America's religious regions, according to geo-coded data

A map of the Christian denominational landscape of the United States, as represented by internet-user-generated data. 

The creators, Matthew Zook and Taylor Shelton from the University of Kentucky and Mark Graham from Oxford, use a software program to mine online, geo-coded data -- Google Maps placemarks, Flickr and Instagram photos, tweets, etc. -- and produce maps such as the above. They write that the internet 

serves to represent and reproduce society in a variety of ways [....] Particularly compelling are the new types of linkages made between online activity and offline locations in which Internet users associate meaning -- ranging from the prosaic to the profound -- to specific sites in the material world. These novel phenomena, commonly referred to as geotagging (also georeferencing or geocoding), provides an innovative means for studying the spatial contours of the virtual dimension of practically any subject, including religion.

This is a different, interesting way to conceptualize the religious landscape of America.

The obvious weakness of this map is the extent to which it relies on denomination names. It's interesting, though, that even as more Protestant churches downplay organizational affiliations, and non-denominational churches are on the rise, there's still quite a bit of information that can be gathered using the organization names generated by internet users, and that information gives one a decent overview of the strong regional differences in American's religious choices.

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Hitler wins: the disjunction of law & politics in Romeike v. Holder

The definition of a very vague legal term is at the center of oral arguments being heard today in a federal appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio. That term is "particular social group."

In US law, that is one of five named groups of people eligible for asylum -- and the most ill-defined. The other categories are race, religion, nationality, and political opinions. If someone can demonstrate they are being persecuted or that they fear being persecuted on those grounds, they can be granted refugee status in America. People also have the right to asylum if they're being persecuted because they belong to a "particular social group," but what that means, who that applies to, is a matter of a legal dispute. In the case in court today, the question is whether or not homeschoolers count as a "particular social group" and should be granted asylum if they come to the US from a country where homeschooling isn't legal, such as Germany.

The political agitation coming out of this court case bears only the slightest relation to the legal issue, though.

The activists who care about this case, Romeike vs. Holder, don't appear to be at all interested in the legal issue at the heart of the case. They are, though, very interested in the way public perception of the case allows them to agitate against the Obama administration and for homeschooling.

The Romeike family has become a cause célèbre on the American right.

Uwe and Hannalore Romeike left southwest Germany in 2008, facing mounting fines for their refusal to send their children to either a public or private school. At the behest of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a non-profit committed to advocating for the rights of parents to homeschool, the Romeike's travelled to the US on tourist visas and then applied for asylum, claiming they were being persecuted in Germany for their religious belief that they should homeschool. The family does not belong to nor affiliate with any religious organization, but cited numerous Bible verses that they say instruct them to educate their own children, despite their lack of official credentials to do so.

The couple also claimed the German education system was teaching their children all sorts of things that they were opposed to, including witchcraft, though they didn't offer any evidence to support those claims.

Uwe Romeike told the authorities, "God requires me and my wife to educate our children at home ourselves."

In 2010, a federal judge ruled that the family was indeed a "particular social group" -- i.e., homeschoolers -- being persecuted in Germany, and thus could be considered to have the right to asylum in America.

The Romeike's lawyers also argued they were being discriminated against because of their political opinions and religious beliefs, but the court didn't accept those arguments. The family had no history of political activity. They certainly were religious, but the law they were accused of violating had no religious component to it, and didn't qualify, legally, as amounting to religious persecution. The judge wrote, however, that the family was being attacked by the German government because the German government, "for some unknown reason," wants to suppress the particular social group that is home schoolers. Their request for asylum was granted.

Then, a year ago, the immigration appeals board overturned the court's decision. The board ruled the Romeike's were not legally entitled to the status of refugees, as homeschoolers do not constitute a protected class, since they are a diverse group, amorphous. The main legal standards for establishing a group as a "particular social group," established by the precedent of court rulings, require the Romeike's lawyers prove that homeschoolers are a group with immutable characteristics. This means they have to make the case that being a homeschooler involves "a characteristic that either is beyond the power of an individual to change or is so fundamental to individual identity or conscience that it ought not be required to be changed." There are also other interpretations of what this term means that have been used by the courts, as is outlined in a Boston College International and Comparative Law Review article that strongly supports the Romeike's asylum case. The extensive legal issues involved in this case are further argued by one of the HSLDA lawyers in a long blog post here.

None of that shows up in the popular arguments being about this case, however.

Instead, the HSLDA is promoting arguments like this:

That comparison has been picked up and repeated by those who strongly support homeschooling and strongly oppose Obama and, generally, American liberalism. For example, a self-described "homeschooling guru" blogger writes,

the Obama Administration, while disregarding millions of illegal immigrants and Mexican drug lords sneaking over the Southern borders, dismissed the judge’s argument and immediately set their sights on an innocuous homeschooling family from Germany .... This case should be on the radar screen of every parent who values the freedom to raise and educate our children without government interference.

A FOX News story opened with the same comparison between "good" immigrants and the bad ones: "While the White House and many lawmakers push to grant legal status to immigrants who crossed the border illegally, the Romeike family thought they followed the rules -- but now face deportation."

None of this has anything to do with the case, in reality. The merits of the case -- on which the case will be debated and will be decided -- have not the slightest relationship to the question of immigration reform or general immigration policy. The politics of immigration aren't at issue in the federal appeals court.

The case has even less to do with Nazism, but the political agitators have been very aggressive in associating Germany's education law to that dark period of German history, making the hand-wavy argument that either this family should get asylum in America or the Nazis win. Though public education has existed in Germany since Luther, and was law long before Nazis took charge, people defending the Romeike's right to be seen as persecuted refugees repeat claims that German education policy is, at bottom, a Nazi policy.

As HSLDA head Michael Farris put it,

the German government wants to prohibit people who think differently from the government (on religious or philosophical grounds) from growing and developing into a force in society. It is thought control. 

It is belief control. It is totalitarianism dressed up in politically correct lingo. 

In the same vein, HSLDA has argued people should speak up in support of the Romeike's because:

While Dietrich Bonhoeffer's face may not symbolize principled opposition to growing government encroachment on the freedom of religion to everyone, that's what it communicates to Christian conservatives in America today.

Nor are the ad hitlerum arguments always so subtle.

A Neo-Calvinist homeschooler wrote that in this case, the US Attorney General is taking the side of Nazism in federal court. The homeschooling father writes:

This may be a glowing example of the argumentum ad hitlerium fallacy, but consider the facts. Adolf Hitler will be one of Eric Holder’s witnesses for the prosecution against the Romeikes. This is a human rights contest where the prosecution will posthumously call Adolf Hitler to testify on their behalf whenever German law is invoked, and the German Supreme Court’s upholding of these Nazi laws is the primary witness in Eric Holder’s case against the Romeikes.

No facts are actually involved in that paragraph. But details of how and why German education policy developed aren't relevant to rhetorical excess, nor to the political argument for homeschooling and against government generally. And anyway, no one who is making this argument-by-free-association seems to have bothered to investigate why Germans tolerate and even avidly support the ban on homeschooling.

It's enough, politically, to shout "Hilter!"

Or, as a columnist at the right-leaning Washington Times wrote, "small-minded and grasping totalitarianism .... It sounds like they aren’t really big on religious or philosophical diversity over there."

Even if it were what it seemed like or sounded like to those who think loose comparisons to Hitler serve as evidence of totalitarian intent, that wouldn't be relevant to this court case being heard in Ohio today. The decision won't be based on anything having to do with Hitler. Or immigration. Or any of the political conflicts being actively aggravated by homeschooling advocates in loose connection to the Romeike case.

The court case isn't about any of these things.

But then maybe that's the point, because HSLDA can lose this appeal and still advance its cause and rally its base with all this rhetoric and agitation that's only tangentially connected to the court case purportedly arousing it. Getting people up in arms can serve a purpose. And people are unlikely to strong emotional reactions to debates over the definition of "particular social group" in a US asylum law passed in 1980. The politics of this and the legal case in the courts are, when one looks at them, only barely related. The two discourses never quite intersect, even when they're presented as being (and necessarily, for the sake of the politics) entirely the same.

This is what's really crazy about the public debates about politically sensitive court cases -- knowing the facts of the case and legal issues being debated doesn't really turn out to be particularly relevant to the social groups who really, passionately care.

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Teaching the history of American atheism

There are more than a few resources available to those who would teach on atheism, so long as they conceive of atheism in philosophical terms. There are anthologies, and college course syllabi available online, and a more-or-less established sense of what would be included in such a course.

For those interested in teaching on the history of atheism, this isn't the case.

Personally, I became interested in atheism as a historical phenomena when thinking about how to explain the relationship between the New Atheists and the cultural changes at the turn of the century -- the terrorist attacks of 2001, the election of George W. Bush, and the rise of blogging in particular. While the arguments being advanced by New Atheists were, from the most part, not directly speaking to their political and cultural context, those things seemed relevant nonetheless. They're relevant not necessarily in terms of evaluating the arguments being made, but in terms of understanding why the arguments were what they were, and why they were being made in the ways they were. It seemed, further, that in the atheism debates that sprang up in the first part of the 21st century, atheism was consistently being treated as one thing, a timeless and unchanging philosophy. But when one looks at actually existing atheism, there are always multiple movements and counter-movements and many contested claims about coextensive commitments that come along with atheism.

Atheism, that is to say, is always, in history, atheisms. In the plural, they are, I find, more complex, more fraught, and more alive than they're generally made to seem in popular, public conversations.

Thinking about atheism ahistorically means leaving out a lot of interesting and arguably important aspects of the atheisms that people hold to and live their lives with.

Approaching the subject as history, on the other hand, allows one to focus on at least two important issues. One, what cultural conditions contributed to and determined the shape and tenor of various atheist movements, and two, what effect those movements had and have on the culture. Approaching atheism historically can mean (for example) allowing for the space necessary to think about how different political environments and philosophies were hospitable to different movements of atheists at different times -- why, for example, Republicans in the Gilded Age gladly counted Robert Ingersoll as one of their own, while in the first decades of the 20th century atheists were associated and affiliated with the more radical strains of the politics of the left.

As far as I can tell, the only readily available historical works on atheism tend towards hagiography, or are designed to be dismissive, so that "history" means either "model for moral instruction" or "refutation." Such approaches aren't great, academically. While they may be useful for arguing for atheism or against atheism, they're not helpful in teaching about atheism, which is what I want to do.

I am trying to teach the history of American atheism(s) this semester. I've had to create my own canon, to do that, with a bit of very helpful advice. With the thought that there may be others interested in teaching such a course, or anyway, general interest in approaching atheism as aspect of American history, I offer my course schedule reading list here, along with some explanatory notes.

In selecting the assigned readings, I kept two principals in mind: One, representitiveness; Two, accessibility.

It quickly became evident that it would not be possible to be comprehensive, given limitations of a semester. But I wanted readings that would adequately represent the various movements of atheism in American history, give students a vairly complete overview, and I wanted to have selections that would sufficiently present the particular thinkers and their arguments. Also I wanted readings that would not give my students -- mostly in their first years of university, coming from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from a number of different disciplines -- too much trouble. Plus I had to be able to get ahold of the given readings and make them available to the students. With those limitations and goals, here's what I came up with:

15 April

Introduction; syllabus; definitions; review of classic arguments for the existence of God

22 April

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Selections from Age of Reason

Joel Barlow (1754-1812)

Selections from Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World, by Richard Buel, Jr.

29 April

Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)

"Centennial Oration"; "Why I am an Agnostic"; selections from The Great Agnostic, by Susan Jacoby

Elizabeth Candy Stanton (1815-1902)

Selections from A Woman's Bible

6 May

Charles Chilton Moore (1837-1906)

Selections from Kentucky's Most Hated Man, by John Sparks

Blue Grass Blade

Selections from Letter from an Atheist Nation, ed. Thomas Lawson

13 May

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)

"Religion and the Mores"; "That it is Not Wicked to be Rich; Nay, Even That it is Not Wicked to be Richer Than One's Neighbor"; "The Shifting of Responsiblity"; "Sketch of William Graham Sumner," by Albert Galloway Keller; "God and Man at Yale (in 1880)" by George Marsden

20 May

Max Eastman (1883-1969)

"The Religion of Patriotism"

Mike Gold (1894-1967)

"The Jesus-Thinkers"

27 May

H.L. Menken (1880-1956)

Selections from Damn! A Book of Calumny; Scopes trial reporting

3 June: NO CLASS 

10 June 

Humanist Manifestoes (1933; 1973)

17 June

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

Selections from Black Boy

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Selections from Go Tell it on a Mountain

24 June

Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Selections from Atlas Shrugged; Playboy Interview 1964

1 July

Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919-1995)

Playboy Interview 1965, "The Murder of the Madalyn Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman," by Lona Manning

8 July

William Hamilton (1924-2012)

"The New Essence of Christianity"

Thomas J.J. Altizer (1927- )

"A Wager"

Make-up class:

Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

"The Relation of Science and Religion"; "Cargo Cult Science"

Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

"Pale Blue Dot"; selections from "The Varieties of Scientific Experience"

15 July

Daniel Dennett (1942- )

"The Bright Stuff"; "Atheism and Evolution"; "The Evolution of Misbelief"

22 July

Chris Stedman (1987- )

Selections from Faitheist

Conclusion; wrap-up 

A few thoughts:
1. It would be very easy to double the number of readings. There are lots and lots of people who are not here and could be here, though hopefully the above gives a good overview even though it's not comprehensive.
2. There were a number of people who I ended up leaving out because their work is limited mainly to criticizing instantiations of Chrisitanity, and they don't generally go beyond that. Examples range from 19th century abolitionists to 21st century media figures. I gave preference to works where epistemological and metaphysical claims are made.
3. If this could be expanded, it would be worth looking at those who were not atheists per se but attempted to establish secular alternatives to traditional religions, such as Felix Addler and John Muir. Such movements will be referenced in discussions of readings that are included, but there are limits on time that forced me to make some tough decisions.
4. With a few noted exceptions, fictional works on atheism were not included. While there would ideally be space for Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, etc., etc., there was a problem of accessibility. In some cases, non fiction versions of the author's arguments are easier to teach. In others, the issue of excerpting a short enough portion of text for a single undergrad class was very problematic. Additionally, teaching fiction is different than teaching argumentative essays, and switching back and forth too much presents a number of challenges.
5. There are only a few secondary texts, here, mostly in the first month of class. The secondary texts I've found tend to be very uneven. The hope, though, is that these texts will demonstrate to the students how one can take a primary text and situate it historically and read it in historical context, which the class will then do with the later texts.
6. Class time will be given to a combination of history lectures and group discussions explicating the assigned readings.

This is obviously a work in progress, but, I hope, a promising one.

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A tax on sex outside of marriage

Chuck Colson died a year ago today. The one-time Watergate criminal, who converted to evangelical Christianity after his indictment, played a pivotal role in the political mobilization of American evangelicals, particularly by popularizing and promoting the work of Francis Schaeffer and the idea of "worldviews," and also in convincing evangelicals to work with Catholics on common social causes.

In one of his very last daily radio commentaries, broadcast April 2, Colson argued tax policies necessarily reflects legislator's worldview, and that conceptions of "sin" are important to the shape that those tax policies take. He said,

... the number of sin taxes is increasing, perhaps because legislators simply want to be on record as opposing the 'sins' of alcohol, smoking, and even sugary drinks! 

It’s odd, though, that despite this feeding frenzy, nobody is proposing to tax an activity that nearly every previous generation saw as truly sinful and harmful to society: sexual promiscuity. 

In fact, the word 'promiscuity' is no longer uttered after the word 'sexual' in polite company, although the word 'freedom' certainly is. And we actually celebrate sexual promiscuity. 

... now the Sexual Left not only excuses sin, they want us to actually subsidize it.

It's a clever argument, partly playfully facetious, built not on argument for a policy position per se but the deftness of the reversal of the policy position being opposed, an argument via subversion, mutates mutandis.

That style was not incidental to his success, I don't think.

The late Colson's radio commentaries can be heard here. Colson's columns for Christianity Today, including those he co-wrote with the Catholic theologian Robert P. George, can be found here. The radio commentaries of those who have continued his work -- including those of popular Dietrich Bonhoeffer biographer Eric Metaxas -- can be heard here.

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George Beverly Shea, 1909 - 2013

George Beverly Shea, who sang at Billy Graham crusades for more than 60 years, died on Tuesday at the age of 104.

According to the PR Newswire article, he was

Born in Winchester, Ontario, Canada, where his father was a Wesleyan Methodist minister, Shea's first public singing was in the choir of his father's church. Between Crusade, radio, and television dates in many countries, he sang at hundreds of concerts and recorded more than 70 albums of sacred music. At age 23 he composed the music to one of his best known solos, "I'd Rather Have Jesus."

He won a Grammy in 1965, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys in 2011. He was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Religious Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1996.

According to Shea's authorized biography, written by Paul Davis, Shea turned down an early offer of a career in secular music. He won a radio competition, singing Go Down Moses and was offered a recording contract, but wasn't comfortable with anything but gospel music. After he joined with Graham in 1940s, he wholly committed his talent to evangelical outreach. That talent did not go unappreciated. As Davis writes,

In those dizzy, busy days of Billy Graham Missions, his hit records barely kept pace with demand as his multiple admirers flocked to see him in person or on the silver screen in his movie musical shorts or cameo in Christian feature films.

The New York Times reports he was "perhaps the most widely heard gospel artist in the world."

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Psalms for sale

One of the few extant copies of the Bay Psalm Book, either the first book or one of the first books printed in what is now the United States (depending on your definition of "book"). The psalter is very small -- 6 inches by 5 inches -- and is one of only 1,700 printed by Massachusetts Puritans in 1640. The book goes on auction in November. It is expected to bring in more than $15 million. That money will go to Boston's Old South Church, the current owner, a United Church of Christ congregation that has been struggling financially.

The head of the auction house's book department said "It is a mythical rarity. Yet here it is today, this modest little book printed in the American wilderness but embodying the values that created our nation: political freedom and religious liberty."

Update: One of the bombs that went off yesterday at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (after I wrote this post) was outside the Old South Church. The church was not damaged. On their facebook page, they ask people to "Please continue to pray for those impacted by today's events."

[Cross-posted at Jonathan Edwards Center Germany].

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'Heathens' and the history of 'In God We Trust'

In a pending federal lawsuit, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is seeking to get "God" taken off of U.S. currency. Previous attempts have been unsuccessful. The group claims that the motto -- which was reaffirmed by Congress in 2011 -- makes full citizenship seem to be contingent on assent with monotheism, and coerces atheists into promoting monotheism, as they're forced to carry and distribute the message "In God We Trust."

According to the lawsuit, the motto on American money violates both religion clauses of the First Amendment, giving a government endorsement to a religious belief and putting a substantial burden on atheists right not to practice religion.

Whatever one thinks of the legal merits of Newdow vs. the Congress of the United States, the complaint offers an extensive and fascinating look at the history or American money's dedication to God. Part of the story is familiar: in the context of Cold War antagonisms, American politicians, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were eager for the country to confess God, even if only in the vaguest of terms. Religiousness served to unify Americans against "the Godless commies," and to sanctify economic and political interests.

Less familiar are mid 19th century efforts to put "God" on American money.

In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, some thought mentioning the divine on coins would be a good response to "heathenism."

Possibly, in particular, the suspected heathenism of Abraham Lincoln.

According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation suit:

On November 13, 1861, Rev. M.R. Watkinson -- characterizing himself as a 'Minister of the Gospel' -- wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase seeking 'the recognition of the Almighty God in some form in our coins.' Noting to the Secretary that '[y]ou are probably a Christian,' Rev. Watkinson claimed that such recognition was important to 'relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism.' Additionally, the minister argued that such recognition 'would place us under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.' In response, on November 20, 1861, Secretary Chase wrote a short note to James Pollock, then the Director of the Mint in Philadelphia, making the purely religious claim that 'No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.' Secretary Chase then instructed Director Pollock to 'cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.'

Chase was a leader in the Republican party, a strong anti-slavery advocate, and part of the party's radical wing that pushed Abraham Lincoln to be less conservative and cautious. He was religious himself, but it's possible Chase wasn't motivated by his own Christian faith as much as the political desire to thwart the idea that the Lincoln administration was anti-religious. I.e., heathenish.

The president, after all, would, only a year later, tell a group of concerned Protestants that he couldn't know whether or not it was God's will that he free the slaves. Asked to invoke God on behalf of the cause, he resisted. "These are not," Lincoln wrote, "the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted to me that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right."

That sort of secularism didn't sit well with a lot of Americans, circa 1861. Public, pro forma recognitions of God were more popular. 

It's not clear whether or not anyone was convinced of the goodness of the Union cause by the legend on the coins, though. When Congress took up the issue of the monotheistic inscription four years later, a New York Times editorial noted it sounded a bit like a dying profession of faith, too desperate to be taken at face value. According to the paper:

in view of our recent struggle for national life, does it not sound somewhat like a death-bed repentance? Does it not remind one of the significant words of the MASTER, whose estimate of this common medium was expressed in the words: "Whose image and superscription is this?" Without questioning the good motives that led to the enactment of this new form of national worship, we respectfully submit that such tract-printing by the government is always improper, and, just now especially, ill-timed [....] Let us try to carry our religion -- such as it is -- in our hearts, and not in our pockets.

It's not too hard, interestingly, to find Christian sermons making that last point today, contrasting the cheapness of words on money with what the preacher holds to be true Christian trust in God. Though, typically, conservative Christians are thought to be strong supporters of government declarations of dependance on God, the motto on the money regularly comes in for critique from conservative pulpits. At a Church of God in Conyers, Ga., in a sermon speaking to the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, the pastor preached:

every time we make or spend money, the money reminds us that our trust, as a nation, is not in the money, or the army, or the politicians. Our trust is in God. But is it really? Do we really trust God, or has our trust in God been shaken by the economic crisis that our nation is in? Do we trust in God or are we looking to someone or something else to deliver us?

In Franklin, Wisc., at Victory of the Lamb, a church that's part of the theologically conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, a whole sermon series was built off of that critique of the national motto. The series was called "In God We (Really) Trust." The church announced the series this way:

'In God We Trust.' The phrase is printed on all our money. But does our nation really trust in God?  

More importantly, do we really trust in God? Just asking the question may offend some of us. Of course I trust in God!  

Perhaps the more pointed question might be: how deeply do I trust in God?  

Jesus makes it clear that trust radically changes the way we look at and think about the world, our money and our God. This series is not for the faint of heart or for those who do not want to be stretched or challenged. 

Presumably neither church goes in for "heathenism," but the way the debate about the motto takes shape in the national discourse, criticism is often assumed to be coming from a place of anti-religious animus. In 1907, for example, when the place of the phrase on the nation's money was being debated again, the Rev. Charles Edward Locke declared, according to the suit now before the federal courts,"I have never heard of any body of men who believe in the sacred principles of patriotism passing resolutions asking to have the sentiment removed, but from my childhood I have heard the blatant protests of infidels and unbelievers against this custom."

That might be a decent description of the folks at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They might object to the phrase "infidels," but would probably acknowledge, at least, that the reverend was talking about people like them.

The history of efforts to inscribe American money with words of monotheistic devotion, and resistance to those efforts, however, don't sort out so easily into opposition between believers and non-believers. The history of this is complicated, and political, and, as this current lawsuit serves to illustrate, both long and peculiarly fascinating.

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