Atheists in America

Melanie Brewster

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780231537001
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Atheism

This collection features more than two dozen narratives by atheists from different backgrounds across the United States. Ranging in age, race, sexual orientation, and religious upbringing, these individuals address deconversion, community building, parenting, and romantic relationships, providing a nuanced look at living without a god in a predominantly Christian nation.

These narratives illuminate the complexities and consequences for nonbelievers in the United States. Stepping away from religious belief can have serious social and existential ramifications, forcing atheists to discover new ways to live meaningfully without a religious community. Yet shedding the constraints of a formal belief system can also be a freeing experience. Ultimately, this volume shows that claiming an atheist identity is anything but an act isolated from the other dimensions of the self. Upending common social, political, and psychological assumptions about atheists, this collection helps carve out a more accepted space for this minority within American society.

PART 1

LEAVING FAITH

Arriving at Atheist Identity from Religious Backgrounds

MANY UNSPOKEN NORMS exist in the United States, one of which is that individuals will have a belief system guided by a particular religious denomination. However, interesting interplays between religious beliefs and religious certainty exist. For example, roughly 90 percent of people express some sort of belief in a God/gods, but only 60 percent feel positive that God exists.¹ Thus, religious belief is treated as nearly compulsory as a cultural value—and to question or shed belief is atypical. The ubiquity of religiosity presents challenges to leaving faith. As found by Jesse Smith in his qualitative study of atheist identity formation, many participants felt like they had no choice in going to church or being faithful as a child.² Church was a large part of family life and a critical ritual for social and developmental processes (i.e., meeting other children through Sunday school). However, even when some participants stopped attending church later in their childhood, they still identified as believers. Taken together, these findings suggest that attending religious practices regularly and feeling certain of your beliefs are both unnecessary in considering oneself a believer.

For many people, deciding to be (or remaining) religious may involve a rational decision-making process where rewards and costs are weighed and considered. Notably, some of the perceived rewards of religiosity include having a system to cope with grief and loss, a moral compass, community support, and potential access to an afterlife.³ And, bluntly, as captured by Pascal’s Wager, atheism equals punishment after death if God exists. Indoctrination into many religions involves constant exposure to threats of pain, loneliness, and horror in the afterlife if one is not a true believer. This early imprinting of fear makes it hard for individuals to explore freely doubts they may have about their faith. As Seth Andrews, a former Christian, describes in his memoir:

Fear is a powerful weapon. It keeps us in submission. It stops us from asking too many questions. As I grew from a student to adult in the years ahead, fear would mute my own innate curiosity and concerns about the foundation my life had been built on. I would be told continually how much God loved me, but the underlying threat of the Tribulation and Hell would keep me in lock-step with the rest of my religious family, friends and culture. One day the Son would come. And I didn’t want to get left behind.⁴

As a result of this fear, many people who experience religious doubt tell themselves that their uncertainties are “just a phase” and will pass once they receive some sort of confirmation, sign, or divine spark. A crisis of spirit is just that, a crisis, and like other difficult times, it too will pass.

That said, what does it typically take to deconvert fully someone from being a believer to a nonbelieving atheist? Prevalence rates and patterns regarding apostasy among different religious groups are nearly nonexistent, though some themes that emerge in recent literature include leaving childhood homes, entering new social contexts, meeting people who you respect and enjoy who identify as atheist, and doubts surrounding the morality of certain religious creeds.⁵ Most research suggests that this process is painstaking and deliberate. Through interviews with forty-six apostates, Hunsberger describes that becoming atheist is “strongly intellectual and rational, and seems to result from a slow, careful search for meaning and purpose.”⁶ Within the United States, deconversion is a process of individuation and reflection that often occurs during emerging adulthood (eighteen to twenty-five) or “the college years,” when identity exploration may be at its peak and many people leave their family homes for the first time. The process often occurs in conjunction with a period of socialization, when personal identity and values are reexamined.

Plainly, incongruencies between the teachings of conservative religious organizations about women’s rights, LGBTQ populations, and the personal beliefs of more liberal congregation members may also inspire some individuals to begin to question their religious beliefs. A key example of this tension was described by Zuckerman: “One man started to feel alienated from his religion when the words ‘God Hates Fags’ were spray-painted on a wall at the small Midwestern Christian college he was attending. Although not gay himself, such religious-inspired intolerance opened his eyes, causing him to look at the negative aspects of his religion, where before he had only seen the positive.”⁷

For the vast majority of individuals who leave their faiths, the process of deconversion is gradual; however, in a few rare cases sudden deconversions can occur. Explored by Strieb and colleagues in their cross-cultural qualitative study, sudden deconversions are seen as breakthrough events laden with realization. A clear example of such an event was noted by one of the participants after he turned to God for guidance and realized no one was listening: “And there I [said] okay God, lead me, and … I think I will come to the right decision … And suddenly it was real, like a reality check, yup. It was like, wham, like as if, like as if you wake up from a trance, like … what are you doin’ here? Yup, crazy … like someone had thrown a nail in this vase.”⁸

The narratives of this chapter depict many of these same themes, across the experiences of four individuals who left Orthodox Jewish (Alvin), Evangelical Christian (Lynnette and Chris), and Latter-Day Saint (Cora) faiths. Within the first narrative, Alvin describes his experiences of bearing witness to and practicing rituals yet not being able to grasp the powerful feelings that others seemed to have in these same practices. However, he felt compelled to hold onto his religious beliefs for the sake of his mother and because he knew no alternative. At the end of his confirmation, he expected finally to feel the “spark” of Judaism that others experienced, but instead, he had a sudden deconversion when he felt no different following the ritual. On the other hand, Lynnette, Chris, and Cora each reported very gradual deconversions beginning after they were young adults and into their twenties. For Lynnette, deconversion was strongly linked to sexist views within the church and from her very religious father. She felt confused by mixed messages, such as God loved her as a woman but that women should never hold positions of political power and must be obedient to men. Like Alvin, she also described wanting to have a “special feeling” in her faith, but this feeling never came.

It should be noted that none of the authors describe leaving faith because they were “mad at God” or out of rebelliousness, anger, or boredom. Instead, each of the narratives describe shedding a belief system that was inherited by default from the author’s family. The authors do not go on to describe voids that were left by shedding their views but instead express gratitude and freedom. In line with Pascal’s Wager, both Chris and Cora described initial fear in leaving their religions. Chris described becoming agnostic as a “stepping stone” to atheism, believing that being unsure of his stance was less risky. In a poignant statement, he captures the fear described by much of the extant deconversion literature: “Living in a godless universe was terrifying for me because I had learned that God gave us meaning and without a god there was no meaning.” And, weighing the social risks of leaving faith are epitomized by Cora’s narrative; in this piece, she describes the hardships of becoming an apostate in the Latter-Day Saint religion, a tight-knit community, collectivist and insulated. Taken together, the narratives depict that leaving faith was informed by learning more (about science, politics, social issues), meeting an inspirational new person, or feeling conflict between personal beliefs (e.g., women’s rights) and religious doctrines. Though the authors come from very different backgrounds, it remains clear that, uniformly, leaving faith can be a challenging undertaking.

1

HOW I GOT TO NONE OF THE ABOVE

Alvin Burstein

Alvin, eighty-one, is a retired psychology professor and psychoanalyst. He currently volunteers at the New Orleans–Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center, where he teaches and serves as librarian.

When I arrived at the Army Induction Center in 1954, I was required to fill out a form so that my dog tags could be punched out. The information to be included, beyond name and serial number, was religious orientation. The choices were Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or none. I chose the last.

A grizzled sergeant came up to me. “Burstein, aren’t you Jewish?”

“No, my family is, but I’m not.”

“If you’re wounded, maybe dying on the battlefield, don’t you want a chaplain to hold your hand, comfort you?”

“I would want someone to hold my hand, I guess, but I don’t care who.”

I have always thought of my mother as an observant Orthodox Jew, but how do I know that? I was sent to Hebrew school for years, attending for several hours after my public school classes. I don’t remember how many days each week the Hebrew school classes occurred, but I am pretty sure I didn’t volunteer for them. They were no fun at all. We learned only a few words of Hebrew, paradoxical ones. The Hebrew word that sounds like “dawg” means “fish,” “hee” means “she,” “hoo” means “he.” Sometimes the teacher would hold something up, say a book, “Mah zeh [what is this]?” If you said “Zeh ha safer [this is a book],” you would be rewarded with “Tov m’ode [very good].” But mostly we translated the Old Testament, sounding out the cryptic Hebrew letters one at a time and translating word by word. We learned no grammar and acquired no conversational skills. It is a dead language.

As even more evidence of my mother’s orthodoxy: I know my mother cooked for the Jewish Community Center’s summer camp, and I am pretty sure the meals had to be kosher. That meant keeping dairy products and meat products separate, making sure that meat came only from animals that chewed a cud, had split hooves, were killed in a ritually proper way, and had all traces of blood banished before cooking. Seafood was required to have scales. Chicken seemed to be easy.

I know my father and my maternal grandmother had orthodox services at their funerals, though I know, without knowing how I know, that my father, a thirty-second-degree Mason, wanted a Masonic funeral. And I know for sure that we had four sets of dishes, separate everyday sets for dairy foods and meat foods and a parallel sets for the Passover. I also remember my mother lighting the Sabbath candles, the bench licht. I believe it to be the only Orthodox Jewish religious ritual that is gender specific. It must be performed by a woman. Mom would cover her head with a cloth, chant a barucha (blessing), and wave her hands above the candles toward her face in an arcane gesture, as though she were wafting some spiritual essence to be smelled and savored. Although it seemed to me that many of the religious mandates she observed were performed as matters of routine, this one seemed imbued with meaning.

I remember, too, that the unmarried rabbi of the Orthodox synagogue just a few blocks from our house used to have Friday-night dinner with us. He would have driven from his house to the synagogue Friday morning. But because driving on the Sabbath was forbidden after sundown, he would walk to our home, have dinner, and spend the night with us. The next morning he would walk back to the synagogue, and after sundown Saturday, he could drive his car back to his own home.

One Friday evening, my mother was rushed and forgot to bench licht before the rabbi arrived. When he noticed, he walked hurriedly, head down, into his bedroom, closing the door until my mother, abashed, realized the problem and performed her ritual. He must have been listening at the door because as soon as she finished, he emerged. Without mention of the situation, he went to the Sabbath table, with its candles properly lit. There we joined him for the meal: braided challah bread, chicken soup, fish, maybe veal chops and flaky, oily strudel, redolent of cinnamon, apple, and raisin. After the meal, Rabbi Rakofsky would open a book and read aloud. It was an astonishing experience. No one had read poetry to me before. He read Poe, and the sonorous rhythms and rhymes of “The Raven” and “The Bells” fixed themselves in my memory.

He wore a vested suit and had a thin Clark Gable mustache. To my preadolescent eyes he epitomized wisdom and sophistication. I was devastated when he left town under a cloud of disgrace, for reasons I could not fathom, although I remember overhearing hushed comments about “hot pants.” It is unusual for Orthodox rabbis to be unwed, and that may have accounted for congregational suspicions. Only recently has it occurred to me that the suspicions might have included my widowed mother, who also did some house cleaning for the rabbi.

In the years leading up to my bar mitzvah at thirteen, my Judaism took some twists and turns. I was furious at the people I thought persecuted my idealized rabbi. Although I felt an irrational excitement about the activities of the Jewish kibbutzim and of the Jewish underground fighting for the independence of Israel, I had an intellectual conviction that nationalism itself was a problematic concept. I regularly attended Orthodox Sabbath services, giving sermons in the Junior Congregation and playing Theodore Hertzl, a prominent Zionist, in a Hebrew school pageant. The congregation of our synagogue offered me a scholarship to a yeshiva, a Jewish seminary. I declined, partly out of fear of leaving home and partly because of my doubts about Orthodox Jewish beliefs.

Despite the doubts, I was observant because I thought that my mother might be responsible in some cosmic way if I broke the law before I became confirmed. After that, the responsibility would be mine. I remember specific grounds for my religious doubts: my father’s wish for a Masonic funeral and my sense that not respecting that wish could not be right. In addition, I was troubled by the content of two of the many required daily prayers. The first was a prayer in which men said (in Hebrew, of course), “Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the universe for having made me a man,” while women said, “Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the universe for having made me in accordance with your desire.” Though Betty Friedan and feminism were some decades away, I found the notion of women as second-class citizens irrational. Another prayer praised God for choosing us (Jews) from all the nations. I thought the community in the synagogue, the old men dipping snuff and bobbing back and forth as they rattled off prayers, the women gossiping in the balcony, the smooth-shaven, self-important big shots that ran things, all pretty ordinary, not much of a divine selection.

Nevertheless, as the time approached for my confirmation, I spent a lot of time hanging around the rabbi’s office at the synagogue. I thought there was a chance, albeit a small one, that he might have something of profound importance, an earthshaking truth, to impart. I didn’t want to miss that precious moment. The weeks went by, and my laborious practice of chanting the Torah portion assigned to the week at my bar mitzvah came to an end without a call to the rabbi’s office.

At the synagogue for the ceremony, I remember wearing my tallis (prayer shawl) and yarmulke (skull cap). The small black boxes, the teffillin, containing the sacred words “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one” hand-written in Hebrew, were bound to my left arm and forehead. I was to carry the holy Torah from the ark, at the front, to the bemah, the platform in the center of the synagogue where the cantor sang and where the portion of the holy Torah for the week was to be chanted. I felt the slippery parchment of the scroll under the ornate velvet cover in my sweaty hands. I was terrified at the possibility I might drop the Torah and be visited with a terrible punishment, maybe fasting for a year, for the desecration. I made it to the bemah and managed my solo chant of the portion of the week without a major stumble. As the service concluded, I stood with the new rabbi at the front of the congregation. I was a pretty good speech writer, and my memorized comments went well. The rabbi began his response, and I had the hopeful thought, maybe now, maybe this is it. Maybe … but no. The best he had to offer was a string of banalities. No poetry and no kabbalist mysteries. Yearnings for epiphany, for ultimate truths, were not to be satisfied in the temple—or elsewhere.

So, in that moment and from that day forward, the case was closed; it was none of the above for me.

2

RELIGION AND THE F-WORD (FEMINISM)

Lynnette

Lynnette, twenty-one, lives in Chicago with her boyfriend. She is working toward a degree in art and design.

I’ve always hated the question, “when did you become a Christian?” because I don’t remember ever becoming a Christian. I always was one. Sure, there might have been a time where my mother sat down with me and had me say a special prayer, as I remember her doing with my younger siblings, but I don’t remember that time. “Becoming” a Christian always seems to imply some sort of choice in the matter, as if my parents had given me all the information and I thought about it for a while and decided that this was what I really wanted to do. That’s not really how it works, though. I was taught Christianity the same way I was taught how to walk, talk, read, and write. Asking me when I became a Christian is like asking when I accepted the alphabet.

I am twenty-one years old. I was a Christian since before I could remember, and I held on to those beliefs for eighteen years. I began to have doubts during my senior year of high school, and I abandoned my beliefs by the end of that summer, right before I started college. It is a very common misunderstanding among Christians that people who leave the faith were never really sincere to begin with. That is simply not the case. I was as sincere as I could possibly be. I went to church every Sunday, and I was very involved with my church’s youth group. I was commonly seen as one of the more mature people and someone who modeled Christian behavior very well. I believed in everything that the typical Evangelical Christian believes in, and I would defend it fiercely if anyone questioned me about it. But of course, what really matters most is that I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I would talk to God all throughout the day and while I was falling asleep at night. It was comforting, and even though I knew I didn’t actually hear anything, I knew he was there because of the comfort I felt when I was talking to him.

What’s interesting for me when I look back is that until my last year of high school, I don’t think I ever had any doubts that God was real. I remember one moment when I was about ten years old that I thought to myself, “Will I always be a Christian?” But as soon as that thought popped into my head, I quickly shook it out because I knew God was listening. It seemed like any time any hint of doubt came up, this was my immediate response. The fear of how God would punish me for my doubt kept me from ever doubting. But eventually this fear was overcome, and the doubt could not be held back.

Trying to tell this story is sort of like trying to tell someone a dream you had. You know how it happened in your mind, but for some reason when you’re actually trying to lay it out in chronological order, it doesn’t work. Since most of this story is about my thought process through this time, it won’t make a lot of sense if I try to tell it in order. Instead, I’ll focus on the different ways my thinking changed over a year-long period. The first thing I started thinking about was the relationship between women and Christianity. At the same time, I was also considering the possibility that the Bible might not be literal truth, as I’d always been taught. My dad died when I was twelve years old. Most of my memories of him are from when we were watching television or a movie, and then he’d stop it and start talking to us about the morality of what we just saw or heard. He took “parental guidance” very seriously. This would get us going on many topics, like evolution, abortion, politics, and more. During one of these talks, I remember that my dad was explaining why a woman should never be president. First, he explained that the story of Adam and Eve clearly shows that women are not fit for leadership because women are easily deceived....

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Other Closet: An Introduction to Atheism and Coming Out Processes
• Part 1. Leaving Faith: Arriving at Atheist Identity from Religious Backgrounds
• Part 2. Cultural Contexts in Coming Out as Atheist
• Part 3. Two Closets?: Identifying as Both LGBTQ and Atheist
• Part 4. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough: Navigating Romantic Relationships as an Atheist
• Part 5. Family Life and Atheist Parenting
• Part 6: The Search For Connection: Coming Out to Friends and Questing for Community
• Part 7. Atheism at Work: Tales of Coming Out to Coworkers and Colleagues
• Part 8. Atheism and Aging: The Challenges of Entering Older Adulthood as a Nonbeliever
• Concluding Thoughts: The Open Door
• Notes
• Bibliography