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Commentary Too - Apr 26, 2005 - Printable Version
- The First Amendment Paradox
by S.K. Eleton
I was recently privileged to have an interchange of e-mails with the editor of one of the nation's alternative press progressive magazines. During this interchange, we were discussing the intertwining of religion and politics in the United States, and the increasing difficulty getting secular news even in the left-wing press. I explained in my e-mails that I did not expect to see any increase in coverage for non-believers, but I did want to express some of my concerns about the direction the country was heading, and try to address my feelings of helplessness at the takeover by the religious right. The editor expressed some surprise at my insistence on publishing my letter to him under a pseudonym, stating that it gave the perverse impression that non-believers should be in hiding. I wasn't totally surprised by this, as I am very aware that few people are informed about the level of risk suffered by non-believers in this country today. I addressed this in my previous column, and am not going to rehash that here, although recent events have led me to be thankful I have never in a momentary lapse of judgment uncloseted myself (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041105F.shtml). During the course of our e-mail exchange, this statement came from the editor of this progressive journal: "I agree that the United States is supposed to be a secular democracy, but we cannot ignore the fact that nearly 90% of Americans have some religious affiliation, 84% of them are Christians and two-thirds go to church regularly". I found this somewhat disturbing, and I will explain my thinking. Imagine the same scenario if the same editor received a letter from a Jewish subscriber who felt that the way the magazine handled Jewish issues was inappropriate. During his response, this editor happened to point out to the Jewish subscriber that we must remember that only about 2% of the United States population is Jewish, or even if he included the exact statement cited above. Imagine if a black reader wrote in to point out some issue pertaining to the black community that he felt had been ignored or misreported in some way. If he received a reply pointing out that 86% of the population of this country is non-black, he would be quite justified in feeling slighted or even a little outraged. If questioned, the editor would no doubt state that such a response on his part would be totally inappropriate. I would agree with that.
For many years, the progressive media has been a voice for minority news and opinions. Groups that are frequently ignored by the mainstream press find their voice in the smaller, less well read journals of the alternative media. Overall, I would have to say that the alternative media do a good job on this. They take this role seriously, and rarely hesitate to speak up in support of small, despised minority groups across the spectrum of our nation. With one exception. Outside of a handful of magazines that are published by the secular humanist society or other similar organizations, and are read only by free-thinkers and non-believers, there is rarely any mention of the rights or issues of non-believers. The community of individuals that consider themselves atheistic, agnostic, or just religiously apathetic constitutes a significant minority in American society, but a largely invisible one. People notice atheists only when they need someone to blame for something particularly dastardly. For instance, atheists get mentioned every time someone brings up the topic of banishment of bible-reading from schools (a case filed by a Roman Catholic) and prayer from school football games (also filed by Roman Catholics and by Mormons). "Those atheists" caused these terrible tragedies. The mainstream press jumps on these stories. The alternative press mostly stays silent, or rings in to support separation of church and state without necessarily setting the record straight about the role of atheism in our society. The fact that atheists are the subject of hate crimes rarely gets reported. There is little attention paid to the harassment that is suffered by atheists. And now the alternative press, when this is brought to their attention, point out that American society is mostly Christian. I will maintain that is true. Which is why atheists and agnostics really need the alternative press to be receptive to their issues. The mainstream press simply isn't going to care. For the mainstream press, non-believers are just another source of amusing stereotype, just as blacks and Jews and American Indians have been for so long.
The First Amendment to the American Constitution is a remarkable thing. A precedent-setting, ground-breaking event. Nothing like it had existed before. Our Founding Fathers committed a bold, innovative break from tradition in establishing the freedoms contained in it. One of the purposes, and one of the effects, of this amendment has been to protect minority views from tyranny by the majority. Americans should rightly be proud of this amendment, this enshrinement of the basic rights of human dignity and freedom. They should stand up against any force, foreign or domestic, that attempts to weaken or destroy it. Instead, we are daily seeing assaults on the most precious of rights contained within this amendment, assaults that are all too often ignored or even cheered on by large segments of the American public. Why are we so afraid of free speech? Why are we so terrified of free press? What is such a frightening thing about freedom of religion? It would be easy to dismiss these complex questions with a simplistic answer - it's just because we all really believe in freedom for our own thoughts, our own speech and our own religion, but have much less tolerance for the freedom of others. That is, at least in part, true. But it is not all the story. There are many reasons why people feel uncomfortable at the idea of free thought.
One evening last week, while I was sitting quietly listening to a great roar of nothingness surrounding me, I had a minor revelation. My mind turned inward to deep and sometimes unsettling thoughts, and turned eventually to this perplexing question of the first amendment. It has always been difficult for me to see anything in the first amendment that could possibly be objectionable. All my life, my teachers and my parents taught me about the wonderful freedoms enshrined within our Constitution. I would always have the right, they said, to think and speak and worship in whatever way I found most appropriate (of course, my parents felt this operated only under the assumption that I found their way most appropriate, but it took me a few years to realize that). I grew up believing in this freedom, and freely roamed through many of the major belief systems and philosophies of the world. I have looked at Eastern religions, Western religions, even spent a little time pondering over some of the tribal religions. I have thought about deism, animism, paganism, agnosticism and atheism. I have even dabbled a little bit in several different ones of those as a practitioner, trying them on for size, as it were. Eventually, I moved from fundamentalist Christianity through deism into agnosticism. I never declared myself an atheist until the first time on these pages, merely a couple of months ago. But throughout all that time, I assumed that my freedom to explore and create and discover was protected. Protected by a 200-year-old document that is considered the basis for the law of our land. It is unfortunate that in practice, I rarely experienced what existed in theory. I was, on this evening, pondering the implications of the first amendment, and wondering why it was so difficult to practice. It suddenly hit me - the biggest problem with the first amendment is that it is based on a paradox.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". For most people, this doesn't necessarily pose any inherent problem. For some religious individuals, however, it is a deep and fundamentally held belief that in order to freely practice their religion, they must institute it as the law of the land. For this reason, in enforcing the first half of the establishment clause, it is possible that for some people, you have violated the second half. It is possible that this paradox has left our nation on the horns of a dilemma. We can either respect the first half, prohibiting the establishment of a religion, or give way to those who feel that the second half is more to their liking, and know that the only way to respect it is to allow them to establish their religion as the law of the land. Unfortunately, many of those who feel the second half is more important are now in power in Washington. Perhaps the nation has made its choice at the ballot box last November. If so, it does not bode well for those of us who have always felt we could freely establish our own belief system and live within it - whether Christian, Muslim, Jew, Wiccan, Pagan - or atheist. No belief system held by those in power to be aberrant will be allowed. There will only be one religion left that is given protection of the first amendment - a distorted, warped, angry version of Christianity that tolerates no dissent.
I hereby call on all of those who dare to believe that the first amendment is precious, who dare to believe that their version of whatever religion they choose to practice (should they choose to practice one at all) is as valid as that of Tom DeLay and Jerry Falwell. I urge you to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who believe nothing at all. Don't be scared of us. Don't marginalize us. And never underestimate us. We have a lot of strength, and a lot of courage. We are on your side. We just need you on ours. Challenge your magazines and your newspapers to be more open to viewpoints outside the Judeo-Christian mainstream. Tell them you want religion out of politics - your religion, and everybody else's. Tell them you stand for the first amendment.
Our government, our Constitution, was the result of a grand experiment. This experiment is still ongoing today. Let's make it a successful one.
Visit the website of the Freedom from Religion Foundation for more information:
http://www.ffrf.org/index.php
(Editor's note: This is our second article from S.K. Eleton. To read this writer's other article on this topic, entitled "Confessions From the Closet" go to: http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/CommentaryToo/1021.html )
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