Loukinen, a regional director of the American Atheists, said "We'd rather there be no monuments at all, but if they are allowed to have the 10 Commandments, we will have our own."

The president of the American Atheists made similar statements. David Silverman told Time Magazine "We don't want to establish this monument; we feel we need to establish it."

The American Atheists have apparently made peace with that position, though, because Silverman announced on Saturday at the monuments' unveiling that there's now a plan to build 50 more monuments on government property in the United States. Silverman said an anonymous donor has provided funds for more atheist monuments, and the group is working to make that happen.

He told reporters he would also support other groups' legal rights to put up their own monuments.

Atheist blogger Hemat Mehta writes that this strategic, though not ideal. He says,

In an ideal world, atheist monuments like this one wouldn’t have to be here. It’s not like American Atheists was pushing to have it installed. It was only when the Courthouse granted special access to a Christian group that AA knew they couldn’t let them get away with it. Same with the rest of the nation.  

If the Christians take down their monuments, the atheists will, too.  

But until then, might as well make Christians feel *really* uncomfortable about the fact that their actions are paving the way for pro-atheist monuments to go up across the country.

There were a few protestors at the unveiling who perhaps could be taken as evidence of more general discomfort with the idea. Some flew Confederate battle flags and had signs with slogans about Yankees. Another, creationist Eric Hovind, reportedly jumped up on the monument and thanked those gathered for giving him a platform from which to preach Jesus. The private group that put up the 10 Commandment monuments has said several times publicly that they're not concerned by this development. They also weren't present at the Atheists' ceremony on Saturday.

Whether there are others who "feel *really* uncomfortable" with the monument and the idea of other such monuments remains to be seen.

The American Atheists, though, seem to have overcome their own discomfort with idea of public monuments, so long as they can have theirs too.

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