Religiously speaking, 2008 may seem like an upside-down political season. John McCain doesn’t do God talk, Barack Obama does. And the general consensus seems to be that even though Obama acknowledged that he went searching for a church only after he began organizing in Chicago, he genuinely means it.
That may seem upside-down because for seventeen years the U.S. has grown steadily more secular – and democrats pander to secularism, don't they? The data comes from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) from CUNY, first conducted in 1990 and repeated in 2001. The study asked thousands of Americans "What is your religion?" "No religion" came in third after "Catholic" and "Baptist" – and the number jumped from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.5 million in 2001.
So where’s the evidence of rising secularism since 2001? Well, I interviewed one of researchers behind the survey – and he heartily believed that the trend had continued. But I can’t really cite that with links here.
There is some citable evidence, however, in modern politics.
George H.W. Bush once famously quipped that atheists should not be considered Americans, but by the time his son debated John Kerry for a second term, the terrain had shifted.
"You’re equally an American if you choose to worship an almighty, and if you choose not to," the younger Bush said. Unfortunately, this was either pandering to growing numbers of secular republicans (like McCain?), or just a slip, as he continued, "If you’re a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you’re equally an American."
Interestingly, Obama came near as dammit to echoing this sentiment (without the slip) at the recent Compassion Forum in Philadelphia. After arguing that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King would have been put off on being told that they should leave God out of the public discourse, Obama noted that we are "not just a Christian nation. We are a Jewish nation; we are a Buddhist nation; we are a Muslim nation; Hindu nation; and we are a nation of atheists and nonbelievers."
I met an atheist not long ago who admitted that he preferred Edwards to Obama because Obama was "a preacher." Pastor Wright, based on recent comments, would seem to disagree. Regardless, what I would assert is this: it’s precisely because of the way Obama talks about God that we can count on him to value religious tolerance as a leader, and to respect the nuances of the first amendment that make unbelief possible in the first place
Indeed, things now seem upside-down: mum’s the God word with the republican, and it’s democrats who are lashing out at atheists.
I’m as turned-off as the next guy at the likes of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, but atheists are the wrong target. It may be useful to note that most sociologists and even a few atheists consider organized atheism a form of religion.
So who is the right target? There isn’t one. The truth is, the political season of 2008 isn’t upside-down at all. Rather, we’re now in the process of setting it aright again – it was upside-down before. Obama was correct to cite Lincoln and King. But he might have cited a variety of thinkers who helped shaped everything we now call liberal and progressive: Thoreau, Emerson, William James. Godly men all. And liberals can do far better than Hitchens or Richard Dawkins for intellectuals: we have Marilynne Robinson, Christian inheritor of abolitionist fervor, and Annie Dillard, modern Transcendentalist.
The growing number of people who report "no religion" on a survey does not mean more people are becoming atheists. Rather, it means they are less likely to self-report association with organized religion. In other words, people are wandering, searching, steering clear of the megachurches.
And maybe they're finding Obama - and clinging to him. So perhaps my atheist friend is right – he is something like a preacher. If so, praise be.