Jeremy Kolassa / March 19, 2014
It is mere coincidence that as I write this, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps Sr., lies dying? It wasn’t my intention to write this as he was – while I hold no love for the man, I won’t dance on his grave either – but it is what it is. And that “it” is that Republicans should not be afraid of secularism and atheists, and perhaps should tone down their religious rhetoric.
It may seem that social conservatism, Christianity, and the Religious Right are the bread and butter of the Republican Party. American conservatism is defined in many places as wishing for less government involvement in the economy, but having it promote a particular worldview in society, one that is usually Christian. Indeed, not a day goes by without some conservative or Republican leader calling on us to return to Biblical law, which supposedly was the basis for the United States. (It really wasn’t.) Looking at the numbers, though, at least from a marketing and recruiting standpoint, this is unstainable. It is also unnecessary.
Let’s look at the demographic data. About 20% of Americans have no religious affiliation, and that is a group that has been increasing rapidly – up from just 8% in 1990. I must stress, though, that these are not all atheists and agnostics: according to the Pew study where this number comes from, 68% of these unaffiliated people believe in God. (37% say they are “spiritual but not religious.”) What’s most interesting is in the ages: 34% of younger millennials (those born between 1990 and 1994) and 30% of older millennials (born between 1981 and 1989) are unaffiliated. (There’s even one argument out there that blames the decline of American Christianity on it’s heavy politicization since Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority.)
Politically, the Pew study says the unaffiliated lean more towards the Democratic Party, but I want to challenge that a bit with a study from another academic. Razib Khan, writing for Discover Magazine, noted in a study of atheists (so a smaller dataset than the Pew study) that over 20% of atheists “identify as Republicans or conservatives.” Khan argues that most “conservative” atheists are in fact libertarians. Considering that many arguments for socially conservative positions are based, in some way, on religion, tradition, or cultural uniformity, that is not surprising. However, that’s also a gross oversimplification.
For instance, I know an atheist who is not just a libertarian, but who is also pro-life. There is, in fact, an entirely secular pro-life movement out there. You might think that positions we commonly deem to be socially conservative are incompatible with a nonreligious mindset, but clearly, that is wrong.
One of the top writers at National Review is an atheist: Charles C. W. Cooke. He is British, sort of the anti-Piers Morgan, coming from a conservative tradition that sees no contradiction in being an atheist conservative. Cooke writes that much of what drives his conservatism also drives his atheism, and that the two positions can and do work well together. It mirrors similar writings by Heather MacDonald at the Richard Dawkins Foundation. (Yes, a pro-conservatism piece at the Richard Dawkins Foundation. I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath.) Skepticism towards religion also frequently – if the skeptic is intellectually honest – blurs into skepticism about government. Indeed, it is a powerful force for limited government.
I also want to stress a difference between atheism, being nonreligious, and secularism. Atheism comes in two standard flavors: negative atheism, which simply says “I do not believe in a god” (though with the possibility of being proved wrong later); and positive atheism, which says “There is no god.” Nonreligion is more akin to just not going to church (a ritual that only about 40% of Americans actually partake in, religious or not.) Secularism, on the other hand, is simply the separation of church and state, and that political decisions should be free of religious influences.
That last part is important, both because it is ingrained in our nation’s past and it should be the way forward for the GOP’s future. Our Founding Fathers, wary and weary of the religious strife in the old world which was a result of state churches and kings mandating their followers take their own personal religion, were adamant that freedom of religion be a fundamental principle of the new nation. In 1777, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Church of England (the state church in the colonies at the time) and provided freedom of religion to everyone—including Catholics and Jews, who weren’t exactly at the top of the popularity charts in that era.
The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli specified that the American government was “not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”, and most of the Founding Fathers were more Deist than Christian. Keeping the church and the state in two separate spheres was seen as essential not just to freedom and liberty, but also to social cohesion and peace. Much blood had been shed in Europe over which religion would control government and force itself on others; better to sidestep the whole question entirely and recognize that in their minds and in their hearts, individuals were sovereign, not the government, and just let them be.
As the number of the religious unaffiliated grow in America, and American youth especially turn away from organized religion, the GOP would be wise to start embracing secularism. There is nothing wrong with being a Christian or any other religious believer, and certainly I am not advocating for the GOP to start embracing irreligion whole hog. However, it would be unwise to ignore this growing segment of the citizenry, and – especially with the conservative and libertarian elements I noted above – abandon them to the Democratic Party, essentially giving them free voters.
Beyond that, however, we must acknowledge that there are many, many more Christians in America than there are consistent Republican voters. Trying to push public policy on the basis of religious arguments risks turning off those denominations with a different theological view.
Is that really wise? Do we really need more people registering as Independents or going elsewhere?
Writing on the blog Secular Right, in response to Cooke’s post (and citing one of his own, earlier writings), Andrew Stuttaford makes a great point that conservatives should not ignore:
Godless conservatives however are rarely anti-religious [Charlie makes a similar point]. They often appreciate religion as a force for social cohesion and as a link to a nation’s past. They may push back hard against religious extremism, but, unlike today’s “new atheists” they are most unlikely to be found railing against “sky fairies.” Mankind has evolved in a way that makes it strongly disposed towards religious belief, and conservatism is based on recognizing human nature for what it is.
That means facing the fact that gods will, one way or another, always be with us.
Granted, not all nonreligious people are like this. There are sadly more than a few people who could charitably be described as “morons”. There are more than enough, however, who follow Stuttaford’s philosophy. “Disbelief” is not the same as “hate” or “hostility.” Making them all out to be enemies would be a mistake.
The makeup of the American populace is changing in many ways. One of them is that more Americans are not having a religion. Republicans can still be Christian (or Jewish, or even Muslim, or Buddhist, or Pagan.) You can still have a deep religious belief. But don’t ignore Americans who think differently, and don’t turn them away by trying to push a particular religious view. That will not bode well at the ballot box or in public policy.
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