A few recent examples point out how far we who advocate secular viewpoints have to go.
Two tidbits present themselves for consideration.
The first is how the media have portrayed the home-schooled Christian assassin of Christian church attendees and missionaries in Colorado. The second is Mike Huckabee's belief in how women should submit "graciously" to their husbands in marriage.
Before going into the media handling of these shootings, a word of solace and wishes for healing for the injured survivors, the bystanding survivors, the loved-ones of the dead and the injured.
Regarding the media, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council blamed "secular media" for these killings. The shooter was a home-schooled, evangelical Christian whose family members attended prominent right-wing Christian universities. It is alleged that the anger of this young man came not from having read Katha Pollitt's or Christopher Hitchens' severe critiques of religion in Mother Jones, the Nation or the Progressive, or (horrors) some secular-minded blogger. But non-gun-toting, non-shooting secularists in a culture in which this young man presumably did not imbibe get the blame.
How many Christians did Colorado atheists target for murder yesterday? Presumably zero. Not our culture, Tony. Blame the limits of modern psychopharmacology, or a backfire from the Manichean good-vs-evil absolutism that your culture, not ours, burned into this troubled young man. While this Christian was killing Christians, most atheists were at work earning a paycheck or taking care of their kids. None were killing your co-religionists. I will be a little nicer to Tony than he deserves because he lives in that community and he may be a little shaken at the purely human level like I was when John Muhammad was randomly killing Marylanders 5 years ago.
Now to Huckabee who holds to the "women should submit" tropes from letters attributed both to Paul and to Peter in the Christian Epistles. I got irritated, perhaps more than I should have, when Kossacks' jaws dropped on hearing this sexist news about Huckabee. But we should be religiously aware enough that we should not be surprised to learn this. Sexism is a core cultural, theological and moral value of classical Christianity; it has been so, more or less, since the beginning. Of course Huckabee believes that women should submit, must obey, their husbands. This is what Christianity teaches as directly commanded by the Creator of the Universe through his (gender specific) designated representatives, Paul and Peter. When they speak, they speak for their God, even when they disagree with each other (which they absolutely did.) If you don't like it, go to Hell - literally.
Now we secular-minded people are more likely to reject this sexist garbage than advocates of classical Christianity would be because we don't believe that there is a sky God (or any other God), much less a sky God who is male and commands that males rule over females. Some monotheist formulations theoretically deny that God has a gender but in the Christian tradition, God is Father and Son, and the Holy Spirit is no more female than Tinky Winky. There are feminists who have tried to graft "Mother" into the tradition but that has gone approximately nowhere within Trinitarian Christianity. Some Unitarians will pray to "Mother" but finding Unitarians who will admit publicly to "praying" at all is not always easy. I digress.
Secular-minded people can be more sexist than Christians are, of course, and some self-professed Christians are excellent allies against sexist idiocy. But to be surprised that a right-wing Christian evangelical minister who is trying like mad to win right-wing Christian evangelical votes is sexist in his conception of marriage is just silly.
For people who grow up in a Christian culture, it can be hard to separate the idea of "Christian" from "good." For many Americans, even secular Americans, "Christian" is almost a synonym for "good." It's hard to reconcile the cognitive dissonance arising from, on the one hand, the well-known "Christian" beliefs in generosity, kindness and (ahem) liberality and on the other hand the "Christian" historic acceptance of race-based slavery, murderous persecution of Jews, bone-marrow deep sexism in hateful theory and bitter practice, the bloody history of Christian societies, leaders and advocates on every continent, etc. So most people don't reconcile the dissonance. They keep in their head that Christianity a) is good and b) is morally responsible for condoning or creating massive incalculable evil, and think inconsistently due to the pain of trying to cope with this dissonance. It's kind of like someone half-way through a semi-amicable divorce: they think simultaneously of their spouse as someone to protect, by years-long habit, and someone to defeat in court, by current circumstances. Sort of like the Matrix, before the pills and without the cool effects.
For those who have reconciled the cognitive dissonance - often by judging Christian conduct according to basic standards of human decency, and not believing or tolerating unjust bullshit no matter many Bibles Christians thump to rationalize such injustices - their conduct seems clearer and more predictable. Huckabee's sexism is not an shocking outrage but a commonplace injustice, and a reminder of why we secular-minded people do not buy into their bullshit. Don't stand shocked: fight back like you mean it.
Editor's note: I was never in love with the title "Secular Sermon." I did not want to write "sermons" and readers probably did not want to read one. So this series will run under the title "Secular Content" which is more accurate and less off-putting. Cheers and thanks.