Everything I Like About Religion I Learned From an Atheist

Humanist, Nov, 1999 by Barbara Ehrenreich

One of the most alarming developments in my lifetime has been the increasing identification of patriotism and other so-called traditional values, like family, with religion. Religion is such a tricky thing. We try to teach our kids to avoid cults and sects but then, sooner or later, they get old enough to ask you to explain the difference between a cult and a genuine religion.

Is it that cults have irrational belief systems and engage in peculiar, lurid practices? No. Some religions do that, too. Is it because cults are always trying to take your money? Well, no. Religions have a tendency to do that, as well. So eventually you have to admit to your kids that it's really just a matter of size.

A couple of dozen people committing suicide in preparation for boarding the mother ship somewhere is a cult, while a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate is considered a world-class religion. A half-dozen Trotskyists meeting over coffee is considered a sect, while a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists is referred to as the Republican Party.

This fusion of patriotism and religion all started when I was a child. When they put the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, for a long time I couldn't accept it. When they were saying "one nation under God," I thought they were saying "one Asian under dog." There was also the whole question of why we had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school in the first place. Did they actually think that second-graders would defect to the Soviet Union overnight if we didn't renew that pledge every day?

And then there are all the travesties involving the founding fathers, who are usually portrayed by the Christian right as a bunch of born-again members of the Christian Coalition, even though they were mostly deists. They were exactly what many people today would call "godless atheists"--like John Adams, who described the Judeo-Christian tradition as "the bloodiest religion that ever existed" or Ethan Allen (the revolutionary hero not the furniture store), who wrote the first anti-Christian text published in America.

It's not just a matter of religion infiltrating patriotism, however. There's also the ongoing attempt in the United States to turn patriotism into a religion.

Every year Congress takes up the issue of whether to amend the Constitution to prevent the "desecration" of the American flag. This gets members into all kinds of trouble when they realize that today you can find the American flag on almost anything: T-shirts, bathing suits, even men's underwear. So they seriously discussed, in the august halls of Congress, whether underwear could be a flag and if it were ruled to be a flag in one state, would it then be a flag in all states--and whether it would then, I suppose, have to be saluted. The way it was going, I almost expected them to eventually get to the vexing issue of whether small lapses in personal hygiene committed by guys wearing the flag underwear would qualify as acts of desecration.

Not only have religion and patriotism been merging, but religion has been seeping into public policy in the form of "family values." James Dobson, a leading member of the Christian right (now there's an oxymoron for you, like conservative Marxist or airline schedule), publishes a pro-family newsletter in which I was described a couple of years ago as someone who had "devoted her life to the destruction of the American family." This despite the fact that I raised two perfect children and remain in close contact with dozens of relatives around the country--some of whom are kind of annoying, I admit, but I have never tried to destroy any of them.

I think the reason Dobson believes I must be trying to destroy the family is that I'm a feminist--which shows a typical Christian-right understanding of feminism. For example, a couple of years ago, Christian leader Pat Robertson sent out a mailing to the Iowa members of the Christian Coalition in which he explained feminism for them. He explained that the goals of feminism are to get women to (1) leave their husbands, (2) kill their children, (3) overthrow capitalism, (4) become lesbians, and (5) practice witchcraft. This is a very exhausting agenda. My question then is, if we're so good at witchcraft, why hasn't Pat Robertson turned into a little green frog yet? We'll have to work on our spells.

For the record, feminists have not tried to "destroy the family." We just thought the family was such a good idea that men might want to get involved in it, too.

And these are not partisan issues anymore. The Democrats today have been as big on family values and religion as have the Republicans. For example, President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform bill in 1996, which effectively ended this nation's obligation to the poorest of the poor. At the time he signed it, Monica Lewinsky was working in the White House and Dick Morris, the presidential aide who pushed hardest for welfare reform, was embroiled in a relationship with a Washington prostitute. But the interesting thing is that the welfare reform bill, among many ingeniously sadistic measures, provides money to bring abstinence education to unmarried poor women. Why waste that abstinence education on the poor? There are so many sites in Washington where it could be very effectively applied.