Angela Zito: Greta Christina gives us a list of the ten worst states to be an atheist. It’s really a list of: “Ten Worst States to Declare Publicly That You’re an Atheist.” A lot of the anger is actually about atheists daring to claim some part of the public discourse for their set of beliefs, be it parading on Veterans Day in Pennsylvania, putting up billboards announcing the existence of atheists, forming a high school group, running for office as an atheist, or objecting aloud to Christian media like banners in the work or school place. In short, it’s about contesting media monopoly for a narrow range of religious discussion and practice. To be sure, these fights are about theological nicety and content, but they are just as much about the power to speak out–which bleeds directly into political life, into questions of who owns the public sphere and who gets to dispose of public resources. Then it feels like “religion” carries, while hiding, a great weight of social responsibility and political power in its agenda-bag. Ouch? Oh, but it actually does, always, and here is where we find the proof.
3 comments
Aphaniptera says:
Jun 10, 2011
While there is, no doubt, a lot of entrenched counter-pressure to any attempt to voice an atheist perspective in those states (and in the U.S. at large) it doesn’t help that, in many places, atheist have sought to inhabit venues that favor flash over content.
Back when President Obama was Candidate Obama, there was, so you’ll no doubt remember, a minor scandal over his membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church. The pressure was on Obama to make a statement that would satisfy the public that the association wasn’t cause for concern. The conventional response would have been clipped and simplistic: an expression of defiance, or a bid to distance himself from the church. What Obama did instead was give a nuance and disarming speech that put Wright’s sermons is something like their proper historical and cultural perspective, while at the same time broaching one of the more pervasive cultural divides that have plagued this country almost from the beginning. For me, it certainly felt like a turning point in his career, and did more than nearly anything else he said in his campaign to give substance to the platform of “Hope” and “Change.”
The point is that it’s difficult to put that sort of message on a billboard or on the side of the bus, or to initiate that sort of conversation while marching in a parade. The so-called New Atheist camp has largely approached the public discussion over religion and atheism as a kind of PR campaign, haggling over what would be the best name for softening public perceptions of atheists (Brights? Humanists? Rationalists?) and suggesting ways to tar moderate and extremist religionists with the same brush.
What the atheists in this country need more than anything else is a venue that will allow them to present their unbelief not as a platform to be pressed like the latest consumer product or political party, but rather as an aspect of identities that have their own value, both intrinsically and as part of the broader social milieu. The sort of reconciling, taboo-breaking moment that nullified the scandal over Obama’s affiliation with Jeremiah Wright won’t be possible until the most vocal elements within the atheist community stop looking for venues that lend themselves to divisive soundbites and bumper sticker sloganeering.
angela says:
Jun 11, 2011
Your comment humbles me. Thoughtful and right on the mark! I neglected the other side of the problem. If I gave the impression that I think that the struggle for media presence is just one of “media management” and “rhetorical tactics” in public space, then I am sorry. If that comes off as glib, I don’t mean it to. You have rightly pointed out the depressing downside of having our communicative lives reduced to PR (a boom industry) and gave a great example of what can happen when someone looks around and past the tag-line alternative. The stakes are a lot higher than that, and using a billboard does not really forward the possibility of deeper engagement. On the other hand, the reaction to said billboards does indicate, at least, the arena of battle. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could indeed move it into a more complex terrain!
Aphaniptera says:
Jun 11, 2011
No need to feel humbled. My response was more about the general state of the public discussion in contemporary America discourse than about your comments in particular. And as far as it goes, your point stands: There is an ongoing struggle over certain public platforms. But that struggle shouldn’t persist without some consideration of the worth of those platforms, and which are really worth the effort.
It seems to me that a site like The Revealer is well-placed to start searching out and pushing toward the sort of vantage point needed to carry on that more nuanced and complex discussion. It has in its favor that it has not (so far as I’ve seen) allied itself to polemicists like Harris and Hitchens, whose idea of a more complex terrain appears to involve little more than increasingly sophisticated arguments for expunging religion from the public sphere.
Given that The Revealer>/i>’s stated purview is that of “religion and the media,” there’s certainly scope in which to conduct an ongoing conversation about not only the way in which atheists are portrayed in the media, but also one about the way in which atheists present themselves, either to the discussion’s advantage or disadvantage, in their increasing attempts to raise the community’s visibility through the media.