Dear Harry: The State of the Nontheistic Movement

The following is from an email I wrote to my friend Harry Lonsdale, who's ready for things to change for nontheists in America, and who wanted to know what we're going to do about it. So here's what we're doing:

1 - Rational Sunday School. This is something our Prescott group is doing, but in addition to our group, Dale McGowan's Foundation Beyond Belief is working on building secular parenting groups around the country and supporting similar Sunday Schools. This is such an important move, because I think parents sometimes stay in religious communities knowing that community is so important in nurturing responsible, well-adjusted and moral children--and previously there have been very few alternatives for secular parents. Atheist communities such as Ethical Culture have not been terribly successful in providing programs for parents, and so I think families have stayed nominally theistic in order to provide community for their children. Not the case anymore! We'll be seeing a lot more families coming out as nontheistic as more and more of these family-oriented groups spring up. I'm working on developing curriculum for our group, and in sharing it with the wider nontheistic community.

2 - Secular Coalition. Secular Coalition for America is working on developing state groups for all 50 states. SC Arizona is the first, and our kick-off went extremely well. We packed the house for the event, and for our follow-up lobbying workshop we had a few dozen nontheistic Arizonans come to learn how to influence their elected officials. Our organization has several registered lobbyists (myself included), and we intend to cultivate citizen-lobbyists as well. I believe that this organization has the potential to lend real legitimacy to nontheistic voices--and I think it is particularly powerful that we have such a wide demographic involved in the coalition including families, women, people of color and so on. The stereotype of the angry white male atheist (no offense to any angry white male atheists, of course) is on its way out! I believe we ought to focus on substantive issues that affect our families and communities: real science education; access to sex education based on facts not on religious moralizing; marriage/adoption/family equality and so on. Making ourselves visible on these issues is a way of saying clearly that nontheists care about issues of morality; we care about our families and our children and we're dedicated to improving our world.

3 - Chaplaincy. I had an excellent conversation last week with John Figdor, the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard under Greg Epstein, about the humanist program at Harvard Divinity. HCH has been working hard to make sure humanism has a respected place at the table of inter-religious dialogue, and that nontheists in places like the military, hospitals, universities and so forth have access to nontheistic/humanist council. I think this is another crucial aspect of the movement, because people need real sources of consolation during difficult times, and if the only available options are religious ones, then people come to believe that nontheism cannot be relevant to daily life. Humanism and other forms of nontheism CAN be relevant, and Harvard Divinity's humanist program, which is training humanists to help people in their communities work through questions of meaning, value and ethics in a nontheistic way, will help make that relevance clear. We need to have coherent answers to questions about how to be moral and how to navigate through suffering--and regular people need access to these answers, not just ivory tower academics who read tons of philosophical books and write esoterically on the big questions. The chaplaincy movement can help make that happen, and I feel passionate about this work. I'm continuing to volunteer for hospice with this in mind, and come spring I'm planning to finish my undergrad and then work toward chaplain credentials.

This is Serah Blain's three-pronged approach to saving the world. And now, off to change diapers!