Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (37 page)

In 1884, Moore started a newspaper called the
Blue Grass Blade
with the explicit purpose of promoting freethought and atheism — the first such periodical ever. His editorials against religion drew shock and outrage, and he began to receive regular death threats. In 1894 he said, “If there is a devil, Bourbon County [Kentucky] is nearer and dearer to his heart than any place of its size on earth” — and earned himself a stint in jail for it.

In 1903, Moore solicited letters from his readers on the topic “Why I Am an Atheist.” Letters flooded in from people in all walks of life — men and women, rich and poor, educated and not, farmers, teachers, housewives, doctors, the works. Reading the stories not of philosophers and famous authors but of regular folks grappling with the same big questions is incredibly moving. As a result of his trials and his newspaper, Moore earned the epithet of “Most Hated Man in Kentucky.”

As usual, rumors of a deathbed conversion to Christianity made the rounds after Moore’s death in 1906, and his wife and his publisher were left to deny them.

The “Most Hated Woman in America,” Part I: Emma Goldman

Around the turn of the 20th century, “Red Emma” Goldman (1869–1940) was the convenient embodiment of everything bad and scary to the sensibilities of the time: anarchy, communism, free speech, gay rights, pacifism, reproductive freedom, prison reform, free love — oh, and atheism.

Any challenger of the powers that be who writes and speaks for more than a year or so will eventually be challenging the powers in wartime. For Goldman it was the First World War, and sure enough, she was accused of treasonous activity for criticizing the US government, the war itself, and the draft. It couldn’t have helped that she published a powerful essay called “The Philosophy of Atheism” in 1916 — one of the most powerful and eloquent defenses of the worldview written to that point.

Goldman managed to step on just about every exposed nerve in the United States of her time. People in the United States particularly hated and feared
anarchism
(the desire to live without government) because an anarchist had assassinated President William McKinley a few years earlier — not long after hearing an Emma Goldman speech. People hated and feared pacifism because the United States was at war. People hated and feared atheism and communism because fears that the Bolshevik Revolution would spread to the workers of the United States had spawned the Red Scare of 1919. So it was an especially bad time to be Emma Goldman — or an especially good one, depending on how you look at it.

In 1917, as the United States prepared to enter the war and the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, the American fears of the time converged to earn Goldman the undisputed title of “Most Hated Woman in America.” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover seized on the national mood, arrested Goldman for speaking against the draft, and deported her to Russia, her birthplace, in 1919.

The “Most Hated Woman in Britain”: Margaret Knight

The mild-mannered Margaret Knight (1903–1983) seemed like a Girl Scout compared to other atheists on the “Most Hated” list. But a mere ten minutes talking about moral education on BBC Radio in 1955 was enough to earn Knight a whole slew of nasty nicknames, including “The Unholy Mrs. Knight” and “The Most Hated Woman in Britain.”

Knight had been a student at Cambridge when a little bit of Bertrand Russell reading helped her find what she called the “moral courage” to give up her religious beliefs. “It was as if a fresh, cleansing wind swept through the stuffy room that contained the relics of my religious beliefs,” she said years later. “I let them go with a profound sense of relief, and ever since I have lived happily without them.”

In the years after the Second World War, immigration from Eastern Europe and India quickly changed the ethnic and religious face of Britain. The BBC made a good effort to keep up, inviting a wider variety of belief perspectives on its radio programs. In 1955, Knight, then a professor of psychology, delivered two short radio addresses on the BBC Home Service under the title “Morals without Religion.”

Her tone was civil and her thesis simple: moral education should be separated from religious education so that all people, regardless of their perspective, can have a shared understanding of it.

Knight was stepping on a raw nerve here. In addition to ethnic and racial diversity, the United Kingdom after WWII was rapidly going secular. Both church attendance and reported belief were way down and sinking fast. To many listeners, Knight’s broadcasts seemed to confirm the suspicion that religion was “under attack” in Britain.

Though she reported a good deal of positive feedback, most of the public response was outraged. “Don’t let this woman fool you,” said one editorial. “She looks — doesn’t she — just like the typical housewife; cool, comfortable, harmless. But Mrs. Margaret Knight is a menace. A dangerous woman. Make no mistake about that.”

But in a later book on the subject, Knight shared one letter from a listener in Germany that she found especially moving:

Please accept the gratitude from an unknown man who has seen in your talk the sunrising of a new epoch based on the simple reflection; to do the good because it is good and not because you have to expect to be recompensed after your death. Being myself a victim of Nazi oppression I think that we all have to teach our children the supreme ethics based on facts and not on legends in the deepest interest for the future generations.

The “Most Hated Woman in America,” Part II: Madalyn Murray O’Hair

In the 1960s and 1970s, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the face of atheism in the United States. O’Hair was founder and president of American Atheists and a plaintiff in a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court that banned compulsory Bible readings in public schools (see the next section for more discussion).

O’Hair was the embodiment of the nightmares of a Middle America still immersed in the psychological terror of the Cold War and who saw religion as the defining difference between the United States and the Soviet Union. It made little difference to the brash O’Hair, who pursued church-state separation with an unapologetic fervor, going after everything from “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to “In God We Trust” on the currency, quickly earning her turn as the “Most Hated Woman in America.” When she wasn’t at the Supreme Court, she was on the talk shows where she delighted in provoking religious opponents into spitting fits of rage.

Though even atheists are divided over Madalyn’s approach, there’s no denying her impact. The legal precedents she helped establish were a huge step forward in securing religious freedom for all Americans, regardless of their perspective.

Courting the Separation of Church and State

Church-state separation — the principle that government should be separate from organized religion, shouldn’t endorse any particular religion, and shouldn’t restrict the religious freedom of its citizens — took a number of leaps forward in the 20th century. Almost every new national constitution in the century included religious freedom as a guarantee, and many specifically included church-state separation as a way of achieving that.

In the United States, the Supreme Court reached several key decisions that helped rebuild the wall of separation that had been seriously eroded over the years in American public schools. When a Pennsylvania student named Ellory Schempp protested his high school’s daily Bible reading requirement by bringing a Qur’an to read instead, he was sent to the principal’s office. His father sued, and the case began wending its way up through the system.

In 1960, atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued to protest the same requirement in her son’s Baltimore school (refer to the previous section for more on O’Hair). The two cases were merged, and in 1963, the US Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that mandatory Bible readings in public schools were a violation of church-state separation. And in 1962, the Court ruled that organized, mandatory prayer in schools was also unconstitutional.

Notice the word “mandatory.” Individual prayer wasn’t banned, and even organized group prayer is still allowed as long as the school doesn’t lead it and it isn’t mandatory for all students, which is a very reasonable compromise — but one very widely misrepresented and misunderstood.

Canada, which not only allowed but mandated Bible reading and the Lord’s Prayer at the start of each school day for most of its history, banned the practice in 1996 as a restraint on religious freedom.

A few attempts at separating church and state have failed. A 1970 suit to remove “In God We Trust” from US currency failed on the weird argument that it wasn’t a theological statement. And in 2010, the Ninth Circuit court in California ruled that the words “under God” shouldn’t be in the Pledge of Allegiance, but the Supreme Court overturned that one on procedural grounds.