So much has been made of Obama being the candidate who bridges deep divides in America. He is half-black and half-white. His father was an immigrant, his mother was from small-town Kansas. He's young but still has substantive experience in making policy, spanning the generation gap. He has lived in America and Indonesia. He works with Democrats and Republicans.
So many of these facets of his life are considered overwhelmingly positive traits. Yet on one issue, Obama has faced a consistent uphill battle.
Religion.
Much has been made of Obama, a practicing Christian, having ties to the Muslim community. His father practiced Islam, and he went to a school attended by mostly Muslims while living in Indonesia. It has even been (falsely) asserted that he is a "secret Muslim". And while this gets endless coverage from the news and individuals, I have seen that when many people make derisive comments about his mixed-religious background, it is often mentioned with similar scorn that his mother was an atheist.
Before I go any further, I feel I should mention that I am indeed an atheist. I was raised by a very lax Catholic family who never argued with my religious choices. I have seen firsthand the misconceptions and derision that people who consider themselves otherwise tolerant have for atheists.
By now many have seen the American Sociological Association's 2006 survey that named atheists the "most distrusted" minority in America.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
The report goes on to conclude that Americans view only the religious to share the same "moral core", basically saying that those same people view atheists to be amoral, self-serving individuals "not concerned with the common good".
I've seen this myself. Only a few months ago I was talking with an old friend and the topic of politics and religion came up. My friend turned to me finally and said "Well, if you're an atheist and you were elected President, what does that mean? Would you see yourself as just the most important person in America or the world?"
I was momentarily shocked into silence. Was this really how people—people that I knew, who were my friends!—saw me? Was this truly what America thought of atheists? Now, the disadvantage of being associated with a group that generally ignores organization and really don't hold any central ideas is that I simply couldn't speak for everyone. But I felt I had to make my case.
No, I explained. Hell no. I may not believe in a God of any sort, but I still do believe in a higher power. The difference is that the higher power I would represent as President would be the good of the American people. And, even more important than that, the good of humanity as a whole. And, even beyond that, the good of our planet in general. That is what I base my moral core on, and I really don't believe it has steered me wrong yet.
This is just one example of an overarching trend I've observed. While no one has ever outright attacked or insulted me with regards to my lack of religion, it's impossible to ignore how many stop taking my opinions seriously when they find it out. I've asked religious friends if they think that I can be a good person without believing in God and while some say yes, others have simply said that I can't.
Now, to be clear, I think that Obama's religious background is diverse and should be commended. Of his mother's religious views Obama said:
For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.
This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.
In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.
When I've mentioned this aspect of his upbringing many of my friends and family found it extremely positive. In such a diverse country as America and in dealing with countries who hold radically different beliefs, such an understanding of other religions from such a young age can only help a President and foreign policy. I know too many, however, who see this familiarity as inherently dangerous. I can only be hopeful that the election of a President Obama will usher in more tolerance for those who have not just different beliefs, but a lack of those beliefs too.