Chris Stedman's Blog, page 27

Sam Harris, Will You Visit A Mosque With Me?

A few days ago, I published an open letter to Sam Harris in The Huffington Post in response to his recent blog post in support of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.” Just two hours after it was posted, he replied (in his first and so far only direct response to a piece on this issue):

(source)

I am very gratefuly that he took the time to read the post, respond, and share a link to it — I’m astonished, really — but I’m still hoping he’ll take me up on my offer. If you use Twitter, please feel free to tweet at him @SamHarrisOrg (and include me @ChrisDStedman) and let him know that my offer still stands. (We have options — in the days following the publication of this letter, many Muslims have reached out to me and offered to host us for a visit.)

Read on for the letter and, if you want to, please share it with others:

Sam Harris–I know you’re a busy man, but I’d like to ask you out. Will you go to mosque with me?

I’m not trying to convert you to Islam. Like you, I’m not a Muslim. Like you, I don’t believe in any gods. I’m happily, openly atheist. A queer atheist, even. Like you, I have many significant concerns about Islamic beliefs and practices. But still, I want to visit a mosque with you.

We don’t have to go alone–we could go with Mustafa Abdullah, a young community organizer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina who is currently campaigning against the state’s proposed anti-gay Amendment One. We could attend with Najeeba Syeed-Miller, a teacher and activist who has dedicated her life to peacebuilding initiatives. Or we could go with Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, who is committed to promoting pluralism and opposing bigotry, and who regularly speaks up for atheists as a religious minority in the United States.

Why am I inviting you to visit a mosque with me and my friends? Since I’m asking you publicly (I couldn’t find your phone number anywhere and I’m pretty sure this MySpace page isn’t really you), I should probably give some context.

A few weeks ago I saw you speak at the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia. Before I go on, I need to confess: your remarks blew me away. In a weekend full of incredible intellects, your frank, contemplative, eloquent speech on death, grief, and mindfulness was easily my favorite. So I was not prepared for the crushing disappointment I felt when, just a few weeks later, you published a piece called “In Defense of Profiling” in which you unequivocally stated: “We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.”

Never mind that your argument doesn’t hold water–to quote my friend Hind Makki: “What does a Muslim look like? The 9/11 hijackers didn’t have beards and ‘dressed Western.’ The shoe bomber wasn’t Arab or South Asian. Sikhs wear turbans. The majority of American Muslim women don’t wear hijab. The majority of Arab Americans are Christian–though they often share the same names as their Muslim counterparts. Perhaps Harris would support an initiative that required all Muslims to sew a crescent and star onto our clothes. It would make his airport security time a more pleasant experience. (Though, I suppose, it wouldn’t have stopped McVeigh or Breivik.)” Though as a frequent traveler I share your frustrations with the TSA, profiling doesn’t make sense as a solution to its problems.

Instead, while we’re en route to mosque, I’d like to talk to you about something else. As I read your piece, which (along with the clarifying addendum you tacked on a few days later) failed to explain how you would determine who “looks… Muslim,” I thought back to another moment at the Global Atheist Convention a few weeks ago. As you were speaking, rumors began to fly that a group of extremist Muslims would be protesting the convention. Sure enough, a group of less than a dozen appeared just a short while later, holding signs that said “Atheists go to hell” and shouting horrible things. But to my dismay, their hate was mirrored by hundreds of conference attendees, some of whom shouted things like “go back to the middle east, you pedophiles,” tweeting ”maybe the Muslim protesters [are] gay so [they] don’t have wives? … A lot are/were camel shaggers,” and wearing shirts that said “Too stupid for science? Try religion.” Watching the scene unfold, I was reminded of how much work there is to be done in combating prejudice between the religious and the nonreligious.

Continue reading at The Huffington Post

Video: Contours of Common Ground

Back in February, I was invited to sit on a panel organized by the Pluralism Project and the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School as a part of Harvard’s 2012 Interfaith Awareness Week. The subject was conceptions of “common ground” in interfaith work.

When it was my turn to talk, I discussed how the idea that “common ground” might require ideological and theological consensus is often a stumbling block to bringing different voices into the interfaith movement (particularly atheist voices). To that end, I talked about how some language used in interfaith circles doesn’t make room for nonreligious people, and how interfaith worship or prayer breakfasts are inherently exclusive. I explained why we instead emphasize interfaith social action at the Humanist Chaplaincy, and offered my ideas about common ground as both a goal and a device for achieving other goals, and how we might go about locating it. Finally, I shared a couple of stories — one about finding common ground when it’s easy, and one about finding common ground when it’s difficult. The latter story explains how I responded when someone came to a speech I gave and told me I had a demon inside of me that was making me gay. Yep, that has happened! (More than once, in fact.)

I was lucky to sit on this panel alongside Jennifer Peace of Andover Newton Theological School, Latifa Ali of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Massachusetts, Whitney Barth of the Pluralism Project, and Francis X. Clooney, S.J. of the CSWR. Each had some great insights and stories to share. Click here to watch the video and let me know what you think about this elusive and often vague concept of “common ground,” how we might find it, and what we might do with it!

The Unseen

I posted this appeal on Facebook as a status update, but I’d like to share it here too:

Last month, on our alternative spring break trip working with homeless and at risk LGBT youth in California, I had a conversation with two teens that continues to haunt me. They described in excruciating detail how humiliated they felt whenever they had to ask strangers on the street for assistance. “There’s nothing worse than how so many people just ignore me when I ask for money or food,” one said. “I’d rather they told me to fuck off than just walk by pretending they don’t even see me.” Too often, our society ignores and dehumanizes those in need, turning a blind eye and pretending they don’t even exist. Please help people who struggle to find food be seen and supported. I’m doing the 20 mile Project Bread Walk for Hunger in a week—if you can spare a few dollars, I’d really appreciate it.

Back from Australia, Off to Illinois!

Hey folks! Australia was amazing — I’m going to have a full recap up on the blog just as soon as I can. Right now I’m back in Boston, still trying to readjust and shake off my last bit of jetlag, but I’m taking off again.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois for the Illinois Conference on Interfaith Collaboration (ICIC). Eboo Patel, Jim Wallis, and Valarie Kaur are giving keynotes throughout the weekend, and for some strange reason so am I: my keynote closes the second day of the conference. Click here to see the full schedule — there’s going to be a huge meal-packing service project, a bunch of useful, engaging workshops on interfaith organizing, plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with other interfaith activists, plus it’s being put together by an energetic, passionate group of students.

I’m so excited about this conference and hope to see you there this weekend!

Also: for Boston-area folks — I’m speaking at an interfaith vigil for environmental sustainability next week (on Thursday, 4/26) with Bill McKibben. More info here.

Six Verses: A Conversation with Matthew Vines

About this time two years ago, as the residents of my dorm were beginning to pack up for the summer, one was preparing for a much longer break. My friend Matthew, who was a sophomore like me, had decided not to return to school in the fall. I have never been as happy anywhere in my life as I have at Harvard, so I couldn’t understand why anybody would voluntarily go anywhere else. He kept saying he needed time to study some things on his own, and he promised all of us that he was going to do something big before he came back. Sure you are, I thought. This was one of the first instances of what has now become something of a pattern: Matthew makes a big claim, I am skeptical, and then he follows through and blows me away.

Matthew recently delivered a speech called “The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality” at a church in Wichita, Kansas. (Here is a transcript if you are short on time, though I recommend the video if you happen to have one hour, seven minutes, and nineteen seconds free, since Matthew is a very persuasive speaker.) In this speech – which is the result of the extensive independent research he has performed over the last two years – Matthew analyzes six key Bible verses and turns their traditional anti-LGBTQ interpretations on their heads. Again, I went into the video skeptical, expecting it to be another instance of people twisting words to mean what they want them to mean. But by the end, I was sold. I’m no theologian, but as a person with an interest in the Bible and a general academic background, I found it extremely compelling.

To be clear, I obviously disagree with Matthew on some key premises here. Most importantly, I don’t think the Bible is the word of God, so I don’t think its contents should actually have any bearing at all on how we evaluate the moral status of different types of human relationships. Matthew, as a Christian, clearly feels differently. But I think what he has to say is important for even non-Christians to hear, for a variety of reasons. First of all, Matthew’s main purpose here is combating anti-LGBTQ bigotry among Christians, which is a goal pretty much anybody reading this blog is probably on board with. If Christianity is here to stay – which I’m pretty sure it is, at least for the foreseeable future – then we might as well do our best to make it as harmless as possible, and ending or reducing Bible-based homophobia would be a huge victory. People of all beliefs can use the arguments Matthew presents to help have productive conversations about this topic with their Christian friends. We can also help by sharing the video widely in order to get it into the hands of as many Christians as possible, so it can help LGBTQ Christians feel less alone, arm them with talking points for difficult conversations with family and friends, give similar tools to LGBTQ allies within the Christian community, and maybe even change the minds of some of the more conservative Christians who watch it.

Since I was so intrigued and excited by Matthew’s project, I was delighted when he took the time to answer a few of my questions about it. I had been planning on editing my questions and his answers into a more synthetic form, but he is so thorough and eloquent in his responses that I thought it would be a shame to mangle them. So, in its raw majesty, I give you a conversation with Matthew Vines, Christian Gay Rights Activist Extraordinaire.

Chelsea Link: Can you tell me more about the path that led you from college to giving this speech?

Matthew Vines: Long story short: I was raised in a conservative evangelical church in Kansas, so I suppressed awareness of my sexual orientation growing up. But Harvard was a very different atmosphere, and by my sophomore fall, I’d come to terms with being gay. And though I might’ve liked simply to have come out and moved on, I couldn’t do that without losing or fracturing many relationships, so I took a leave of absence to study—among other things—the Bible and homosexuality. The traditional interpretation of these six verses in the Bible is the main sticking point on this subject for a lot of Christians, and the grounds on which gay Christians can expect to be rejected by straight Christians if and when that happens. And unfortunately, that still happens far too frequently, so gay Christians really have to take the time to learn their theology if they want to be well-prepared.

But obviously, I didn’t just want to learn the theology in a personally satisfying way, but also in a way that would equip me for substantive dialogue and engagement with Christians who disagree. There’s a real wealth of literature out there on this subject by now, as it’s been a hot topic in the Christian world for a good three decades, but it can seem quite unwieldy and intimidating at first. There are almost too many books and too many resources, so that it isn’t at all clear where one should start. And most of the best scholarship is written at a pretty high level, which makes it difficult for your average lay Christian to access and absorb easily. Consequently, gay Christians in conservative communities remain without the resources that they need to stand up for themselves and challenge the prejudices within their own communities. That was my driving motivation in doing this research: to produce a clear, comprehensive, and cogent argument that gay Christians in unfriendly places will find directly instructive and helpful.

To that end, I bought dozens of books on the subject from all viewpoints and tried to delve as deeply as possible into every nook and cranny of the theological debate as I could. That meant finding the best articles and essays on every aspect of the debate, and then finding the best rejoinders to those articles—on and on until I felt like I had seen all of the best material from both sides on every point and could then make an informed judgment. And there are many more levels to this debate than just these six verses; there are a plethora of ways of framing the issue biblically, historically, and theologically, and those must be carefully considered as well. All the while that I was doing this solitary study, I was also meeting and dialoguing with other Christians about the subject on a regular basis—mainly those who disagreed with me, so that they could challenge my thinking and force me to reconsider any questionable arguments I was making. In total, I probably spent somewhere in the vicinity of three to four thousand hours studying this since 2010, and of course, I could easily invest another three to four thousand and learn even more. But after having read at least fifty books on the subject (and probably even more journal articles), watched or listened to countless debates and interviews, and had many dozens of drawn-out conversations about it with other Christians, I felt ready and prepared to make a formal presentation about it.

CL: What do you hope to accomplish with this work, short-term and long-term?

MV: My short-term goal is to continue to build traffic for the video, with the hope of reaching LGBT people in conservative Christian communities in particular. That way, even if they aren’t ready to come out yet, they could still share the video with friends and family and start a dialogue about the subject in a less personal way. Hopefully, that could get at least some of their friends to start thinking about the issue more critically while also allowing LGBT people to find out who their allies are. Another core group to reach in the short-term are straight Christians in conservative communities who may already quietly support LGBT people but need better resources to nudge others in a similar direction.

In the long term, my goal is to help to permanently reform Christianity so that homophobia is a thing of the past. Homophobia meets all of the biblical criteria for sin in a way that homosexuality never could, and I and many others will not let up until that is recognized across the board in church teaching.

CL: How has it been received so far by your fellow Christians?

MV: So far, the responses from other Christians have been quite positive. Most people who’ve contacted me have expressed agreement and appreciation. One woman who came to my presentation let me know a few days later that she found it sufficiently compelling that she was changing her position because of it. And she hasn’t been alone among the more traditional Christians who’ve watched the video. That’s not to say that everyone agrees, because they don’t, but of the negative responses I’ve received so far, few of them have offered well thought-out counterarguments to the arguments that I put forward. I am hopeful that that will change, and that those who disagree will begin to engage more deeply with my scriptural arguments, but many of those who hold negative views about this have never had their views challenged before biblically, so they may not be prepared to engage in this dialogue yet.

CL: Part of your argument rests on the fact that certain rules in Leviticus only applied to Jews, and should not constrain the behavior of Christians today. But what were gay Jews supposed to do? Do you think God did want them to be alone in life? Or that God wouldn’t make any Jews gay? Or is there an alternative explanation?

MV: First of all, no one is identified as a gay Jew in the Old Testament. Our entire discussion about sexual orientation is very recent and doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible. So it’s fairly speculative to be talking about God’s will for a group of people that are never even mentioned in the text.

That said, however, there are indeed alternative explanations of the Levitical prohibitions of male same-sex intercourse. I didn’t discuss these in my talk because my basic point—that the prohibitions are inapplicable to Christians—is the most important one for a Christian audience. But the precise meaning of the verses remains very important for Orthodox Jews today, so they are worth studying more carefully. Modern scholarship (cf. Daniel Boyarin, Saul Olyan, et al.) has convincingly demonstrated philologically that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 specifically prohibit male anal sex, but only that act. And it’s on those grounds that some in Orthodox Judaism are moving toward accepting sexual relationships for gay Jews so long as that particular act is avoided. But even beyond that, it’s important to consider the meaning of the word “abomination” (toevah in the Hebrew). This word is almost always tied to issues of idolatry and cultic ritual in the Old Testament, not intrinsic wrong (although those categories can overlap as well). And Leviticus 18 and 20 specifically state that the reason that these various behaviors are prohibited is because they were practiced by the Egyptians and the Canaanites, who were in the land before the Israelites. So there is an argument to be made that male anal sex was specifically prohibited because of its associations with idolatrous pagan practices rather than due to the act itself, and therefore, that the Torah’s prohibition even on male anal sex should not be understood as binding on Orthodox Jews in loving, monogamous relationships today.

CL: You mention yourself that, although the Bible does not seem to actually condemn same-sex relationships, there are no positive representations of same-sex relationships in the Bible as there are of opposite-sex relationships. Why do you think that is?

MV: Well, had I had more time to discuss this, I would’ve said that there is not absolutely conclusive proof of any same-sex relationships in the Bible. However, there may be three positive examples of gay relationships in Scripture, but because our understanding of them hinges largely on speculation, I didn’t include them in my argument. The first and most famous potentially gay relationship in the Bible is that between David and Jonathan in the Old Testament. The second is Ruth and Naomi, and the third is the account of the Roman centurion and his slave in Matthew 8. (The Greek term used for slave or servant in that passage—pais—was also used to denote a same-sex romantic partner at the time, and the centurion does express unusually strong, personal interest in healing his slave.)

The problem with these cases, as I said, is that they rely on speculation, and it’s possible that that speculation is mistaken. So the more conservative argument is that the Bible is silent on the subject of loving gay relationships and that it does not condemn them, the latter point of which is undoubtedly true regardless of what people believe about the aforementioned relationships. And in general, when operating on the premise that the Bible doesn’t contain explicit positive statements about same-sex relationships, we need to pay more attention to the historical context before casting a judgment about what that might or might not mean. Specifically, the most well-known and widely discussed model of same-sex behavior in the biblical world was pederasty, a very disturbing practice involving an adult man and an adolescent boy. (We would simply call this pedophilia and/or child abuse.) That’s not to say that loving same-sex unions between adults didn’t also exist, but they were far less visible than pederastic relationships. So in some ways, it’s somewhat surprising that there is not greater condemnation of same-sex relationships in the Bible – with the focus specifically being on pederasty.

CL: You make a pretty convincing case, in my opinion at least, for why the Bible might actually support homosexuality and same-sex relationships. But I’m curious what you think the Bible can tell us about other types of alternative sexualities and gender identities. What, if anything, can the Bible tells us about bisexuality? And what, if anything, can it tell us about intersex and transgendered people? I’m curious about these topics because your argument seems to rest largely on the idea that God created people with certain desires and orientations on purpose, and that everybody should be true to their natural orientation – whether a man is attracted to men or to women, he should find a partner of his preferred gender. Can somebody be naturally oriented toward both genders? And what if somebody feels that they have been born with the wrong gender in the first place? Are they meant to stick with the body they were given because God gave them that body on purpose, or are they meant to switch to the gender they feel like they are because God gave them that impulse on purpose?

MV: First, the Bible tells us nothing directly about sexual orientation and gender identity. Our modern discourse about these subjects is worlds apart from the biblical canon. So my view that sexual orientation is created is something gleaned from general revelation; it’s of a piece with Christians’ views now about things like the solar system and the universe. The Bible doesn’t teach the specifics of our modern astronomical understandings, but those of us who believe in a creator also believe that the creator designed the universe in that way, even if Scripture doesn’t spell it out precisely. It’s the same with sexual orientation and gender identity. We can’t know for sure that God created people with different sexualities on purpose, but the Bible offers no reason to think otherwise, and so that would be the natural conclusion to reach.

As for your specific questions: Of course people can be naturally oriented toward both genders; that’s what it means to be bisexual. Now, from a Christian standpoint, we would expect bisexual people who pursue relationships to enter into a monogamous marriage just like everyone else; they simply have a wider pool of potential partners for that marriage. There exists an ongoing misperception that being bi means being disposed toward promiscuity or polyamory in a way that gay/straight people are not. But this isn’t true, so really, bisexual orientation raises no issues theologically that gay orientation doesn’t already.

And as for transgender people, of course they are part of creation as well. It’s hardly my or anyone else’s place to tell trans people that their gender identity is broken simply because it is different from my own experience and identity. Being trans can be an incredibly rich and rewarding experience, and non-trans people need to learn and preach acceptance more than anything—and certainly not think that we should be in the position of pronouncing other people’s gender identities inferior to our own just because they’re different. God’s design is beautifully diverse and multifaceted, and basic Christian humility and compassion should compel us to accept all LGBT people (including the B and the T) and to learn from them rather than pretend we already understand everything there is to know about them.

CL: Any closing thoughts?

The fundamental purpose of the video is to empower LGBT Christians who are being mistreated because of who they are and who they love, so anything people can do to share it would be helpful. There is nothing Christian about the status quo on this issue. Homophobia is un-Christian—and yes, it’s unbiblical, too.

***

So there you have it. If you think Matthew is onto something potentially good for the world, like I do, then you can help him spread his message! Read his HuffPo article! Share the video! Follow him on Twitter! And keep your eye on him. Whatever he does next, I’m sure it’s going to be big.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She is documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year at Blogging Biblically. She is the former Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. Last summer, she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.

Australian Speaking Tour!

Greetings from Sydney! That's right: just days after an excellent trip to Minnesota, I made a very long trek to the other side of the world. I had a window of less than two days back in Boston (most of which I spent in the office, ha) and then I hopped back on a plane to Australia (with a quick LAyover in Los Angeles). I arrived early this morning and spent the entire day trekking around Sydney to see the sights and fight the jet lag. I'm off tomorrow morning to Canberra, and then the trip continues (more information below). In a tour assembled collaboratively by several Australian interfaith and atheist, agnostic, humanist, rationalist, and freethinker organizations, I'm going to spend nearly two weeks traveling around and talking about interfaith work and atheism. Here's my schedule of events:

Sunday 8th April |  4:30-6:00pm

"Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious"

Hosted by ANU League of Godlessness, Canberra Atheist Church, & Canberra Atheist Meetup Group

Manning Clark Centre Theatre 3

Australian National University, Canberra

Followed by a Pub Night with Canberra Atheists

Thursday 12th April | 12:45-1:30pm

"Faithiest: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious"

The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne

A Fringe Event of the Global Atheist Convention

Friday 13th April | 12:00-4:00pm

Speaking; other speakers include Debbie Goddard and Lyz Liddell

2012 Student Leadership Conference

Hosted by Australian Freethought University Alliance

Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre

Friday 13th April – Sunday 15th April

Look for me at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention – I'll be there!

Monday 16th April | 12:00-2:00pm

Some of my best friends are atheists: a conversation among the faithful about how religions engage with atheism

Hosted by InterAction

(details to come)

Monday 16th April | 6-7:30 PM

The Road Less Traveled: Can atheists and believers work together for the common good?

Hosted by Rationalist Society of Australia, Humanist Society of Victoria & InterAction

Forum with PZ Myers and Leslie Cannold

Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre, University of Melbourne

A Fringe Event of the Global Atheist Convention

In addition to the events above, I'll also be visiting some folks, doing a touristy thing or two, and (man, did this sneak up on me) turning 25 (on April 9th). I'm so excited and grateful to have such an incredible opportunity to visit Australia, discuss my ideas and my work, and learn about how atheist-inclusive interfaith work plays out in Australia.

P.S. For more about my Australian tour (plus Faitheist, "confrontationalism versus accommodationism," interfaith work and atheism, The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, and more) check out this interview I did with the wonderful Kylie Sturgess for the Token Skeptic podcast. Thanks again for inviting me on the show, Kylie!

P.P.S. Just a few days after I get back from Australia (which I will inevitably again spend trying to get caught up on work), I'm heading to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois for the Illinois Conference on Interfaith Collaboration (ICIC). I'll be giving a speech, as will Eboo Patel, Jim Wallis, and Valarie Kaur. Plus, there will be tons of useful workshops on interfaith organizing, plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with other interfaith activists, and it's being put together by an energetic, passionate group of students. You really don't want to miss it!

Alright, time to recuperate after ~21 hours on airplanes and a full day of urban exploring. The only thing I have left to say is that I'm really hoping I get to see (at least one) platypus.

Come Say "Oh Yah, Hey 'Der!" in Minnesota This Weekend!

Hello, friends and strangers! Time flies, eh? Here's a quick update of what's been happening in my world:

It's been a very busy March — in addition to my usual workload at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, I've been all over the map. Early in March I spoke for the awesome Granite State Skeptics and spent a weekend in a Humanist Celebrant training. Later in the month, I spent a week leading a group of Harvard Humanist graduate students on a sobering, challenging, and life-affirming alternative spring break trip working with homeless and at-risk LGBT youth in Los Angeles, and did speaking events hosted by the great folks at Claremont Lincoln University and California Lutheran University's Secular Student Alliance group (co-founded by current Board President of the national SSA Evan Clark, who talked about his experiences at Cal Lutheran in a recent piece for Inside Higher Ed about atheists at religious schools, which also quotes me and my friends Eboo Patel and Jesse Galef). All of these experiences were incredible, and I'm so grateful to all the people who welcomed me into their schools, organizations, communities, and lives this month.

So I was busy, sure, but April is going to be something else altogether. I'll tell you more about that soon; but to kick things off, here's some information about a couple of exciting events I'll be doing this weekend in Minnesota:

This coming weekend I will be speaking about the importance of working across lines of religious difference and leading a community service event on the closing day (Sunday, April 1st) of the student-organized Midwest Science of Origins Conference at the University of Minnesota-Morris. Other presenters at the conference including UMM Biology professor and popular blogger PZ Myers, University of Chicago paleontologist and author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body Neil Shubin, and many others. It's an exciting lineup put together by an extremely dedicated group of students, so click here for more information. I can't wait for this weekend — the theme of the conference sounds awesome and I expect to learn a lot. Plus, it's free and open to the public! So if you're in Minnesota this weekend and you like interfaith work, community service, and science, you really have no excuse not to come and hang out with me. Registration is required, though, so don't delay.

The following day (Monday, April 2nd), I will be at Minnesota State University-Moorhead. In an event sponsored by the MSUM Gay Straight Alliance, I'll be meeting with students in the "Rainbow Room" and then giving a speech on interfaith work. For more information, check out this Facebook event. It sounds like it's going to be a really great evening.

Clearly I'm pretty excited about this trip, and would love to see you at MSOC or MSUM. Plus, as icing on the cake, I'll (very briefly) get to see my mom and siblings (two of my siblings live in Moorhead and the other lives in Grand Forks, ND) — and I'll get to meet my new nephew who was born less than a week ago!

That little taste of home will be nice because just days after I get back from Minnesota (as in less than two full days, both of which will be spent in my office, ha), I'll be off for a few weeks of speaking engagements on the other side of the world. Check back soon for more information on my upcoming travels!

Good > Without God

Left: Christian protester. Right: Man dressed as Jesus riding a dinosaur. This is what most college students do on the weekend, right?

After two trains, a bus, a quick breakfast with my fellow NPS panelist Walker Bristol and our Unelectables co-blogger Chelsey Faloona, and two more trains, I stumbled up the Metro stairs and onto the National Mall in the midst of the Reason Rally. All my exhaustion and scrunched-bus-napping-induced aches were replaced with the excitement of finally being there. This was the largest gathering of atheists, agnostics, Humanists, and other assorted non-religious folks in history. Around 20,000 of us flocked to the capital for a day of speeches, music, comedy, and celebration.

I have so far refrained from looking at any of the (from what I hear, extensive) news coverage of the event, because I would like to share my own impressions before they are colored by others. I think that media and popular responses to the event, from the religious and non-religious alike, will be crucial to determining whether it accomplished its goals – which were, according to the Reason Rally website, to dispel stereotypes about atheists, to encourage people to come out of the closet as non-believers or supporters thereof, and to achieve (or at least move toward) legislative equality. I will probably do another post in a few weeks, once the dust has had time to settle, on how well this seems to have worked. For now, here are my own impressions.

First of all, I am so proud that this event happened, and so glad that I was able to go (thanks to the generous funding of a donor from the Secular Massachusetts Meetup). I firmly believe that the non-religious do need to organize if we want to get anything done – and we have so much to do. I had a fantastic time last weekend, and I'm extremely grateful to everybody who put the rally together. It was a huge step for our movement.

But we still have a long way to go.

As I emerged from the Metro, yellow-shirted volunteers were ready to direct me to the rally. One of these volunteers was calling out to passersby as he directed them: "Atheists! Agnostics! This way! Step right up! Reason Rally, over here! Skeptics! Non-believers!" I smiled at him and thanked him for pointing me in the right direction (although I would like to think that I could have found my own way to the giant stage in the middle of the park). He kept on calling out: "Freethinkers! People with brains! This way!" My smile drooped as I walked away, thinking, oh, good, here we go again.

A lot of the day was focused on positive rhetoric, inspiring the crowds to work towards the three goals mentioned earlier. Don't be ashamed of who you are! Tell people what you believe! Be proud! Demand equal treatment! Defend your rights! Let's unite and work together towards our common goals! Build supportive communities! Show people that we can be good for goodness's sake!

That all sounds great. But I was shocked at the apparent lack of cognitive dissonance that many of the speakers (and attendees) experienced when these lovely sentiments were blatantly contradicted, often in the next breath.

I particularly remember Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists, delivering a rousing fire-people-up kind of speech in which he instituted a "no more bigotry" rule. I love that rule. Within a matter of seconds, however, he was insulting religious people. No, not presenting a thoughtful critique of their beliefs. Flat-out insulting people. It was…oh, what's the word…bigotry. What happened to the "no more bigotry" rule? I asked this out loud, and several people around me immediately set me straight, telling me (most of them in a tone implying that this distinction should have been obvious to me) that the rule applied to anti-atheist bigotry only.

Oh.

…So, I know we all become flushed with passion at the thought of logic and reason and so on, but I'm having trouble following the argument for why we should demand respectful treatment from people who believe we are mistaken, but we feel no need to treat the people we believe are mistaken with equal respect. Wouldn't it be simpler to extend the "no more bigotry" rule to everybody?

Fortunately, Greta Christina was on hand to remind me why atheists are angry. This is a speech she has given many times before; you can see the video from Skepticon here. I actually kind of love this speech – mostly. I'm completely on board with about 95% of it. Religion has been responsible for some pretty fucked up stuff. (Just to be clear, I'm not claiming that religion is responsible for every bad thing, or even most of the bad things many atheists like to blame on it – for a great article on this bad habit, check out the Rogue Priest. But I'm comfortable attributing some pretty lousy things to religion.) I've said this before, but I would love for religion to go away. So don't tag me with that "belief in belief" crap.

Here's the difference between me and Christina. She wraps up her list of grievances with a defense of aggression. After all, we have reasons to be angry, so why should we hold back? But I think there is a small but crucial distinction between being angry and lashing out. Christina claimed at the rally that "nobody ever accomplished social change by being nice" (I might not have that quote exactly right, but that's as close as I can remember, and it definitely captures the sense of what she said). Again, I couldn't help responding out loud, to the indignation of those around me. "Um…Martin Luther King. And Mahatma Gandhi. And Harvey Milk." I didn't go on because I was getting dirty looks again. I'm not sure if people were glaring at me because they disagreed or because they didn't want to be reminded of pesky facts that didn't fit with their worldview. Which is one of the things people at the rally repeatedly mocked religious people for doing.

Sigh.

Christina's questionable claim about the ineffectuality of niceness was just part of an ongoing debate over tactics. According to most atheists, it would seem – or at least the loudest ones – this is the million-dollar question: Will we deconvert more religious people by being nice to them, or by teasing them and yelling at them?

I don't know the answer, although I do have my suspicions. But here's another question I think has been overlooked, and one which was stuck in my head throughout the rally and never answered: If we really are committed to being good for goodness's sake (which we love to brag that we are), then why do we spend so much time calculating whether it's strategic to treat people respectfully? Shouldn't we be respectful because that's the right thing to do, and we (supposedly) do the right thing simply because it's right?

I know we love tracing our non-believing heritage to famous dead guys, so let's take a leaf from David Hume's book: "Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."

Personally, the moments of the rally when I was most moved, inspired, and proud were those which focused more on our shared humanity and less on our theological disputes with our neighbors. The top three showings, for me, were by Jesse Galef, who gave an uplifting and rousing speech on the importance of community, particularly for young people; Senator Tom Harkin, who isn't even an atheist but beautifully explained why he, as a religious person, fully supports the secular movement and the rally; and of course the inimitable Eddie Izzard, who always manages to use humor in exactly the right way, brilliantly critiquing religion without punishing the people who cherish it. He doesn't hold back from poking holes right and left in theology, but he does it in such a way that religious people can laugh at it, too. And maybe it's just me, but I think showing people how to laugh at themselves might cause people to see their own worldview from a different perspective, whereas trying to tear it violently out of their hands will only make them clutch it more tightly. But even if it doesn't, I still think respect is worthwhile as more than just a strategy.

The Reason Rally was a hugely important event, and we should be proud of all that we've accomplished. But if we really want to show our religious neighbors that we can be good without god – or if we want to be able to look at ourselves without shame – we can't let the "without god" bit overshadow the (much more important, I think) part about just being good.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She recently founded and currently writes for two other blogs, The Unelectables (following religious minority candidates in the 2012 election) and Blogging Biblically (documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year). She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she's on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. Last summer, she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she's doing after graduation, but she'll give you a different answer every time.

HUNGERally: From Rooibos to Reality

 

Today's guest post comes from Abigail Clauhs, a sophomore at Boston University who is studying religion and who runs the Boston University Interfaith Council. Below, she shares her experiences working to plan HUNGERally (more info here, here and here).

There is something nerve-wracking about meeting someone for the first time in a coffee shop. You get there first, five minutes before the agreed-upon time by virtue of your unbreakable habit of punctuality. You stand by the door, pull out your phone to look busy. Eyeing the menu, you wonder if you should go ahead and order the rooibos latte or if it would be rude to already get a drink. With every person that walks in, you wonder if it is the one you've only spoken to on the phone or via email. There is the awkward eye contact dance where you look to see if that person is looking for someone, too, and if you both are–relieved smiles and, finally, introductions.

I did that a lot last semester. Networking meetings, not blind dates. Just beginning my work with the Boston University Interfaith Council, I wanted to meet the leaders of interfaith programs at other colleges in Boston. And so, through a series of emails and calls, I got to know the interiors of a myriad of Boston coffee shops and people from MIT, Suffolk, and other universities.

The first time I met Chris Stedman was in a Starbucks in November of 2011. Chris, the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, was a major interfaith activist, and I was a little starstruck. However, we found ourselves soon fervently talking about interfaith work and the importance of service. That, in a way, was where the idea of HUNGERally was born. Of course, we has many meetings after that–and even more conference calls–but the event that happened on February 11, 2012, began right there.

HUNGERally–an interfaith event to fight hunger in the greater Boston area–was held at Boston University. Nearly 100 college students attended the event, representing campuses including Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Brandeis, Boston College, Fisher College, and Gordon College. At the event, along with collecting multiple boxes full of canned food donations, we heard from a variety of speakers.

Matthew Martin from Kids Care/Outreach Inc. affected many students with the staggering numbers of hunger and the news that every dollar you spend is enough to feed four hungry children or adults with a meal from his organization. We also heard about the many types of people who go hungry–from the homeless to the elderly to college students–from Michael Banciewicz, of Church on the Hill Community Initiatives; he was followed by a moving poem about homelessness from Jayne Eisan, whose performance left the audience in moved silence before impassioned applause.

We were also lucky enough to hear presentations from students of several religious and non-religious backgrounds, including Humanist, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian, about how their traditions address the issue of hunger. HUNGERally attendees heard students share passages from the Qur'an, a story about a Christian saint, and a Walt Whitman poem, along with various other presentations.

At the end, we had attendees break into groups for interfaith dialogue, answering questions about their religious/non-religious traditions and the importance of service and fighting hunger. The students were so eager to discuss that, even before we finished asking them to divide up into groups, they had already jumped into dialoguing. It was incredible to see students from all different backgrounds and all different campuses coming together and discussing how they want to fight hunger in an interfaith setting.

On the commitment cards we handed out at the event–which included a space for guests to write down a concrete commitment to fighting hunger–we also encouraged people to post about HUNGERally online. Quotes from people talking about HUNGERally on social media included such inspiring things as, "We're all human beings, so let's unite for things that matter!" and, "[W]e are more alike than we are unalike."

All in all, this event was a beautiful beginning to the vision Chris and I had formulated on that first Starbucks meeting, a vision to have interfaith groups from all the Boston-area colleges work together in a city-wide community. Hopefully there will be many more lattes, meetings, and intercollegiate interfaith events to come.

Abigail Clauhs is a sophomore at Boston University, studying religion while minoring in English and anthropology. She was raised in a variety of churches, including Catholic, Presbyterian (baptized by a sprinkling of water as a baby), and Southern Baptist (dunked underwater in the baptistry pool), but now considers herself a Unitarian Universalist. Abigail runs the Boston University Interfaith Council and works at BU's Marsh Chapel. She is passionate about getting students from the many different colleges in the Boston area (and the world at large) to work together in interfaith service. Also, she likes cooking weird food, drinking chai, and writing tolerable (maybe) poetry. You can follow her on Twitter (@jigsawfaith) or on her blog (jigsawfaith.wordpress.com).

Religion Roundup: On Migration

Although only a small percentage of the world, millions in the world live as foreign-born. A vast number of factors account for migratory patterns, and there are a number of competing theories that attempt to model them collectively. One element of the system which, until now, had received awfully little press, however, was how religious affiliation colored various migratory streams.

The Pew Forum released a study last week which examined the religious breakdown of international migrants: in keeping with global percentages, Christians make up the greatest chunk, followed by Muslims. The relative numbers are particularly interesting, though–Christians make up over half of the migrant population, whereas they comprise only about a third of the world. Muslims, on the other hand, only have slightly stronger representation in the migrant population than globally.

That aside, individual Jews are far more likely to migrate than any other major religious demographic–about a quarter of all living Jews are living as foreign-born residents, followed then by only 5% of Christians, and so on. This phenomenon among Jews has been generally explained by leaders in the tradition as a "consolidation" of the Judaic community, marking mobility from the Third World to the First amid fears of persecution.

For background, immigration is generally understood to be a incredibly complex system not easily explainable without using multiple, intertwined models. For instance, the process can be observed in terms of levels: individual, household, national, international, socioeconomic class– the decision to migrate is typically not made as a simple cost-benefit analysis of economic opportunity, as it is so often portrayed. Often, the existence of social structures, international penetration, conflict, family reunification, and a host of other factors play into the issue.

This study is particularly interesting because it introduces a new dimension to consider with regard to the question of "Why move?" If, as in the aforementioned case of Judaism, a religious minority faces striking oppression in a certain area or are risking conflict by concentrating themselves in unsafe territories, they'll naturally tend to want to leave. But even further than that: the nature of religion itself offers incentives for migration–seeking monuments and relics, or a common community of believers.

This might partially explain, for instance, the predominant migration streams of Muslims to Saudi Arabia, Jews to Israel, or even–given the religious structures that exist in American public life despite the Establishment Clause et al–Christians to the US. If anything, it's one in a host of reasons that individuals or groups have for international movement.

Not terribly daunting or compelling, but an interesting find nonetheless. I'd personally like to see a more specific breakdown of the affiliations of refugees, since they are occasionally included in counts of "immigrants" although the study itself never looked at the issue on its own. It seems like such a breakdown would shed some statistical light on what religious oppression worldwide looks like nowadays, and if certain countries have certain trends. Immigration–as (failed) policymaking has demonstrated–is certainly a nontrivial issue, but this new look is a motion in the proper direction for building a better model.

Walker Bristol is an undergraduate studying religion and linguistics at Tufts University, and the Community Organizer and Interfaith Representative for the Tufts Freethought Society. Originally from North Carolina, Walker was raised in a largely Quaker community before exploring several Christian traditions throughout high school and ultimately becoming a secular humanist at age 15. Walker serves as the chair of the Committee to Establish a Humanist Chaplaincy at Tufts, and has worked as a student intern at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. Along with fellow Tufts Freethought board member Lauren Rose, Walker hosts the internet radio show FreethoughtCast. In addition to being involved in secular student activism, Walker is a hobbyist musician, ballroom dancer, and far-too-avid science-fiction fan. He tweets nonsense @GodlessWalker.