A few thoughts about practical secular and atheist organizing.
Secular-minded people would do well to organize themselves better to achieve social and political goals, in all senses of the words "social" and "political." The following are a few thoughts regarding some organizing methods that may be less or more effective.
About 4 months ago, or thereabouts, a good friend who is an atheist told me of an outreach effort to take place at Lafayette Park in front of the White House on the National Day of Prayer, to protest the government's official involvement in such matters. I am lukewarm to cool about the National Day Prayer controversy; politicians do have private lives and if they want to gather in their private lives to pray or play poker together, I have no fundamental reason to object. When it involves official acts, resources, etc., it's more of an issue. But in any event, the local secular group had a table up, and so I went, punching out for an extended lunch and a brief walk from the law office where I did contract work.
I found a small group of people who, in a slightly haughty tone, told me that they used "reason" and not religion to guide their lives. They handed me some sort of white printed literature with significant grammatical and typographical errors. They were volunteers, and they were probably taking time out of busy schedules to do this, but I don't think they were achieving their desired effect. I walked away as a disappointed sympathizer.
I bring this to light not to show unkindness to strangers but to emphasize that the method of outreach matters - a lot. My wife, a conservative evangelical Christian, takes our children to Sunday School with her every Sunday where she also teaches. I don't go because I was a non-religious person when we met and still am; she became a Baptist a few years into our marriage. (A tale for another Secular Sermon, I promise.) But on the few occasions when I have gone over to her church for whatever reason, the folks there are clearly non-haughty, all-friendly and bursting with eagerness to share what for them is extremely "good news" (ev/u angelos.) They are not full of themselves at Northwest Baptist, but want you to feel welcome.
Now I don't believe that atheists should adopt some aping of the Great Commission to make "disciples" [sic] of all the nations. BUT - if you set up an outreach booth, you should at least match the quality of the local restaurant, the local tanning salon, the local greeting card store in terms of marketing edge and prudence. The goal is to make people want to talk to you, make your "abode" filled with nice smells of spicy Szechuan or camomile, images of nice people feeling good about doing something positive. It's true whether you are selling takeout, a political party, a hobby club, a law firm, a philosophical organization.
I don't usually look to Nixon for anything political, or anything else, really. But one of the very smart things that Nixon's campaign operatives are said to have done was to meet with new volunteers and ask them their profession. If the volunteer was a barber, they would ask if the volunteer new any other solid, good barbers who might like to contribute. If the answer was yes (as it almost always was), they would encourage the volunteer and his contact/friend to set up "Barbers for Nixon" or the like, and donate to/through their own committee, naming the first volunteer "President" and the second one "Vice-President." Now modern campaign finance laws probably shut this sort of thing down at least partially for political campaigns, coordinated donations and all, but the basic concept is the same: bring your organization to the person, don't make your new member/volunteer walk a longer mental/emotional distance than is needed. Baptists are smart on this: you just gotta believe and say you believe and get baptized. What you wear to church or what hymns you sing come later. But why not atheist barbers? You can find associations of Catholic lawyers, Baptist lawyers, presumably Lutheran lawyers as well.
Part of the challenge is that atheism is both a minority view and, more or less, an intellectual position. If atheism is bad, of course, no one should be an atheist. But if atheism is good and positive, we should be proud to be atheists and, in a proper time, place and context, to state that we are atheists in a way that would make at least some others want to join us in our view, or at least think about it. The so-called "Soup Nazi" may be an exception; neurotic New York is probably the only place on the planet where a business could grow to expansion and national fame when the owner's nickname was "Nazi." My money would be on the "Soup Champion" or "Soup Ladies" or "Soup Meister." But atheist organizers and advocates seem frequently to think like members of a small club of intellectuals, rather than people who could compete for the attention of, say, a college varsity football player against these Christian advocates. So they make the mistakes that intellectuals so often make, citing myself as an example of the error-prone, no doubt about it.
Among the 10-15% of the public who are non-religious, some are explicitly atheist or agnostic by whichever definition they use. Some don't spend much time thinking about the question either way. Some are atheists, but just hate labels. Some are atheists in the pews and don't particularly want to leave, for social, political or aesthetic reasons. I appreciated the beauty of the Latin Masses I attended as a Roman Catholic and the somber chanting of Salve Regina, and still do. In my view, the atheist and secular community should reach out to the atheists in the pews as a service, let them know we are also available, not as brand competition for their Sunday (Saturday, Friday) but as a resource and additional source of community.
Another area where secular-minded people could do better is public service. Now I don't accept the proposition that religious people are more charitable as a whole than secular people. True, they make more deductible contributions proportionate to income, but in my view if you donate to the church where you socialize, meet your friends and spend your time, it's little different than paying country club dues. If the church happens to collect a little food for the hungry also, excellent, but tithing exists to lift the minister out the necessity of working two jobs (or to buy him a $150,000 Bentley) and to keep the church roof from leaking, not to feed the poor or alleviate illiteracy in Africa or Appalachia or West Baltimore. So calling that self-interested spending "charity" seems a bit false in practice, somehow, especially when it only benefits the church members as a private organization (or the minister's pimped-up "ride.")
Nonetheless, it would be great if more secular organizations adopted a service ethic explicitly. Some do, and that's excellent. Not only is it the decent and civic thing to do, but it would probably attract more people who would be PROUD of their association with other secular people, according to common civic and wholesome values. Religion doesn't own ethics or morality, and sadly religious institutions are not even good "rent-paying tenants" on ethics or morality a lot the time. I don't know that the Roman Catholic Church is actually worse than other organizations when it comes to sexual abuse - have not studied the issue enough to have an opinion - but the judgment and settlement payouts in diocese after diocese after diocese due to the abuse and the unbelievable cover-ups do stagger one's mind. But it's not enough to criticize the failings of others; it is important affirmatively to do good, for all of the sensible and decent reasons.
Okay, enough "sermon" for tonight. Would very much welcome the thoughts of one and all, with my thanks for your indulgence. My eyes are tired and I would be grateful for the "bright-eyed" editors among us to point out the typo (and non-typo) flaws that may plague this marketing effort, to avoid having me be both obnoxious and a hypocrite to the folks at Lafayette Park who, at least, went out on a cloudy day to give it a shot.