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A Charter for Controversy?
Public school “alternatives” still must abide by the separation of church and state
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by Rob Boston • 22 April 2014
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Starting in the late 1980s charter schools were pitched to Americans as a harmless and non-threatening alternative to traditional public schools. That’s come to pass in some states. But in others, we’re beginning to see church-state problems.
Remember, charter schools are not private institutions. They’re part of the public school system. The idea behind charter schools was to spur innovation by freeing the schools from some of the regulations and requirements imposed on public schools. Outside groups were encouraged to offer input and even create new schools.
Like traditional public schools, charter schools may not promote religion, sponsor prayer and Bible reading, or encourage students to take part in “faith-based” activities. They may teach about religion as an academic subject but are not allowed to engage in theological instruction.
Some charter schools are clearly stepping over these lines. In 2012, Americans United for Separation of Church and State conducted a lengthy investigation of Shekinah Learning Institute, which ran several charter schools in Texas.
Americans United was suspicious from the beginning. The word “shekinah” has religious meaning and is sometimes interpreted as a manifestation of God or a dwelling near the deity. The school’s superintendent is also pastor of a church, which rents space to the school.
AU’s investigation found that the school promoted attendance at chapel services and offered weekly Bible study classes. School materials contained religious phrases and iconography. An auditor for the Texas Education Agency reported that “many of the parents thought they were actually at a private Christian school.”
Texas officials vowed to fix that mess. Now they have another one on their hands: Late last year, reports surfaced that creationism was being taught by a charter school chain with branches in Texas and Arkansas.
The abuses at schools run by Responsive Education Solutions (RES) were first brought to light by Zack Kopplin, an activist who promotes sound science education in public schools. Kopplin found that RES schools were teaching students that the fossil record is “sketchy,” that the theory of evolution is “dogma” and “unproven” and that leading scientists disagree about the age of the Earth—in short, standard creationist nonsense. Lessons also attempted to link Darwinian evolution to the racist “social Darwinism” of the late nineteenth century.
Texas officials promised to make changes after attorneys with Americans United wrote to them about the matter. But the situation in Arkansas, where RES also runs charter schools, was not so easily resolved. Education officials there told Americans United to take their complaint directly to RES—implying that state officials had no say in the matter. In fact, they have the final say since these are public schools.
Charter school problems aren’t limited to Texas and Arkansas. A California charter school recently hosted a prayer service for a student who was declared brain dead after undergoing what should have been a routine operation. Sponsoring a religious service was bad enough, but officials at the school compounded the problem by strongly implying to young children that their classmate, who medical officials agreed was clinically dead, would somehow come back to life if they just prayed hard enough.
The list goes on. A parent in Tampa, Florida, checked out what looked like an innovative charter school but turned out to be a front for Scientology. A Minnesota charter school ended up embroiled in a lawsuit over allegations that it was teaching Islam. In Pennsylvania, a pastor who ran a charter school was accused of funneling taxpayer money to his church. A chain of charters in New York that offered a Hebrew-language curriculum were said to be promoting Judaism.
And in some states, financially strapped Roman Catholic schools have pulled down crucifixes, promised to stop teaching religion, and converted to publicly funded charters, retaining the same student body and staff.
The charter concept has always had its critics. Little evidence exists that charters out-perform traditional public schools, and in fact some may do worse. Many opponents fear that charters are designed to get Americans comfortable with the idea of privatizing secondary education or grease the skids for vouchers. Others say charter schools dilute the influence of teachers’ unions.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Charters could be what they were intended to be—a supplement to traditional public schools—but only if they are subjected to proper forms of oversight and regulation.
Regulation seems to be a dirty word in much of the United States these days. That’s unfortunate, because all of the problems I’ve discussed here could have been avoided if state education officials had simply kept an appropriate watch over things.
Simply cutting a check and handing it off to a charter school won’t do. Education officials have a responsibility to ensure that the operators of charter schools understand that their institutions are part of the public system. Thus, they can’t inculcate religion.
These schools should also be subjected to the same curriculum checks as traditional public schools. In Texas and Arkansas, it took whistle-blowers to bring the abuses at RES schools to light. It shouldn’t be that way. If state education officials had been doing their jobs, they would have known that RES was pushing creationism and would have put a stop to it before it reached the classroom.
These schools also need to be subjected to the same quality-control measures that are imposed on other public schools. Standardized testing and other efforts at accountability are all the rage in public education right now. One can question the effectiveness of these approaches—standardized testing has its critics and rightly so—but it’s unfair to rigorously subject traditional public schools to these measures and give the charters a pass.
Charter schools must show that they are getting the job done. If they’re not, the charters should be revoked.
Finally, it must be made absolutely clear to everyone from the get-go (school administrators, parents, students, and state officials) that charter schools are not “private schools-lite.” They are public institutions, supported and maintained by the taxpayer.
That means they must follow all applicable laws, including the First Amendment’s dictate of separation of church and state. It’s never too late to learn what’s right.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Tags: Charter Schools
Boston5Rob Boston is director of communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a board member of the American Humanist Association. Rob writes the Church & State column for The Humanist magazine and TheHumanist.com.
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Imposter Syndrome, and What It Means to Be an Adult
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by Greta Christina • 22 April 2014
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“I don’t feel like an adult.”
Perhaps that or any of the following statements sound familiar to you: “My adult life looks nothing like I thought it would. I thought I’d have it a lot more together by now. I thought by now I’d be finished with school, or have a stable job, or be married and have kids. Sure, I’m doing (insert list of awesome, inspiring, difficult things) but I can’t balance my checkbook/ I do my laundry at the last minute/ I eat like a teenager/ I’m scrambling for money at the end of every month/ I have eight thousand unanswered emails/ I clean my house for parties by shoving all my junk into grocery bags and sticking them in the closet. What’s wrong with me?”
I can’t tell you how many people I know who feel this way. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of an adult in my life who doesn’t feel this way, at least to some degree. And recently I’ve started wondering: What’s up with that?
Many religions have coming-of-age traditions: rites of passage in which children declare themselves to finally be adults. Much of the time, of course, these traditions are less about actual adulthood, and more about the formality of declaring yourself an adult so you can make a supposedly adult commitment to your religion. As a result, many people get pressured into taking part in these rituals, even when they’re having serious doubts about their religion or are even open nonbelievers. (In researching my book, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, I read a depressingly large number of these stories.) And these rites often take place at a much younger age than we generally consider people capable of making important decisions. (It’s traditional in Judaism, for instance, for bar and bat mitzvahs to take place at age thirteen, and while Catholic confirmations are common for teens, they can happen as young as age seven.)
Many humanist communities are doing nonreligious rites of passage, such as baby-namings and coming-of-age ceremonies. I think this is a fine idea. But lots of nonbelievers don’t get to have these rituals. Heck, I didn’t, and I was raised without religion. So for those of us who never had a humanist coming-of-age ceremony—and even for those of us who did—I think it’s worth asking: How do we define adulthood?
As nonreligious people, we reject the definition of adulthood as stating an adult acceptance of one’s religion, or knuckling under to pressure to do so. And as freethinkers, we’re more likely to reject the standard set of cultural markers—“adulthood” equals marriage, financial stability, higher education, a steady job, and so on. If we reject these standard definitions, then what does adulthood mean? And why do so many of us have a hard time thinking of ourselves as adults?
You may have heard of “imposter syndrome,” a condition where accomplished people see themselves as frauds, as not deserving of success or recognition, despite significant evidence to the contrary. I think imposter syndrome can apply to more than just career accomplishments. I think imposter syndrome can apply to every aspect of life, and our ability to navigate it as adults.
A big part of this, I think, comes from how we see adulthood when we’re growing up. When we’re kids, we tend to see adults as infallible, omniscient, having everything figured out. So when we ourselves become adults, and we’re all too aware of how fallible we are and how much we’re just making things up as we go along, we feel like failures. Or at least, we don’t feel like grownups. (I sometimes wonder if this contributes to the religious impulse: the panicked realization that you don’t really know what you’re doing, that none of the other adults around you knows what they’re doing, and the fact that nobody is driving the bus could easily make people yearn for an all-knowing, all-powerful cosmic parent-in-the-sky who actually has things under control.)
It’s also easy to focus on our failures rather than our successes. It makes a certain amount of sense: humans are problem-solvers, and if we’re trying to make things better for ourselves and others, it’s easy to focus on what isn’t working. But this does lead to dissatisfaction. And it’s easy to have that “grass is greener” syndrome when we’re assessing our lives. It’s easy to see other people’s lives as more together than our own—since “successful and together” is the face that people tend to present. As a friend said when we were talking about this, “Keep in mind you only see the side of other people’s lives that they want you to see. Sort of like when you think everyone but you has a clean house or apartment. They cleaned it because you were coming over!”
And I think that seeing ourselves as adults can be especially hard for people with unconventional careers and lives. Our culture’s idea of what it means to be an adult is somewhat rigid: marriage, kids, a nice home, a stable job. Now, I know in my head that this is crap: I can reel off the names of dozens of amazing adults—adults I look up to and admire and am inspired by—whose lives don’t look like that. I can think of people who left high-paying career tracks to do relief work; people who dropped out of school to become artists or musicians or writers; people who went to school to pursue uncertain careers in social work or healthcare or something else they think matters instead of going for the big bucks; people who rejected the supposed ideal of monogamous marriage and are inventing relationship structures that work for them. But the rigid image of adulthood is very prevalent, and it’s hard not to buy into. And when you’re carving out your own life, then, pretty much by definition, there’s no cultural template—no yardstick to measure yourself against to decide whether you’re doing okay.
And yet, that very conundrum—the lack of a cultural yardstick to measure success—may actually point the way out of this problem. I’m not sure I could come up with a simple, sound-bite-length definition of “adulthood.” But if I had to, it would probably be: “Carving out your own life.” It wouldn’t have anything to do with any particular marker. It would be about your ability to decide which markers matter to you. It would be about taking responsibility for your choices—and accepting the consequences of those choices.
It wouldn’t be about any particular signpost. It would mean being willing and able to paint those signs yourself.
To me, accepting without question the cultural standards of adulthood—doing what everyone expects of you simply because they expect it—that’s the opposite of responsible. That’s the opposite of adult. But if you do what matters to you, and you accept the burdens and consequences and risks of that choice—then in my eyes, you’re an adult.
Even if you do eat cookies for breakfast.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Humanist_Sept_Oct11.inddGreta Christina is a widely read and well-respected atheist blogger. She is also the author ofWhy Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (Pitchstone Publishing), is a regular contributor to AlterNet, and has been published in Ms., Salon, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Greta writes the Fierce Humanism column in the Humanist magazine and TheHumanist.com.
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Humanism 101: The Danger of Scientism
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by Michael Werner • 22 April 2014
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I’ve been surprised at how many people I’ve met in the secular movement who dismiss fiction, saying they’re only interested in reading nonfiction and, more specifically, important scientific books. For their part, some of the “New Atheists” have edged nearer and even crossed over to scientism in their writings, overvaluing the ability of science to inform and guide us in how to live our secular lives.
This is problematic for humanists, who have been some of the few willing to stand up for reason and science in our neo-romantic, postmodern, religion-dominated times. We don’t want to appear to disparage science. Still, history calls for a balanced, interdisciplinary approach to humanism. The humanities have much to inform us and we disregard them at great loss, as humanism represents the best of both the Enlightenment and the Romantic traditions.
Fourteenth-century Renaissance humanism emerged out of the Dark Ages with a focus on human welfare and potential. The high aspirations were inspired by the classical literature of Greece and Rome. The Italian scholar Francesco Petrarca heralded our potential for progress and higher culture focused on humanity, not God. The Renaissance gave great importance to the artistic community and benefactors like the Medici family helped advance our cultural civilization.
Why are the humanities important? What value does music, literature, art, drama, architecture, and poetry provide us other than pleasure? This perennial question has been answered many times, but we still seem to forget that Shakespeare tells us more about human character than most psychological science, that Greek sculpture reflects our highest visions of the human form, and that Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings can musically send us into the depths of existential angst, while gangster rap speaks to the angst of urban despair. Charles Dickens’ marginalized characters inhabit our minds long after reading them, the aria “Un Bel Di” in Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly, tugs at our heartstrings with the tale of abandoned love, and no one needs Enlightenment rationalism to understand the horror of slavery after seeing the movie Twelve Years a Slave. (It becomes a visceral awareness.) None of these are examples of scientific learning. They are experiential, transformative lessons separate from “head-only” thinking.
Put another way, we can rationally “know” things but art makes them real, immediate, and makes us emotionally aware. Great art holds a mirror to our selves, to life, and to society in ways no data can. As Albert Camus said, “If the world were clear there would be no need for art.” Maybe as George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” Yes, art entertains, but it also opens doors to knowing and to awareness we might not otherwise possess, and it arouses us to action.
Other humanities need our attention as well, most importantly philosophy. Massimo Pigliucci and others find the increasing dominance of a scientific approach a sad turn of affairs for atheism/humanism and they have challenged the writings of secular luminaries such as Sam Harris, E.O. Wilson, and Jerry Coyne, among others. I agree. Philosophy, despite its problems, still offers conceptual tools to understand reality. Pigliucci distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: The first type he calls scientia, which consists of science, philosophy, logic, and math. The second includes literature, the arts, and other humanities.
Many times a purely scientific approach leads some to mere reductionism, whereas the humanities enlighten us on the emergent complexities of life, from hearts that ache, hearts that soar, our longings for better life, and the moral life within.
As Pigliucci says regarding science, “There is important stuff before it: there are human emotions, expressed by literature, music and the visual arts; there is culture; there is history. The best understanding of the whole shebang that humanity can hope for will involve a continuous dialogue between all our various disciplines.” Indeed, pulling together all our human resources is what civilization entails and inspires a full, robust humanism beyond mere atheism, mere scientism. Raising our consciousness and increasing our sensitivity may be just as important for obtaining the good life as knowing true facts about the world.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Michael Werner is past president of the AHA and author of the new book, Regaining Balance: The Evolution of the UUA. The book was recently published by Religious Humanism Press (the HUUmanists Association’s publishing arm) and has been released as an ebook by Humanist Press.
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The End of Polite Conversation?
Part One
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by Marcy Campbell • 3 March 2014
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This is part one of a two-part series. Click here for the conclusion.
On February 26, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have made it legal for businesses to discriminate against LGBT customers whose identity ran counter to the business owner’s religious views. Similar bills in other states are facing major opposition, as the majority of Americans increasingly see a person’s gender or sexual identity as that individual’s own private business, nothing else. But conservatives haven’t given up. And even if laws allowing businesses to deny services to LGBTs don’t come to pass, what’s stopping the butcher, the baker, or even worse, your doctor, from giving you an earful?
“You should get a medal,” my doctor said. He had just asked how long my husband and I had been married (eighteen years). “You should get reward stickers, like we give to our kids. Our culture should be rewarding your relationship, the right relationship.”
I felt my heartbeat quicken. Just minutes before, the nurse had clocked my blood pressure at a very desirable 110/70. I could feel those numbers shooting upwards with each breath. I wasn’t there to talk about my marriage, but my sleep habits—namely my insomnia—during my third, and hopefully last, visit.
Pulling into the parking lot for my first appointment, I’d been confronted with a huge shrine, complete with a towering statue of the Virgin Mary clutching baby Jesus to her breast and a lantern sitting at her feet with a flame lit in honor of unborn children. I sat and stared out my windshield at the sheer spectacle of it. There were benches around the statue where I suppose patients, or anyone else, could sit and pray, just a stone’s throw from our town’s tiny Planned Parenthood clinic (which does not provide abortions).
I wondered what the shrine might have cost, and assumed the medical practice was doing well; it had taken me awhile to get an appointment, and the parking lot was full. I was just so very, very tired. I attempted to blink away my morning headache, not yet relieved by my first dose of caffeine. I needed help sleeping, and this doctor was the only sleep specialist in town. And so I went in.
At that first visit, we discussed my insomnia at length. I learned a lot from the doctor about sleep cycles and what was considered “normal.” There was only one moment that made me feel uncomfortable. While going through my family history, the doctor had inappropriately asked why I’d “started so late” having children and why I had only two. He and his wife had eight. “She just finished breastfeeding, and she’s fifty,” he said proudly, as though he were the one producing the milk.
I laughed nervously and changed the subject. I’d gotten somewhat used to inappropriate comments, often of the conservative religious variety, since moving to my rural Ohio town ten years before. But the comments were often ones I simply overheard. Being confronted personally was something new.
At a recent visit to a different doctor, I noted the only reading material in the waiting room was the Bible. Furthermore, on the mirror above the coat rack, a collage had been created with quotes from Billy Graham overlapping ones from Abraham Lincoln. The unifying theme amongst the quotes, which took me some time to discern, was that God wanted people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. I never would have put Lincoln and Graham together, there on the same mirror (which no one could actually use since the glass had been completely obscured) but my podiatrist apparently thought the two men were suitable bedfellows. My former dentist dispensed with any second-guessing concerning his motives. His only waiting room reading material was a stack of pamphlets on how to be born again.
After my second visit to the sleep specialist (during which we analyzed the results of an actigraph test that recorded my rest/activity cycles round the clock), I felt much more confident that I was on the path to sleeping better. The man had, in fact, helped me. And the only other annoying comment he’d made was: “If you wake up too early, just get out of bed and catch up on your Scriptures.” I wasn’t sure if he meant reading Scriptures would help me fall back to sleep, but I didn’t ask.
I had learned to sidestep the shrine on my way into his office. People are entitled to their opinions, I thought. I’ll just ignore it. Plus, I’d been taught as a kid to respect authority, such as that of the priest and deacons in our church, of my father, of anyone in uniform, including police officers, and, certainly, doctors. I tried to imagine the shoe on the other foot. What if I was a deeply conservative, religious woman visiting an openly gay sleep specialist? What if he commented on how lucky I was to have two children when he and his partner were having trouble adopting? I couldn’t hold the idea in my head for long; it was too absurd to imagine where I live.
Yes, it bothers me when professional people, of any profession, feel the need to broach topics such as religion completely out of context. Still, I’m not someone who enjoys confrontation; I wasn’t going to challenge the sleep specialist about it, as long as he didn’t take it too far. He’d stepped up to the imaginary line I’d drawn in my head, but he hadn’t stepped over it, not yet.
Click here to read part two of “The End of Polite Conversation?”
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Tags: The End of Polite Conversation
campbell_marcyMarcy Campbell has published essays in UUWorld, The Writer, Ohio Magazine and The Millions. Her short fiction has been published widely in literary journals (most recently The Rumpus and The Santa Fe Writers Project Journal) and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has recently completed her first novel and blogs as The Closet Creative.
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Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It
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Book Review by Temma Ehrenfeld • 22 April 2014
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by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Yale University Press 2013
280 pp.; $26.00
It’s a Wonderful Life is such a cheery movie, we forget that the main character, George Bailey, gets drunk, crashes his car into a tree, and is about to jump off a bridge when his guardian angel appears. Clarence famously shows George what his town of Bedford Falls would be like if he’d never been born. But imagine a different movie, in which George sees what happens in his town after he dies jumping off the bridge.
If the suicide rate in Bedford Falls held true to real-life statistics, it would rise. The town is small and George Bailey is well known and admired. In particular, his wife and children would be afflicted for years with suicidal thoughts and perhaps dreams that George was asking them to join him in death. One of the kids—let’s say his youngest daughter, Zuzu—might throw herself off a bridge when she reached middle age. (A suicide by a parent triples the likelihood of a child dying by suicide; think of Nicholas Hughes, the son of Sylvia Plath.) In this alternative version of the film, George sees the damage caused by his suicide—and also by his simple absence. Imagine Zuzu weeping over a broken love affair and Clarence holding George back as he thrashes around, wanting to jump across time and console her.
Now let’s say that Clarence also gives him a tour of his future if he chooses to live—a segue into the happy ending of the actual movie.
Jennifer Michael Hecht, a poet and historian of ideas, doesn’t reinvent Frank Capra’s movie, but she invites us, over and over, to engage in the kind of thought-experiment I describe above. Stay has a simple message: when you contemplate suicide, think about the harm you will do to others. Also think about the possibility of a future in which you can do good, and even be happy at times.
Hecht doesn’t address jihadists or people contemplating euthanasia. Her topic is despair, which she believes can strike us all. To arm ourselves, she urges us to absorb the arguments against suicide before desperation strikes, especially the chance that your suicide will inspire another. She quotes Les Miserables, in which one of Victor Hugo’s characters gives voice to the idea: “You want to die, I want that too, I who am speaking to you, but I don’t want to feel the ghosts of women wringing their hands around me… Suicide is restricted… As soon as it touches those next to you the name of suicide is murder.”
The premise here is that ideas make a difference at such times; it’s worth a try. Philosophers have much to say about the troubles we now bring to mental health professionals. Still, I wish Hecht had discussed the research on which arguments work best to dissuade people from killing themselves.
I believe that many people now stay alive for the sake of others. One friend used to say to me, “I can’t do it as long as my parents are alive. I couldn’t do that to them.” Another has been saying for years that she doesn’t want to live but is determined “not to leave a mess.”
Hecht cites scientific evidence mainly in her chapter on contagion, where she points to a study of three television movies that included a suicide. Two that concentrated on the victim were followed by a suicide spike, but the third, which focused on the grieving parents, was not.
We urgently need to know the right message; the suicide rate has been escalating in the U.S. population for the past decade. Hecht and others argue persuasively that the U.S. military is now in the midst of a suicide epidemic. (The Pentagon counted 349 military deaths by suicide in 2012, up 16 percent from 2011.) For the general U.S. population, Hecht cites an estimate from suicide expert Alan Berman that each suicide directly affects six to thirty-two people. When researchers conducted a random poll and asked respondents whether he or she knew someone who had committed suicide in the past year, they found a sphere of influence of about 425 people per suicide, about 7 percent of the U.S. population.
That’s significant if we accept that suicide is contagious, and especially if we believe that anyone may be susceptible. It’s true that people kill themselves over disappointments in love and legal or financial troubles. However, Hecht may overstate her argument that we’re all in danger. Most people who try to kill themselves have a history of psychiatric disorders, including major depression, or addiction.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t save them or shouldn’t try. There are more than ten times as many attempts as deaths. When my partner, a depressed alcoholic, died in an intentional binge, many people told me that no one could have stopped him. “He’d just try again,” they said. In fact, many people who attempt suicide are saved and go on to lead good lives.
We hear so little about them. Instead, we hear about the toughest cases, like novelist David Foster Wallace, who killed himself in 2008. Wallace had all of the ingredients of a good life—success based on his talents, a seemingly happy marriage, devoted family, strong friendships, and a kind heart. Accounts of his generosity poured out after his death. Hecht frequently says (and quotes scholars who say) that service to others is a path to happiness. It didn’t work for Wallace. But he had been struggling with depression for decades. His medicines had begun to give him severe side-effects; in fact, fourteen months before he died, he and his doctor decided to end that treatment. Then he had electric-convulsive therapy. If you are in great pain and see no reason to think it will end—you’ve tried the available treatments—suicide from depression doesn’t seem so different from euthanasia.
Could reading Stay have saved David Foster Wallace? Probably not.
Now let’s listen to my friend K, who was locked in the bathroom with a big knife when she was saved at the last minute by a virtual posse of adoring friends and family.
I don’t think that reading a book about the philosophical arguments against suicide could be an effective deterrent. Maybe it would work for other, more rational people, but I experienced a fire in the brain (courtesy of William Styron) filled with anxiety and self-loathing, the pitter patter, or stinging, of every thought being about my deficits (I should have done this or that, I can’t, I’m defective, more defective than anyone I know, nobody understands, they can’t know how bad, stupid I really am, followed by despair). Every waking moment, I was writhing in my own skin. In that state, very clinically depressed, I couldn’t think rationally. No argument against it, except thinking of the havoc you will wreak if/when you commit suicide on people you love. I didn’t think about the contagion, just the fact that my mother and sister would be in unbelievable pain and despair, and that fact only multiplied my feelings of shame and guilt. Maybe if I had children, it would be a different story.
What did work for K was psychotherapy and medication—after friends broke down the door.
Still, I’m grateful to Hecht for writing Stay, if only because it taught me how common it is to dream that someone who died by suicide is asking you to join him. I’ve had that dream and it scared me.
I see Hecht’s arguments as a humanist case for embracing life, as armor against cynicism. And read just as a popular book on intellectual history, Stay is compassionate, clear, rich, and even funny, as when she points out that Romeo was pining for another woman before he met Juliet.
Her brief on the history: even the ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t believe in suicide from personal despair, though they admired suicide for the sake of principle. Later Western defenses of suicide were actually attacks on the religious prohibition against killing yourself.
On the anti-suicide side, Diderot, as one example, insists that every person is of some use to society, so dying willingly would violate our obligation to others. Diderot also sees an obligation to improve your own life. Immanuel Kant, who saw self-murder as “debasing humanity,” offers suicide as his first example of an act ruled out by the categorical imperative.
I was most moved by Hecht’s account of John Milton, who suffered in love and politics and went blind at age forty-four, wondering how he would continue to write. Interpreting his sonnet “On His Blindness,” Hecht writes: “When he thinks about how his eyesight is gone (how his days are spent) with half his life still to go, and when he thinks of his talent for writing buried in him because of his blindness, he wants to ask how he is supposed to do his work like this—it is day labor in the dark.” (In Milton’s language: “day-labour, light denied.”)
How eloquently the phrase captures the burden of getting through each day when you’d rather be dead. In the poem, “Patience” replies that we don’t get to choose our burden. Through Hecht’s lens, Milton is telling us that the “work of waiting through suicidal dark periods is heroic.” And she reminds us again that we don’t know what the future will bring. Indeed, Milton had yet to write Paradise Lost.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Temma Ehrenfeld is a writer and editor in New York who blogs at Psychology Today and is currently ghostwriting a memoir. You can see her work at expertediting.org, temmaehrenfeld.contently.com, and psychologytoday.com/blog/open-gently.
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Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
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Book Review by Fernando Alcántar • 22 April 2014
Alcazar
by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola
Congruity, 2013
280 pp.; $14.00
Doubting the divine while still wearing the seal of the cross can be psychological torture, like being held captive in a medieval dungeon of the mind. It is a place of loneliness, despair, and limited options—a place one can’t easily emerge from unscarred. (Full disclosure: I’m currently working on publishing a book based on my own ascension in the ranks of Christian ministry, life’s challenges, and my eventual reasoning into humanism.)
In Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind, researchers Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola bring forth stories of current and former clergy who are, or were, serving the faithful while personally witnessing the twilight of their own belief. They interviewed thirty-five people over the course of three-and-a-half years, asking questions regarding the experience of being inspired by the supernatural, the internal process of questioning the faith, and participants’ personal choices to leave their religious community or to stay on at their post regardless of a theological shift. The interviews were conducted confidentially with those representing a variety of religious doctrines, including Pentecostalism, Presbyterianism, Mormonism, and Judaism.
Caught in the Pulpit tempts readers with these personal, sometimes tragic stories of those who have moved on from the pulpit or are still trapped there. I was originally drawn, as many of you might be, by the seemingly “controversial” nature of the material, the secrecy surrounding the interviewees, and a natural curiosity about the “good dirt” these people may spit out about their religious background. Though the book does provide anecdotes of perceived hypocrisy, cover-up, and scandal, this is first and foremost a research book, along with a depiction of what the writers see as the sanity of post-religious ideology.
The authors begin by describing what qualitative research is, its value, and its process, as a way to validate a lack of bias. They then share short testimonials with sometimes socially tragic details in an attempt to give us a window into the harsh reality of post-religious life. We get segments from people’s stories, including hints at confessions of sexual abuse and social discrimination to support the author’s findings. But as an individual who appreciates personal narrative, I felt stories were selectively truncated and good storytelling was, at times, sacrificed to focus on the research results.
Delving into that research, we learn about how troubled religious leaders felt in their process of doubt, what the breaking points were that made them part ways with their theology, depression they experienced, and how their community responded.
The book does a good job of describing three main phases in the spectrum of belief. First is the “literal,” which describes the more traditional and conservative segments of the religious population, who may be guided more by emotion and relationship, and who believe in the inerrancy and literal translations of the Bible. The “liberal” are those in the religious community who stand closer to the side of interpretation based on logic and intellect, and who believe the Bible to be more inspired than fully literal in its meaning. Third is the “nonbeliever,” who has either always been on or who has made a complete trip to the side of reason and away from religious belief.
While the book preaches to the choir of the “nonbelievers,” it also encourages the so-called liberals to continue the path all the way to full enlightenment.
In the real religious world, beyond literals and liberals, beyond any acceptance of what makes sense logically, there is the Christian’s relationship with Jesus Christ. For the faithful he is the first breath they take in the morning, the heartbeat of their loved ones, and the gravity that holds life in place. It is a relationship with an individual who is part of one’s dreams, the target of one’s expectations, the center of any conflict, possessor of one’s gifts, and the ultimate judge of his or her successes.
This is why, even though many people will admit there is truth in the theory of evolution while seeming to subscribe to a creationist worldview, they’ll still find it heartbreaking to consider parting ways with their best friend and most loyal companion. It may be worth it to endure such pain in order to keep what little of their lives is still in balance.
When I stood inside hundreds of churches to preach the value of Christian life and then went home to a fog of doubt, I wasn’t trembling because of a lack of sense in doctrine, but because of the lacerating possibility of divorce from a community. I was unable to bring my private shadows into public ears, but searched for sources of testimonies that sounded and looked the way I felt.
While facts and figures speak great lengths in the languages of the mind, a personal story hits at the heart of the reader who admits, “this feels, aches, sweats, and bleeds just like I do.” Religion can be broken down by research and findings. Relationships can only be processed by time, words, and actions.
If I were judging the target audience for Caught in the Pulpit, I’d probably place this book a little closer to the textbook section in the library. If you’re looking for a book on reactions, consequences, and short stories about what it feels like to depart from Judeo-Christian values, then you’ve found your book. It’s great for referencing and footnoting. More traditional readers, however, may find themselves lost in academic structure and thirsty for a full narrative that describes how they feel in real life.
In addition, this book is written for an older audience. It covers areas of financial security, marital situations, retirement, and other long-term consequences of choosing to leave one’s religious faith. Also worth noting is that while the book’s participants are diverse in religious background, gender, sexual orientation, and, to some degree, age, ethnic minorities are not represented. These groups would seem crucial in research like this because they very often experience a more cultural attachment to their faith. Though the authors may have had valid reasons for the omission, I couldn’t help being reminded of an old joke from the early days of psychological research: “even the lab rats are all white.”
For anyone who’s made it all the way to the end of their faith, this book will likely prove both validating and encouraging. If you’re a reader who appreciates academic research, you’ll find it informative and gratifying. If you’re a reader who is questioning a religious affiliation, you may find yourself responding with “I know what that feels like.” And if you’re a reader who is confident in a present belief in the supernatural, you may be challenged by honest stories of those who have been where you are and made tough choices in spite of tough consequences.
One thing is for sure, whatever “phase in faith” or point on the spectrum you may find yourself on, it’s important to remember the idea that opened this review: when it comes to faith, doubting can be a form of torture. If anything, this book will give you a better perspective, or a reminder, about how personal and difficult the choice of leaving belief behind can be. This is something about which we should always be very respectful and empathetic.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Fernando Alcántar is a former leader for the Foursquare and United Methodist denominations, as well as for Azusa Pacific University, a top Christian college in California.
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Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist
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Book Review by Norm R. Allen Jr. • 11 March 2014
pinn_book1
by Anthony Pinn
(Prometheus Books, 2014)
241 pp.; $18.95
Since the mid-1990s, Anthony Pinn has been known to many humanists as a major humanist scholar. He is the author or editor of twenty-eight books, including Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (1995), By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism (2001), and The End of God Talk: An African American Humanist Theology (2012).
In his first book (Why Lord?) Pinn discussed theodicy from an African-American perspective. How, he asked, can black theists, particularly black theologians, make sense of a perfectly good God in light of African-American suffering? (In 1973, African-American humanist William Jones raised the same question in Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology.)
This question seems to be one of the central questions in Pinn’s life. Indeed, it was largely responsible for his personal path from minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to full-fledged atheist.
Pinn isn’t the first person to write a memoir about going from being a spiritual minister to an atheist. Former preacher Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) wrote Losing Faith in Faith, for example. Nor is Pinn the first African-American author to write a memoir about his personal journey from theism to non-theism. (See fellow Houstonian and former Baptist Deacon Donald R. Wright’s The Only Prayer I’ll Ever Pray: Let My People Go.) However, Pinn might be the only former African-American minister to write such a book.
What makes Pinn’s journey so amazing is that he was a child preacher. He placed pressures upon himself and had pressures placed upon him by others that most children never have to endure. He was constantly aware that he had to be a sterling example for others. Though he was only a child, he had to deliver messages of hope to the adult faithful that would resonate with them. He had to make sure that his recreational activities were not of a “sinful” nature.
The young Pinn handled the challenges admirably. He saw himself as an instrument of God and felt that he was called to lead at an early age. He also had a great role model in the young minister of his church.
Pinn’s life was much like that of the African-American writer James Baldwin, also a child preacher who was renowned throughout Harlem for his impressive oratory skills. He could drive believers into a religious frenzy. However, Baldwin realized it was all a sham. He eventually became an atheist and a harsh critic of black Christianity, and a somewhat less harsh critic of the Nation of Islam. Pinn acknowledges Baldwin as one of his greatest influences today.
As a preacher, Pinn writes that he became aware at a very early age of male privilege within the church; ministers were supposed to be male and women had no serious leadership roles in the church. Worst of all, their identity often hinged on their willingness to be seen as long-suffering, which often meant enduring the sexism and mistreatment of their husbands.
Pinn eventually left his inner-city public school and attended the predominantly white West Seneca Christian School in Western New York, near his hometown of Buffalo. It was there he noticed differences in black and white religious styles. He recalls being very uncomfortable there and was regarded as an oddity by his classmates.
Some of the leaders and teachers of his school were graduates of the notorious Bob Jones University:
Being a feeder school for institutions like Bob Jones University meant it embraced a compatible theology of race that privileged whiteness and sought to control the interaction between races. The university admitted blacks by the time I was in high school, but the school’s ban on interracial relationships, for example, remained in place until long after I was out of school—out of graduate school and working as a full professor at a major university…
Bob Jones University, from my vantage point, provided theological cover for a culture of racism. With a smile and a song, representatives of this perspective—to differing degrees—at my school felt religiously obligated and authorized to see me as different and to invest that difference with real meaning.
Pinn was sometimes called “nigger” and he was discouraged from dating white girls at the school. Moreover, there were theological differences on the subject and role of race between Pinn’s black church and his predominantly white school.
Ironically, and apparently unbeknownst to the author, he was growing up in the midst of a hotbed of secular humanism and skepticism. The late Paul Kurtz was a philosophy professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. While there, he was editor of the Humanist and a leader of the American Humanist Association. Later, he would found what would become the Center for Inquiry, housing the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publishers of Free Inquiry and The Skeptical Inquirer, respectively. In 1988, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) held their congress at SUNY. One can only wonder what kind of an influence such organizations and publications might have had on Pinn back then had he been exposed to them.
Pinn went on to earn his undergraduate degree at Columbia University and his MDiv and PhD from Harvard. Along the way, he learned much that would change his mind about becoming an ordained adult minister. While teaching at Harvard and preaching at a church in Roxbury, a black section of Boston, Pinn recalls a nearby playground that came to represent for him decay and the numerous challenges faced by poor African Americans. This line of thought helped to advance his thinking about black people and the problem of evil, and helped accelerate his move toward atheism.
Another aspect of Pinn’s character detailed in Writing God’s Obituary is his vast musical interest. Pinn has long been a fan of hip-hop and rap music, as well as the blues, which he says provides him mental relaxation and encouragement. He also points out that the blues is a secular—sometimes atheistic—African-American art form.
Blues figures and church figures both encountered injustices and adverse circumstances, but, while church figures seek assistance from God or find a way to make their predicament a source of inspiration and even joy, blues figures “keep on keeping on.” The blues sees nothing special, no cosmic plan expressed in human misery. It’s just the shit we encounter and that we have to move through.
The dire need for a sense of community among African-American humanists is among Pinn’s primary concerns. However, he isn’t interested in a church model, like that of the Unitarian Universalists. Nor does he identify strongly with the New Atheists. Incidentally, it’s my contention that African-American humanists won’t be able form a solid community until significant numbers of full-time African-American humanist activists come to the fore.
In Writing God’s Obituary, Pinn shows that people can abandon their theistic illusions and still lead happy, moral, productive lives. Rather than being in awe of God, one can be in awe of the cosmos and concerned with humanity, while excitedly trying to figure out where human beings of various backgrounds and ethnic experiences fit into a modern secular society.
Published in the May / June 2014 Humanist
Norm R. Allen Jr. is the director of international outreach for the Institute for Science and Human Values and editor of the organization’s quarterly journal, The Human Prospect.
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Rules Are for Schmucks: Do the Ends Justify Supernaturalist Means?
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by Luis Granados • 19 June 2014
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Two recent news items highlight a troublesome tendency in political discourse to grab whatever allies one can get, without regard to the ultimate damage done to the decision-making process itself.
In England, the House of Bishops of the Church of England earlier this month took an official position against two established political parties, and threatened disciplinary action against any member of the clergy who aligned himself or herself with one of these parties.
The two parties—the British Nationalist Party (BNP) and the National Front—seek restriction on immigration to the UK, and oppose what they claim to be preferential treatment for immigrants over native-born Britons. They also oppose any introduction of sharia law into Britain—a position contrary to that of the immediate past Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who called for “accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law.”
I admit to knowing very little about either party. Much of what I do know I don’t like (aside from the anti-sharia bit). If an individual who happens to earn his living as a paid God expert were to say, “Speaking for myself, and leaving what God does or doesn’t think out of it, I think the BNP is despicable,” I wouldn’t have a problem with that.
That’s not what’s happening here. An official religious organization, acting in its religious capacity—in this case, which happens to be the official religion of the state—is proclaiming that mere membership in a particular political party is against the will of God. As one BNP spokesman asked, “Where is it going to end? Are BNP members going to be allowed to be buried any more in churches?”
“God is on my side” is the single most dangerous, anti-rational argument anyone can make about anything. There’s no answer to it other than “No, he isn’t.” If you think it’s terrible when Pat Robertson or Osama bin Laden says something like that, you’re right. It’s just as terrible when a liberal church does it, even in a cause as honorable as opposition to racism. If George W. Bush had ever said “We do what we do because God is with us,” humanists would have jumped all over him. So why is it ok when his successor utters those words?
The second news item is from North Carolina, where the United Church of Christ and other liberal clergy are challenging that state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, on the grounds that it violates their right to free exercise of religion. They claim they should be able to perform marriages for whatever individuals God tells them they should, and government shouldn’t get in the way of that.
Some advocates of same-sex marriage find delightful irony in the fact that they’ve been fighting organized religion for years, and now along come some different God experts with a novel wrinkle suggesting that religion has actually been on their side all along. “Hoist with his own petard!”
It doesn’t take a psychic, though, to predict what will happen if these plaintiffs should prevail. Quicker than you can say “Latter-Day Saints,” some sects of Mormons and Muslims will be in court, claiming (quite correctly) that their god authorizes polygamy, and it violates their right to the free exercise of their religion for government to get in the way of joining whatever agglomerations God tells them to in legally binding marriage. And they will be right—if there’s a difference between the religious freedom rights of North Carolina liberals and of Utah Mormons or Michigan Muslims, it’s not one I can fathom. Then will come the crackpots claiming a God-given right to marry their siblings, or their children.
The Supreme Court is certainly correct when it calls marriage “the most important relation in life.” It is so important that it needs to be thoughtfully regulated by democratic government, under a consistent and predictable set of rules. Allowing anyone who claims to have a hotline to God to make up rules as he goes along trivializes the whole institution.
We’ve actually fought this one already. The Morrill Act, signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862, banned polygamy in the territories, and it was Utah’s defiance of the Morrill Act and its successors that persuaded Congress to prevent Utah from becoming a state for decades. In 1887, Congress actually passed a statute dis-incorporating the entire LDS church and authorizing the seizure of its property, helping to prompt a revelation from God to the LDS president to back off on polygamy (at least officially).
Marriage is not what some God expert says it is. It’s too important for that. Marriage is what a democratic, responsible government says it is, for all citizens equally. If you don’t like the rules, then try to change them—as same-sex marriage advocates have been doing, with gratifyingly increasing levels of success.
The fight for racial and marriage equality needs to be won the right way, through reason, patience, and the political process—not by anti-rational means that will ultimately create more problems than they solve.
Tags: Church of England, gay marriage, North Carolina, same-sex marriage
Luis Granados is the director of Humanist Press, the publishing house of the American Humanist Association, and the author of Damned Good Company: Twenty Rebels Who Bucked the God Experts. He writes the Rules Are for Schmucks column for TheHumanist.com.
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Rules Are for Schmucks: Pope Versus Puppies
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by Luis Granados • 12 June 2014
Photo by Edgar Jiménez via Wikimedia Commons
Photo by Edgar Jiménez via Wikimedia Commons
Everyone loves Pope Francis, TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2013. That’s due in part to the heroic efforts of his PR guy, Greg Burke, who learned his trade at fair and balanced Fox News.
Poor Mr. Burke may have his hands full dealing with the latest blast from His Holiness, though. Here’s what he had to say earlier this month to a group of couples celebrating their 25th, 50th, and 60th wedding anniversaries:
“In a marriage, this fruitfulness can sometimes be put to the test, when children don’t come or when they are ill,” he said. Couples who have to cope with infertility or loss can still look to Jesus and “draw the strength of fruitfulness that Jesus has with his church.”
What they cannot do, according to longstanding Catholic doctrine, is use modern science to help the conception process along, through techniques such as in vitro fertilization. Five million babies have been born this way—that’s five million terrible sins in the eyes of the church.
That’s old news. The new sin, according to Francis, is that “there are things that Jesus doesn’t like,” such as married couples “who don’t want children, who want to be without fruitfulness.” This “culture of comfort,” he said, “has convinced us that it’s better to not have children! That way you can see the world, go on vacation, have a fancy home in the country and be carefree.”
According to Francis, people think it is better or easier “to have a puppy, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the puppy. Isn’t this true or not? Have you seen this?”
This is real news. Jesus hates puppies! Or, being fair and balanced, Jesus can only abide puppies in families with children—presumably the more the better. So long as they’re Catholic.
Digging deeper into the story: is there any connection between the war on puppies and new legislation in Ohio to ban insurance coverage for certain forms of contraception, including the Plan B pill and IUDs? This is not Hobby Lobby-type employer choice we’re talking about – it’s an absolute ban on any Ohio insurance company offering this kind of coverage to anyone. Once the bishops win their Hobby Lobby “freedom” argument, the next logical step in the path goes rather in the opposite direction. No more puppies! You’re gonna have children whether you want them or not.
Some of us are all in favor of a “culture of comfort,” the kind Epicurus was talking about, 2,400 years ago, which teaches that the whole point of life on earth is to be happy. For most people, being happy does involve having children, and church teaching against using scientific methods to solve physical problems preventing child-bearing is viciously cruel. A significant minority, though, really don’t want to have children, for lots of perfectly valid reasons. Francis, who must claim a special psychic power to read Jesus’ mind since nothing in the Bible records what Jesus had to say about puppies, puts this squarely in the category of “things that Jesus doesn’t like.”
Dear PR guy Burke: Your client would do a lot better staying on-message by sticking to the “Who am I to judge?” line than by wandering off into a campaign against puppies, or by championing what can only be viewed as a “culture of discomfort” over an anti-Jesus “culture of comfort.”
Tags: birth control, Catholicism, In Vitro Fertilization, Pope Francis
Luis Granados is the director of Humanist Press, the publishing house of the American Humanist Association, and the author of Damned Good Company: Twenty Rebels Who Bucked the God Experts. He writes the Rules Are for Schmucks column for TheHumanist.com.
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On the Hill: Obama Takes Step Forward on LGBT Rights
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by Matthew Bulger • 19 June 2014
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In April I wrote about how President Obama could protect LGBT workers with unilateral action since the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) (which would update federal anti-discrimination regulations to prevent workplace discrimination against a person because of their gender identity or sexual orientation) appeared to be stalled in Congress.
I mentioned at the time how Obama could sign an executive order providing workplace protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in the federal workforce without the approval of the notoriously gridlocked Congress. And while I noted that this executive order would apply only to contractors and businesses that work with the federal government and not all employers, I felt—and continue to feel—that such an action would be a huge step forward in the battle for workplace equality.
Thankfully, the media has reported that President Obama is about to issue such an executive order in the coming days.
This is fantastic news, especially since the renewed attention to LGBT rights could be the spark needed to finally convince House Speaker John Boehner to allow the bill to come to the floor for a vote (the Senate has already passed their own ENDA bill). But whether or not that actually happens, and in all likelihood it probably won’t due to religious conservatives in the House, federal contractors must now recognize that it is just as wrong to discriminate against a potential employee because of their sexual orientation as it is to do so because of their race or gender.
President Obama seems to be rededicating himself to the progressive causes that many of his supporters champion on a daily basis, as seen by his recent work on issues like climate change. While this is a promising start to what could be his most progressive period in the White House, it’s worth noting that the president still has some work to do regarding religious exemptions to his landmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, and in ensuring that the privacy of Americans is protected from overzealous intelligence agencies.
But for now, humanists and progressive Americans should be proud of their president for his defense of the LGBT community and his promotion of anti-discrimination regulations. Hopefully, his recent progressive bent will continue throughout the remainder of his term, as there is still much to be accomplished in various issue areas.
Tags: ENDA, White House
bulger_matthew.jpgMatthew Bulger is the legislative associate for the American Humanist Association. He writes the On the Hill column for TheHumanist.com.
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The Ethical Dilemma: Can an Atheist Pay Respect to the Religious?
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by Joan Reisman-Brill • 20 June 2014
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Experiencing an ethical dilemma? Need advice from a humanist perspective?
Send your questions to The Ethical Dilemma at dilemma@thehumanist.com (subject line: Ethical Dilemma).
All inquiries are kept confidential.
Paying Respects: I was raised a Protestant Christian in my youth and my family were consistent Christians (grandfather was a minister), although not flaming evangelicals. My wife was raised a Buddhist and still is respectful of her family who are predominantly Buddhists.
I have subscribed to the merits of atheism over the last 10 years. I am not ashamed of my beliefs, but do not try to persuade others unless asked. I am aware of other Christians who refuse to personally participate in certain ceremonies of any alternative religion–such as paying homage to an altar, praying with others, or providing incense. This usually occurs at funerals, weddings, and other important religious events.
My feeling is that participation in any religious rite, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islam, or Baha’i, is more about paying respects to important people in your life rather than consenting or subscribing to their religious ceremonies. Hence, I willingly go along and expect others of my family to provide condolences and friendship in the same context.
Please provide your views on what is the preferred public conduct of atheists and humanists in these public situations.
–Do Unto Others
Dear Do,
Sorry, but no one is entitled to prescribe appropriate behavior for others when it comes to participating in rites for religions they don’t endorse.
Although lots of people are fine with going with the flow, whatever it is, and some (especially politicians running for office) enjoy publicly participating in other people’s rituals, many can’t or won’t submerge their own views to exhibit those of others, even for an hour. They may consider it their duty to express their own beliefs or lack thereof, and feel it would be hypocritical to fake a faith. Neither attitude is right or wrong, just personal preference.
And although it may seem lovely to put aside one’s ideology as a gesture of solidarity, the question is: who should be doing what for whom? Should your friend invite you to ignore your own worldview and pay respect to his, or should he respect yours by not asking you to do that? It’s particularly irritating when others assume that since atheists and humanists don’t have a faith of their own, they should join hands with those who do.
While in many synagogues, men (and in some cases, women) are expected to wear head coverings, non-Jews may feel uncomfortable doing that; and while some places let it slide, in others the choice is don the beanie or don’t come in. Similarly, many non-Christians balk at bowing in the name of Jesus Christ. Praying to an altar is something many believers and non-believers may not be able to do in good conscience (or with a straight face).
In such cases, guests may skip the rites and join the reception, with the host’s “blessing.” But if the host insists on ritual participation, the guest can either go along or not go at all. I don’t get why anyone would want, let alone require, others to go through the motions of beliefs they don’t share. That’s more of an imposition than being the one who refuses to do so, since the former requires one person to co-opt his views, while the latter simply opts out.
It’s their party and they can pray if they want to. The only blanket rule is to recognize that everyone is entitled to pursue their views as they see fit, to show “respect” by acknowledging and accommodating each other’s perspectives, and to do so without making a stink that sours the relationship.
Joan Reisman-Brill is a writer based in New York City and certified Humanist Celebrant. She received her BA in English literature from the University of Chicago, an MA also in English lit from the University of Michigan, and an MBA in management and marketing from New York University. She has worked in public relations, marketing and myriad facets of writing and editing for nearly four decades. She has been steadily increasingly her humanist identification and activism at an accelerating rate, and while she doesn't pretend to have all the answers, she welcomes this opportunity to tackle the questions. Joan writes The Ethical Dilemma column for TheHumanist.com.
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