American Atheist Magazine April 2006

ABOUT AMERICAN ATHEIST,INC.
American Atheists, Inc. is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, educational organization dedicated to the

complete and absolute separation of state and church, accepting the explanation ofThomas
Jefferson that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was meant to create
a "wall of separation" between state and church.
American Atheists, Inc.,is organized in order to
Stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds,
dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices;
Collect and disseminate information, data, and literature on all religions and promote a more
thorough understanding of them, their origins, and their histories;
Advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the complete and absolute separation of
state and church;
Advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the establishment and maintenance of a
thoroughly secular system of education available to all;
Encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system stressing the
mutual sympathy, understanding, and interdependence of all people and the corresponding
responsibility of each individual in relation to society;
Develop and propagate a social philosophy in which humankind is central and must itself be
the source of strength, progress, and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity;
Promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance,
perpetuation, and enrichment of human (and other) life;
Engage in such social, educational, legal, and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial to
the members of American Atheists and to society as a whole.
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy
of reason and aims at establishing a life-style and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and
scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
Materialism declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is
governed by its own inherent, immutable, and impersonal laws; that there is no supernatural interference in human life; that humankind -- finding their resources within themselves -- can and
must create their own destiny. Materialism restores dignity and intellectual integrity to humanity.lt teaches that we must prize our life on earth and strive always to improve it. It holds that
human beings are capable of creating a social system based on reason and justice. Materialism's
"faith" is in humankind and their ability to transform the world culture by their own efforts. This is
a commitment which is in its very essence life-asserting. It considers the struggle for progress as
a moral obligation that is impossible without noble ideas that inspire us to bold, creative works.
Materialism holds that our potential for good and more fulfilling cultural development is,for all
practical purposes, unlimited.
AMERICAN ATHEIST' MEMBERSHIP INFO

If you're interested in becoming a member please visit our website at www.atheists.org
and fill out membership form American Atheists, Inc.,
Membership
Categories
and Costs
Associate Member (newsletter not included)

Distinguished Citizen (65 yrs or older)
Student
Individual
Couple/Family
Wall Builder (complimentary AA Tote Bag)
Life
$15/year, International $25/year

$-15/year;International $35/year
$35/year, International $45/year,
Two years: $60, International $80
$150/year
$1500
HIll~rimnHth~ist Ma~alim
April 2006
CONTENTS
4
From The President

The Smalkoski Family
by Ellen Johnson
12
James Dobson, Other Religious Leaders, From Unholy Alliance

Against Environment
by Jeffrey Wismer
18
Hemingway: Christian Manque

by Gary Sloan
10
Creeping Triumphalism
From The Arab Street To Spell bound Lingerie ...
by Conrad F.Goeringer
22
God Would Be An Atheist

In Atheists We Don't Trust
by Martin
16
Foreman
The American Atheist Radio Series

A transcript from the broadcast over KTBC in Austin on January 26, 1970
23
Atheists & Co.

Phil Butler & Barbara Baldock
A Personal Story
Diane Louise
Legislative Alert
Republicans Opposed to Damages and Attorney Fees for Successful Establishment of
Religion Cases
15
How It Was...
...in 1952
A Meeting of the United Secularists of America,lnc.
editor's desk
APRIL 2006
Vol 44, No.2
Frank R. Zindler
was
t early in the spring of 1995 - almost exactly ten years ago as I write
- that the Board of Directors of American Atheists Ine. asked if I would be
able to step in to keep the organizations publications going. At the end of the
previous September, American Atheists' founder Madalyn Murray O'Hair,
her son and current president of American Atheists Jon Garth Murray, and her
granddaughter Robin Murray-O'Hair - the editor of American Atheist Press - had
disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No one knew if they were alive or
not. (They were not; they all were discovered much later to have been brutally
murdered.)
At the time of the disappearance, the only periodical being published by
American Atheists was the American Atheist Newsletter. The monthly journal, American Atheist, had not been published for several years because it was just too difficult
for the Murray-O'Hairs to produce two monthly publications while juggling all
the business and legal affairs of that turbulent period in our organization's history.
In addition, there was brisk book-publishing activity that had to be managed.
My wife Ann and I considered the situation and agreed to do what we could
to resurrect American Atheist Press. We realized that we also would not be able to
manage two monthly periodicals at the same time - all the while printing new
books and reprinting old ones that would have to be type-set anew after old printing plates had deteriorated with age. We did, however, want to get the magazine going again. We decided to start American Atheist up again
- but as a quarterly. I would be the editor-in-chief (and
get all the glory); Ann would be the lay-out editor and
type-setter (and get all the complaints about widows, orphans, and texts that disappeared under illustrations).
From 1996 until now, my job has been that of
a volunteer. All the while, in order to pay my bills, I
have had to hold a paying full-time job as a linguist
and editor of scientific information for a scientific publishing society in Ohio. From the beginning, my volunteer job required more of my time than did my official
job - the one that helps to keep the IRS afloat. Every
week-day, after work, I have come home to Ann and we
have rustled up supper in some form or other. Then, together, we have worked
until midnight on American Atheist Press projects. On weekends, we generally
have put in 12-to-14-hour work-days. (Of course, the many household chores and
errands needed to keep alive took up a sizable part of those weekends.) When we
celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary by taking a cruise through the Panama
Canal, I spent almost all of my ship-board time writing copy for the magazine that
would have to go to press soon-after our return home!
After several years of producing both the American Atheist Newsletter and
the American Atheist magazine, exhaustion began to become manifest. Carl-Erik
Boberg of Minneapolis volunteered to take over publication of the newsletter, and
Ann and I were able to catch our breaths enough to deal with our remaining activities. (After a year or so, Mr. Boberg's business obligations led him to pass on editor-
continued on page 20
4
AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE
ISSN0332-4310
Editor,American Atheist Press

Frank Zindler
Editor, American Atheist Magazine
Ellen Johnson
Regular Contributors
Martin Foreman
Conrad F.Goeringer
FrankZindler
Designer
Elias Scultori
Cover Design
Tim Mize
Published monthly
(Except June & December) by
American Atheists Inc.
Mailing Address:
P.O.Box 5733
Parsippany, NJ 07054-6733
phone - 908.276.7300
FAX - 908.276.7402
www.atheists.org
2006 by American Atheists Inc.

All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in
part without written
permission is prohibited.
American Atheist Magazine
is indexed in the
Alternative PressIndex.
is given free of cost to members of
American Atheists as an incident
of their membership.
Subscriptions for the
alone are $40 per year
for one-year terms only
($50 outside the U.S.)
Gift subscriptions are $25 per year
($35 outside the U.S.)
The library and institutional
is $20 per year.
rate
A Personal Story
Diane Louise
My friends, don't fool

with the church because
the church has buried a
million critics. And those
the church has not buried,
the church has made
funeral arrangements for."
-Reverend Herbert Lusk
Lusk, a Bush supporter whose organization
has received more than $1 million in federal grants
under the administration's Faith Based Initiative,
referring to his central role in ''Justice Sunday III."
New Life Members

Don Lacey,Tucson, AZ
Lloyd F.Johnson, Cedar Park,TX
Larry Hicok,
Newest Affiliate
ATHEISTSAND AGNOSTICS GROUP OF ROSSMOOR
www.rossmooratheists.info
Richard Golden
3612 Rossmoor Parkway, #4
Walnut Creek, CA - 94595
Deceased
Wayne Kenemuth, Plant City, FL
Frankie Kogel, Bulverde, TX
visit us
ONLINE
www.atheists.org
AANEWS ON-LINE
send an e-mail message to
aanews-reguest@listserv.atheists.org
AACHAT
send an e-mail message to
aachat-on@atheists.org
have been an Atheist for most of my life. Although I don't advertise that I'm an Atheist, I am fairly open about this with people
whom I know or consider a friend. I am experiencing prejudice for
the first time in my 49 years.
Recently, I earned my doctorate and currently, am seeking
a college faculty job. I have no desire to teach at a large college or
university and prefer a smaller college environment and therefore, am
purposefully applying to smaller,liberal arts colleges. Many small colleges have some religious-affiliation. As an undergraduate, I attended
a small religious-affiliated college. However, religion was not a large
concern. Nobody made judgments about anyone's specific religion or
belief system. There were plenty of"churchy" activities to become involved with for the religious folk. But, if you choose not to be involved,
nobody was concerned.
Recently, I applied for a faculty position at a small"Christian" college. I read the "Christian morals and values"that the college boasted.
As there is nothing in my teaching that is anti-Christian,1 did not
hesitate to apply for a position. My instruction has nothing to do with
religion. My main discipline is music education, and music people are
generally open-minded and liberal thinkers. I was not prepared for
the next set of events.
After they received my application, I received a strange e-rnail
acknowledging my letter and curriculum vita. I was told in so many
words that I had a great deal of experience in music education, but
that I needed to be informed that they were indeed, a Christian college and can only hire people who are or willing to be members of
a Pentecostal church. My first reaction was that this was some sort
of a funny e-mail gone amuck, but no, it was very real. I reviewed
their hiring practice, which says unashamedly,"does not discriminate
against race,color, national origin, gender, age, or disability. I cannot
tell you how shocked I was that the word "religion" was missing. I must
have completely missed it. Further, I live in America, and have become
victim to what is"legalized prejudice." Apparently because they are a
private institution, they are free to practice whatever unethical procedure they want.
College professors are supposed to be intelligent people. With all
the education and qualifications that I have, I am not qualified to teach
there because I am not part of the religious doctrine that the entire
(?)college is subjected? How utterly sad is that? After reviewing their
web page,l realized their version of religion was in sharp contrast
with the vast majority. There is no room for compromise, understanding, or tolerance. How stupid could I have been for applying in the
first place? I withdrew my application, but am so saddened that in
this day and age,l am a victim of such nonsense. I always though the
purpose of higher education was to develop independent thinkers
and educate minds to inquire, explore, and inspire. I would never want
to teach at such a ridiculous institution anyway, but the fact that my
religious beliefs, or in my case,lack of, is a career factor is intolerable.
The irony is that I taught school-aged children in Catholic schools
for eight years. Nobody questioned my religion, integrity, beliefs,
experience, or capabilities. I did not attend mass or religious services
and no questions were asked. I was accepted and appreciated for
what I gave to the students, Catholic, or not. Religion was not an issue.
Music tends to speak for all belief systems.
This recent experience has changed my feelings. For me, 9/11 was
a reaffirmation of my Atheist beliefs. But, this experience from a "Christian" college confirms it to a greater degree. The only thing I could do
was to re-join American Atheists and tell Ellen Johnson my story.
humor
POVERTY-STRICKEN
AFRICANS RECEIVE DESPERATELY NEEDED BIBLES

by the onion - www.theonion.com
MARAOI,
NIGER
- More than 60,000 urgently needed Bibles arrived to allay suffering throughout the famine-stricken nation of Niger Friday, in
one of the largest humanitarian-relief operations ever attempted by a
Christian ministry.
Africans gather in hopes of receiving the Bibles they have hoped
for.
"Come rejoice, and feast upon the word of Our Lord, Jesus Christ,"
said Christina Clarkson, executive director of the Living Light Ministries
of Lubbock, TX."Those who were hungry, hunger no more, for the Word
brings life."
.
An exuberant Clarkson said the Bible drop was the culmination of
one of the largest and most aggressive grassroots fundraising drives
ever undertaken by the organization, which was able to fund the mission largely through local charitable events, such as bake-offs, barbecues,and pie-eating contests.
"We absolutely would not be here today if it were not for the amazing generosity of the people back home," Clarkson said."People everywhere opened up their hearts and checkbooks to us and said.Diq in,"
Niger, ranked as the second-poorest nation on Earth, is experiencing its worst famine in more than 20 years, as a brutal drought last year
was followed by a plague of crop-destroying locusts. An estimated 3.5
million of Niger's 12 million people are currently at risk of starvation.
"That's why it was so important for this mission to happen right
now," said Clarkson."So many people here are suffering. Disease,starvation, and lack of shelter are day-to-day realities in Niger. But once they
hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and accept Him as their Lord and
Savior-once they really take Him into their hearts-then they will see
what poor comforts are the things of this world."
Due to the tireless efforts of Clarkson and other members of the
congregation, the ministry was able to provide the needy with Bibles
superior to the ones they use in their own church services.
"Handcrafted, genuine leather-best
money can buy," said 61year-old missionary Don Kostic as he ran his hand along the book's ornately embossed spine."It's like my wife back home says:Nothing is too
good for people who are ready to receive the Living Word of Christ."
Although the fundraising efforts were unprecedented, congregation members said Living Light would never have succeeded had they
not obtained the generous support of an array of corporate sponsors,
including Applebee's and Church's Fried Chicken.
"We spent so much money just to get here," Kostic continued.
"After we had all the Bibles engraved, we still had to charter the plane.
When we landed in Niamey, we could barely even afford ground transportation."
Undaunted,
the
missionaries
purchased the best vehicle
they could find, which
turned out to be a
used bread truck. "That
old thing!"
recalled
Kostic, laughing. "We
must've scrubbed it
down a hundred times.
You couldn't get the
smell of freshly baked,
vitamin-fortified bread
out of it if your life depended on it."
6
Reaction among Niger residents has been mixed.

Moussa Yaouli, a 35-year-old farmer, was particularly interested to
learn more about the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Living Light
personnel told him involved the eating of wafers. "It is said to be a big
wafer. I am sure it will feed many of my children."
Moussa Yaouli derives spiritual nourishment from his handcrafted
leather Bible.
Though "spiritually gratified" by their work, many of the missionaries spoke about the difficulties of working in an impoverished country.
"It can be so hard being away from the comfort of our homes and
our loving families," Clarkson confided. "I will admit, there have been
times when I prayed, 'Lord, just help me get through this mission and
get me back to Texas!'But when we rolled into town and people started
running after the truck with those big smiles on their faces, I couldn't
help but smile back."
Clarkson added: "And when we opened up the back of the truck
and they saw that it was full of Bibles...Grown men and women wept in
front of their children. That's how moved they were by the Holy Spirit.
That's how I know it's all been worth it."
Clarkson said her mission will succeed in bringing the people of
Niger "the spiritual sustenance they've been deprived of," despite such
obstacles as the nation's 18 percent literacy rate.
"You say you're suffering. I say, let the good Lord do the suffering
for you," she said. "You say you're exhibiting the deleterious effects of
severe dehydration and chronic malnutrition. And I say that no matter
what ails you, the Holy Bible is the best medicine there is."
Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
I ART TEST I
Draw the Prophet Muhammad

And incur the wrath of Islamic Fundamentalists
around the world while simultaneously feeding
the Judea-Christian prejudices responsible for
vilifying any society unwilling to lay butt-prone
to Washington D.C., Jesus Christ or Halliburton!
Legislative Alert
Republicans Opposed To Damages And Attorney Fees For Successful
Establishment Of Religion Cases
.R.2679 would amend the Civil Rights Attorney Fees
Act to stop courts from awarding legal fees or damages to any individual or group which successfully
brings suit under the Establishment of Religion clause
of the First Amendment. Supporters of the measure
argue that organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union
have reaped enormous compensation from such actions, costs
which are ultimately paid by taxpayers. They add that the mere
threat of lawsuits is havtnq a "stifling effect" on religious practices,
specifically the public display of the Ten Commandments and
other sectarian symbols on public property.
Attempts to outlaw or discourage litigation over church-state
separation issues are occasionally introduced in Congress and state
legislatures under the pretext of protecting religious freedom and
ending "excessive"attorney fees. A proposal by Rep.James DeMint
of South Carolina disallowed "attorney fees in any action claiming
that a public school or its agent violates the constitutional prohibition against the establishment of religion by permlttinq.facilitating, or accommodating a student's religious expression."
Attorney Eddie Tabash who has been involved with state-
Hubert Henry Harrison

The Black Socrates
Hubert Henry Harrison

The Black Socrates
The Founders Friends ...
by John G.Jackson
So many of you help American Atheists with donations and

other financial support-and
we want to find a way to say'Thank
You!"We are pleased to announce the re-establishment of an
American Atheist tradition-The
Founders' Friends, begun by the
Murray O'Hair family.
Those contributing $50 or more to American Atheists will
have your name and amount entered in subsequent issues of the
AA Newsletter. Just fill out the blue card with the information
requested, include your gift, and mail it back to us in the enclosed
envelope. Be sure to check the appropriate box authorizing us to
thank you by printing your name and contribution amount in the
Newsletter. Mailing addresses will not be mentioned.
This is our way of saying THANK YOU to an extraordinary
group of people-those
of you who want to "do more" and financially support the critical work of American Atheists!
American Atheists Thanks The Following Persons For Their
Generous Contributions To Our Cause.
$3.00
Stock # 5205
John G. Jackson
TUE CASE AGAINST RELIGION:

A esvcnotneraptsr-s View
and
THE CASE ACAINST
ltELJGIO$ITY
The Case Against

Religion:
A Psychotherapist's
View
by Albert Ellis
$6.00
Stock # 5096
by
Albert Ellis
r-n.o.
church separation issues said that the "Public Expression of Religion Act"was "patently unconstitutional," and was simply another
strategy to discourage litigation over government practices that
violated the First Amendment.
Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, added that
the Hostettler bill "is not for the benefit of the taxpayer, but for
government and religious leaders who insist on eroding the wall of
separation between church and state."
"They know, as do we, that most attorneys are simply unable
to work on long-term, complex litigation if they don't receive some
compensatory fee," Johnson said."We're not talking about donating a few free hours 'to the cause.These cases require an enormous
amount oftime and effort."
Johnson said that governments are often quite willing to
squander taxpayer funds in order to defend their unconstitutional
practices.
"Whether it is school prayer or defending a religious monument in the public square, state and local governments are
frequently very short-sighted and belligerent when caught doing
something that violates the First Amendment," Johnson said.
Joseph L. Dorsey, MD-$SO

EricSpofford, OR-$l 00
Gene Miller, LA-$7S
Ronald Ermini,CA-$100
S.R.(Richard) Fine, IL-$lS0
Aleck G. Karis,CA-$7S
Pamela Matas, CO-$SO
George B.Whatley, AL-$12S
Terry N.Tappan, CA-$SO
-,
from the president
Ih~ ~malkowskifamily
Ellen Johnson
ften when I'm doing a radio program an Atheist will call in and say, "What is the big deal?
I don't have any problems being an Atheist. No one bothers me. I don't see why you
have to have an organization. I reply that it must be nice not to have any problems being
an Atheist. Most of the time these Atheists don't have a problem because they hide their
Atheism and they silently endure all the injustices and indignities that other Atheists won't tolerate. For
those Atheists who don't tolerate being treated as second class citizens life can be very different
At American Atheists we hear from Atheists all the time who have problems at work, in school, in
prisons and at home because of their Atheism. Most of these good folks are quick to tell us right off the
bat that they don't like to join organizations, but let me tell you we are the first ones they contact when
they have a problem. Then they are mighty glad we are here. Often the first time we ever hear from Atheists is when they have a problem. This is what we are here for-to help you if you should ever need it.
Sometimes a phone call or a letter is all that is needed to resolve an issue. On the cover of this
months American Atheist is a photograph of the Smalkowski family of Oklahoma. They are Atheists.
Chuck and Nadia Smalkowski have two daughters, Nicole 15 and Bridgett 4 and a son Czeslaw 11.
Nicole was on the basketball team. Before each basketball game the coach and his wife lead the team
in a locker room prayer. Nicole would not participate. Out on the basketball court, in the middle of
the gym, everything comes to a halt as another pre-game prayer takes place. Nicole Smalkowski does
not want to pray and she had the temerity to step outside the circle, in stark contrast to the conjuring
basketball team, in blatant dissent to the prayers. That's when the trouble started. According to her
mother Nadia, "The coach, the principal, the superintendent and some of the students 'had conspired
and set Nicole up so that she would be kicked off the basketball team. Nicole had refused on Friday,
November 19, 2004 to participate in their prayer ceremony, and as this was a tradition, they wanted her
off the team. That Friday some of the girls hid her basketball sneakers to stop her from attending; so she
borrowed another pair from another player. The girl let her borrow them but the next day changed her
position and said that she did not let Nicole borrow her sneakers. The first thing on Monday morning
in school Nicole returned the sneakers to the girl in front of other students and thanked her for lending
her the shoes. The school however, says that she borrowed shoes without permission.
One year later, Friday evening, Nov. 18, 2005 Nicole refused again to join her basketball teams
pre game prayer circle. Instead she stood outside the circle and said the pledge of allegiance. This is all
on video and was included in a local news story about the controversy.
At school on Monday morning Noverriber 21, Nicole was called into the office and they put her
under security. She was then suspended from school because they said that she told another girl two
weeks earlier that she wanted to kill the secretary's daughter. They said she could not return to school
unless she saw a counselor at the school. She was also told that she could attend a different school (one
they suggested). Quite conveniently, by the time she would have returned she would have been ineligible for the basketball team.
Neither of the Smalkowski children ever returned to school because a threat was allegedly made
by the school principal's son who asked his mother if he should go get a gun when he saw me and the
kids at a basketball game at another school.
During the Thanksgiving school recess Nicole, her father and I went over to the principal's
house to ask him about the lies he had told to me about. The Principal pushed Mr. Smalkowski into Nicole and then the men got into a fight. The news reports of the incident showed a photo of the principal
the next day in a wheelchair in bandages. However, Nicole took pictures of him the next day in perfect
condition climbing up and down bleachers. They stopped Nicole from taking more photographs."
8
Mr. Smalkowski has' been charged with a misdemeanor. The

prosecutor in Mr. Smalkowskis criminal case has actually offered to
drop the misdemeanor charges if the family will leave the state. When
this unlawful offer was refused, the charges were raised from a misdemeanor to a felony. The prosecutor allegedly told Mr. Smalkowski's
criminal attorney that the charges would be dropped if the family
moves out of the state.
Mrs. Smalkowski is worried. "Chuck is being railroaded into
jail. The trial is set for April 4. It is very corrupt out here and we are
proclaimed Atheists. People out here think that means the same as
'Devil worshippers.' They are mentally deranged, every last one of
them. They would burn us if they could and they just might. The
cops have (allegedly) offered ex-cons money to beat Chuck up. Witnesses to the offer are terrified to come forward and are asking for
money to relocate if they do testify. The cops can't wait to get him in
jail for a day, so that they can beat him up. The cops have (allegedly)
tried to get an ex-employee to falsify reports that we have firearms on
the property so that they can get a search warrant for our property.
The person refused. Our criminal attorney was present when the
story was told to us, yet he can't do anything unless these people came
forward and tell the truth, but they will not.
The cops have followed us and harassed us for the past two
years and given us all kinds of bogus tickets. We have to take back
roads and go to Texas for groceries. The Department of Human Services was called on us to harass us, and as bogus as the charges were
we still had to let them intervene and evaluate our family.
Both Chuck and I are banned from attending any school district events or we will be arrested. This order never came from a
judge just the school principal. We have spent over $30K (to their
other attorney - ed.) just fighting back and are getting nowhere. I
think they may kill him and burn us out."
Who are the Smalkowskis? They are law abiding, hard working, patriotic, kind citizens of the state of Oklahoma who are also
Atheists. Chuck says, "My name is Chester Francis Smalkowski Jr. I
am an American. I was in the military and injured during Para rescue
training in the U.S. Air Force. I have an honorable discharge. I have
no gods. I was brought up and schooled to be a Lutheran Minister.
I say the Pledge of Allegiance as it was written by Francis Bellamy, a
Baptist minister.
I accept evolution as the most promising theory to date. I
have long hair. I ride a Harley, I love my family very much. My wife
Nadia and I have three children, Nicole, 15 years old, Czeslaw, 11
years old and Bridgett, 4 years old.
Our family has no gods. We do not need them. We do not
want them. We believe in the Constitution of the United States. We

believe that all life is precious and must be treated with respect. We
bury our dead and mourn their passing. We laugh. We cry. We
stand together as one family and when you harm one of us, you harm
us all. You come to fight, we fight. You come to share, we share. You
need help, we're there.
With our attorney Edwin Kagin, American Atheists is contemplating filing a lawsuit in the United States District Court on behalf
of two of the children and the father for violation of their federally
protected rights of freedom from religion, for discrimination based
on religion and national origin, for defamation, for abuse of the legal
process, for false arrest and false imprisonment, for malicious prosecution, for filing false official reports, for denying the children an
education, and for unlawful establishment of a religion, by state actors who are agents and employees of the State of Oklahoma, who are
acting under the color of the laws, customs, or usages of the State of
Oklahoma, in knowing violation of the Constitution of the United
States and the Constitution of Oklahoma.
We will also ask for an Injunction to stop the prayers. The suit
will be on behalf of the Smalkowskis and of American Atheists.
This is costly work. If you can help us financially to fight for
the Smalkowski family please do it today. We are going to fight to
the end to see that they are protected, that the organized prayers are
stopped and those people who threaten our friends are punished.
This is what American Atheists does. We look out for you. We
are here for you in case you do have a problem.
This is why it is so important to have a strong and large national Atheist organization. Belonging to a local group alone doesn't
do this. I want people everywhere to worry about what WE will do it
they mistreat one Atheist anywhere. If you are not a member please
become one.
If you are an attorney please contact us. We often need local
counsel to make a motion to the courts in a particular state for our
attorney to take a case there.
In a somewhat related matter, Atheists contact us because they
are looking for attorneys, physicians and counselors who are Atheists
and we don't have anyone to refer them to. So, if you are an attorney,
physician or run a business send us your name and we will be able to
refer people to you if they contact us.
AMERICANATHEISTMAGAZINE
~ree~in~Irillm~halism
From The Arab Street To Spellbound Lingerie ...
by Conrad F. Goeringer
TRIUMPHALI5M'
The attitude or belief that a particular
doctrine, especially a religion or political theory, is
superior to all others.
-American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
Fourth Edition. 2000.
"If God wanted us to be naked, why did he
invent sexy lingerie?"
-Shannen Doherty, actress
'1love to wear lingerie. The problem is that men always
rip it off too quickly. When women are dolled up in lingerie
they feel sexy. 50 let us wear it for five minutes. "
-Karen McDougal, model and actress
o understand this story, you have to begin with those disturbing television images ofIslamist
mobs we have witnessed in recent weeks shaking their fists and shouting death threats. The
riots, allover "blasphemous" cartoons in a Danish newspaper have spread throughout much
of the world. In the United States where more "moderate" Muslims demonstrate perhaps
with less obvious vigor and more muted passion, we are excoriated once again that the'West has "insulted" the religion of over a billion people.
It all conjures memories of two decades ago, when enraged Islamic faithful took to the streets
to riot and demand the death of author Salman Rushdie. How dare he pen a novel like "The Satanic
Verses" which, like those sin-ridden Danish cartoons, was an affront to Islam!
Americans are often smugly hypocritical or uninformed about the meaning of this Islamist indignation. After all, we have separation of church and state-the phrase is only selectively cited, of
course, including moments when we see those images of disruptive Moslem mobs burning flags and
calling for blood-and we are "freer" than those suffering under the boot of theocratic dictatorships,
corrupt autocratic regimes and ersatz, one-party "democratic" states, right? We are pluralistic and open,
the opposite of those Triumphalist movements that preach their way to be the only way, even when the
most personal, intimate and minute aspects of life are concerned.
Travel from the "Arab Street" where fanatical mullah's and opportunistic political leaders mobilize credulous followers to the streets of America, however, and one finds disturbing evidence that
Triumphalist religious belief is alive, well and growing even in a place like Augusta, Maine. The battle
there has not involved blasphemous cartoons (the state legislature repealed an antiquated blasphemy
statute) but a window display of live models sporting, well, underwear.
Felicia Stockford, proprietor of the Spellbound lingerie shop on Water Street decided that business needed a boost, and hired live models to display some of her wares in the storefront windows.
Passers-by were treated to a show of "thong underwear, feather boas and figure hugging dresses," noted
a New York Times story. Public reaction was mixed. A local newspaper account noted: "Some suggested
that the women brought life and beauty to the street, while others said using scantily clad women in
storefront windows was morally reprehensible."
The models seemed pleased and unabashedly proud of the event. Twenty year old Tara Manns
described her work as "really fun." Nikki Hunt, 21, considered the experience "a creative turn in my
10
life." Whatever. The whole affair was upbeat and light-hearted.

Photos of rhe women depict them wearing the mildly provocative
garments, but showing far less skin than, say, a rypical music video or
the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
Then things got ugly.
Enter the Christian Civic League of Maine, a group founded
over a century ago as the self-appointed religious guardian of the state
which more recently has stridently campaigned against abortion, gay
rights and orher alleged wickedness. At rhe behest of League board
member Michael Hein, blue-noses set their sites on the live lingerie
display, asked Maine Gov. John Baldacci to denounce Spellbound,
and staged a "prayer vigil"/protest outside Ms. Stockford's store.
With a Hair of theatricaliry, Hein organized his demonstration under the banner of Christians Lovingly Advocating Decency
or CLAD.
"We don't want to have our children, or even us, exposed to
this indecency," Hein told reporters. There were predictions that up
to fifty concerned Christians would turn out for the picketing, but
when the vigil began, only six showed up. ''An hour later, that number dwindled to two: Hein and the Rev. Mike Panosian of Moriah
Ministries International in Augusta," noted a reporter for the Morning Sentinel newspaper. "When young women from Archenemy, a
shop across the street, started modeling underwear and pink, fishnet
bodysuits from their store window, Panosian decided to cross traffic
and stand in front 'bf it alone."
One dangerous attribute of the Triumphalist personaliry is a
kind of arrogant self-righteousness to justify any action, wherher it's
marching to demand death for some hapless writer or cartoonist, or
denouncing the "sin" of frolicking lingerie models. There are plenty
of authentic evils in rhe world to complain about - war, poverry, starvation, those elements of the human condition where God is often
invoked but never seems to answer. CLAD, however, citing the Biblical admonition that women should" ... dress modestly, with decency
and propriery ... " (I Timothy 2:9) described the presence of the appealing window models in hyperbolic, over-the-top terms. Hein rhetorically asked, "Will Augusta become the Times Square of Maine,"
and pointed that an unidentified registered sex offender "supports
the going ons at Spellbound." "The Bible instructs us to 'Bee from
sexual immoraliry' and that we should '...honor God with our body,"
he wrote in a Morning Star op-ed piece. "We can choose to do nothing, and hope that it will just go away ... Or we can say 'No' to this
brand of indecency."
Hein predicted dark days ahead for Augusta, even saying that
the models may as well have been dealing drugs.
"They're 'lust hits,'" he told the Kennebec Journal. "That's a
powerful image, and it's really unfortunate."
Journal staffer Glenn Bolduc noted: "Stockford said the models, whose ages range from 20 to 40, are women who have been empowered by feminism, are proud and in control. 'There's nothing
pathetic about it,' she said. 'I think they would find that kind of an
unusual point of view.'"
The picketing and judgmental, authoritarian rhetoric from
the Christian Triumphalists may have had more than its original intended effect, though.
...
On the day of the CLAD prayer-demonstration, Ms. Stockford announced that she was ending the entertaining window exhibit
after one of the models received a threatening phone and her car tires
were slashed. "It would be unconscionable to put her (the model,
Nikki Hunt) in a position where something might happen."
"It all boils down to slashed tires, violent threats, so we have to
stop. And it stinks. I feel kind of said that it's over with."
Stockford added that see would be selling the store, and hoped
to open another lingerie shop in a more "liberal" communiry like
Portland, ME or even Salem, Mass.
Ms. Hunt continued to receive phone which were described
as "violent" and included "sexual threats." She said that the fun,
lighthearted atmosphere that set the tone for the window lingerie
fest was gone. Soon, so will the Spellbound store. Mr. Hein and
the bluenoses from CLAD and the Christian Civic League will likely
remain. There is no evidence that anyone associated with the group
made those violent threats and slashed Ms. Hunt's tire. Charges of
immoraliry, sin and indecency, though, were surely designed to create
a climate of hostiliry toward Spellbound's owner and employees, and
banish them from the communiry.
Surely, pundits might say, what happened in Augusta, Maine
was "no big deal" and involved a lingerie display which exploited
women for their sexual attributes and bolstered gender stereorypes.
No one was forced to work at Spellbound, though, and the models
were willing, even enthusiastic participants in what many consider to
have been a tasteful display no different than, say, magazine ads, billboards or the Victoria's Secret commercials on television. The presence of models covered with more material than many people wear
to a public beach, though, infuriatedan organization that considers
itself to be the defender of public probity and religious correctness.
Mr. Hein and his CLAD contingent attempted to enlist the support
of public officials. They wanted to shut down Ms. Stockford's business, and they did.
Compared to the mobs of Islamists, CLAD is small potatoes.
Or is it? Augusta, Maine is not Saudi Arabia where the "Mutaween,"
the religious police, roam the streets to punish women for not wearing the veil or scour rooftops for satellite dishes that might pick up
Western program CLAD might find offensive. But in every state of
our union, and in thousands of cities and small towns like Augusta,
Maine, there are religious Triumphalists convinced that they possess
monopoly on divine truth, and are hard at work to make sure that we
will obey. They often do more than express a simple opinion. They
seek government enforcement of their creeds and dogmas; they certainly do not trust the free marketplace which permits too much sin,
mischief, diversiry, too much choice. And they're afraid that the folks
in Augusta, and everywhere, simply don't know what's good them.
After all, when they walk by a store like Spellbound, they just might
like what they see...
11
Jam~~~oo~on,~th~rR~li~ioll~l~arr~r~,
form Unholy Hllian~~H~ain~tInvironm~nt
by Jeffrey Wismer
ack in 2000, the Interfaith Council for Environmental

Stewardship, was launched because one of the founders, Father Robert Sirico, believes that, "environmental ideology
is increasingly being used, not to preserve nature's beauty,
but to restrict human enterprise that is essential to a more humane
existence for people." According to an article on Alternet by Bill
Berkowitz, AlterNet July 3, 2001, "The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, the organization's founding document, was
the first major pronouncement on environmental issues by a coalition of ultraconservative religious groups. The Declaration prioritizes
the needs of humans over nature, advocates the unleashing of free
market forces to resolve environmental problems and denounces the
environmental movement for embracing faulty science and a gloomand-doom approach." The document can be viewed in its entirety
here: (http://www.steward~.net/CornwallDeclaration.htm)
So who signed this document? According the July 3, 2001
article, Signers of the Declaration include such right-wing ringleaders as Focus on the Family president Dr. James Dobson, Campus
Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, Prison Fellowship Ministries'
head Charles Colson, the Rev. Donald Wildmon, president of the
American Family Association, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, head of Toward
Tradition and Father Sirico. The ICES' advisory committee comprises Dr. D. James Kennedy of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Coral
Ridge Ministries, a controversial anti-gay leader and an outspoken
denier of the separation of church and state. Kennedy said, "if ever an
issue needed sound Biblical Doctrine brought to bear upon it, it's the
environment, and [ICES] accomplishes this."
President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" guru Dr. Marvin Olasky, professor of journalism and history at the University of
Texas, Austin, is also on board.
Why are they against the environment? It is mainly because
the Bush Administration is also against the environment, and the
Bush Administration is primarily made up of oilmen. Oilmen don't
want to upset Exxon/Mobil. In fact, one of the founders, Father
Robert Sirico is a huge supporter and defender of Exxon/Mobil. Ac-
12
cording to another Bill Berkowitz article written July 14, 2003, Father Sirico told Exxon/Mobil stockholders to disregard the "religious
activism" directed against the company because "it stems from the
desire of certain religious activists to force what is clearly a left-wing
economic and political agenda on Exxon/Mobil specifically and society in general. The agenda of the human rights advocates and religious and environmental activists "is based upon specious economic
arguments, many of which have been duly discarded and repudiated
by the experience of history." And, these activists are putting "human lives at grave risk in the name of political ideology with a mere
moral gloss." Pursue "your duty" t~"act upon the reality of consumer
demand, obligation to your shareholders, and the needs of your thousands and thousands of employees," Father Sirico said.
The July 14, 2003 article went on to say, "In a recent op-ed
piece in the Detroit News, Father Sirico asked: "Should a company
be 'greenmailed' into adopting a dubious agenda clearly at odds with
the company's obligations to countless employees and customers
merely to satisfy the passions of professional agitators?" Revisiting
the issue of shareholder resolutions and what he termed "high profile
direct action campaigns" against multinational corporations, Father
Sirico defended the Ford Motor Company's refusal to "adopt higher
fuel economy standards for its fleet," an action he wrote, that "would
be detrimental to both the company and consumers." It was not surprising that Father Robert Sirico-who did not return my telephone
call-and the Rev. Jerry Zandstra, were given a platform at Exxon/
Mobil's confab in Dallas. They were there to defend the corporation
against attacks from its critics. Religious and environmental organizers want Ford, and companies like it, to "commit corporate suicide"
and they want to stifle its "right to economic initiative," Father Sirico
wrote in the Detroit News. Father Sirico's bottom line is the "bottom
line": "Unnecessary regulation" and forcing companies "to cede their
corporate governance to national and supra-national authorities"
forces "creative initiative" to be "replaced with passivity...rather than
innovation." In the end, this "results in less competition, loss of market share, higher consumer prices and increased unemployment."
Why is Father Robert Sirico.. a Roman Catholic priest, so

staunch in his defense of corporate interests, in particular interests
that do not benefit the environment and trumps the rights of people
that Exxon/Mobil and the Ford Motor Company abuse? That doesn't
seem to fall in line with any of the Vatican's stances on the environment, and it goes directly against a Roman Catholic sponsored Earth
Charter document (http://www.earthcharterusa.org/ earth_charter.
htrnl).
According to the July 3,2001 Berkowitz article, Father Sirico
has a colorful though rarely publicized background that includes a
1970s stint as a "roll-em-on-the-floor Pentecostal boy preacher, who
was packing 1,500 people into a Seattle theater every week," says
Jerry Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Project Tocsin. Sirico moved to Los Angeles, joining the Universal Fellowship
of Metropolitan Community Churches, and later served as executive
to Acton's website, "Acton has no ties with any particular church or

religious community."
According to another Berkowitz article, since its founding, the
Institute has been fed handsomely by a gaggle of right wing foundations: Between 1991 and 2001, it received more than $2.5 million in
grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Earhart
Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation and John M. Olin Foundation, according to Media Transparency, a website that tracks "the
money behind conservative media."
Let's look at one other case in which Father Robert Sirico's
organization was involved. According to Berkowitz, in 2003, The
Acton Institute attacked Health Care Without Harm. Health Care
Without Harm is a Washington, DC-based environmental group that
has taken more than its share of heat from the chemical industry over
its campaigns against the use of mercury in medical equipment, the
director of what is now the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Sirico later termed this his "soft Marxist" period. After
embracing libertarianism, he turned to the Catholic Church. "I heard
homilies preached that inevitably insulted business people," Sirico
says, and he was determined to turn that around.
According to the article, back in 2001, Father Sirico advised
President George W Bush on "charitable choice" and the future of
welfare reform; responded to a call from the Vatican and edited a
book delineating the Catholic Church's teachings on social justice
issues; launched a right-wing religious environmental coalition; sponsored a conference on globalization at the Vatican; and published oped pieces in numerous U.S. dailies.
Topping it off, Acton Institute advisory board member Father
Avery Dulles, son of former secretary of state John Foster Dulles and
nephew of former CIA head Allen Dulles, was designated a Cardinal
by the Vatican.
As the article said, Father Robert Sirico founded Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a right-wing religious environmental coalition. According to a section dedicated to business
and society, "The Acton Institute believes that commerce is an essential component of the culture of any society, enabling individuals
to freely serve the needs of one another through mutually beneficial
exchange. We acknowledge the legitimate role of profit as an indicator that a business is functioning well, and affirm the importance of
business as a calling. We advocate a strong civil society-the best antidote to unscrupulous business dealings-rather
than burdensome
government regulation that inhibits human freedom and stifles innovation and creativity." That sounds a lot like the reasoning used to
nominate Judge Samuel Alito a couple months ago.
If you're Exxon/Mobil, orthe Ford Motor Company, anytime
you can get people in power that are against more restrictions the
easier it is for you to do business, and even if you're called before a
subcommittee, you'll never have to testify under oath.
So why is one of the most influential members of the Roman
Catholic Church mixed up in corporate affairs? Of.course according
incineration of highly toxic medical waste and the use of pesticides,

cleaners and disinfectants. Health Care Without Harm campaigns
against the use of PVe, or vinyl plastic-the most widely used plastic in medical devices which Health Care Without Harm maintains
is "harmful to patients, the environment and public health." The
subtext of Rev. Gerald Zandstra, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Stewardship at the Acton Institute, agenda is less about
environmental and health care realities and more related to protecting industry. In late October, the Acton Institute's report entitled
"Health Care Without Harm-or
Harming Health Care?" written
by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow'at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist, maintained that "a long running campaign
to rid hospitals and other healthcare facilities of medical vinyl products ...has dangerously overstated the risks associated with vinyl use
and diverted attention from much more serious health threats."
According to the Article, Health Care Without Harm counters
that the US Food and Drug Administration and National Toxicology
Program have warned that DEHp, a toxic additive that leaches from
vinyl medical devices, can be harmful to certain patients, including
sick infants and pregnant women undergoing high risk procedures.
"Why should the most vulnerable patients be exposed to potentially
dangerous devices when non-vinyl plastic devices that don't leach
toxic additives are available?" Stacy Malkan said.
Father Robert Sirico and his organization threaten to railroad
any group that stands between corporate power and greed, and a just
cause. For a recent example of Acton's latest railroading operation,
Jay Richards, director of institutional relations at the Acton Institute.
(www.acton.org), attacks the recent move by Evangelical Leaders to
reduce Global Warming. Jay Richards, in his February 8, 2006 article: (http://ny.christianposLcom/article/ editorial/Ll /section/ evangelicals.and. global. warming.not.enough.serious.
thinking/ l.h trn)
writes, I doubt any of these evangelical leaders has relevant expertise
when it comes to global warming, especially since the scientific issues involved are exquisitely complex and change from day to day.
So presumably they are simply trusting the advertised "scientific conAMERICANATHEISf MAGAZINE
13
sensus" on this issue and using that perceived consensus as a filter

for interpreting mundane events, like ice melting in Antarctica. My
point here is not to make any decisive pronouncements on global
warming, or its more recent, and more vacuous substitute, "climate
change." My point is, rather, to plead with evangelical leaders not to
do so, and not to pretend that they know more than they can possibly
know. That's especially true when it comes to the media-hyped global
warming bandwagon, of which these evangelical leaders have now,
unwittingly, become a part.
Unfortunately for Father Robert Sirico, and fellow Interfaith
Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES) founder James Dobson they have recently been challenged from within their own religious community. According to a Washington Post Article, February
2, 2006, The National Association of Evangelicals said yesterday that
it has been unable to reach a consensus on global climate change and
will not take a stand on the issue, disappointing environmentalists
who had hoped that evangelical Christians would prod the Bush administration to soften its position on global warming. Over the past
four years a growing number of evangelical groups have embraced
environmental causes, urging Christians to engage in "Creation care"
and campaigning against gas-guzzling SUVs with advertisements asking, "What would Jesus drive?" In October 2004 the leadership of
the NAE, which says it has 30 million members and is the nation's
largest evangelical organization, declared that mankind has "a sacred
responsibility to steward the Earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part." At about the same time, the umbrella
group's president, the Rev. Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, called
the environment "a values issue." But this fledgling movementdubbed the "greening of evangelicals" in a front-page Washington
Post article a year ago-has also met internal resistance. In a letter to
Haggard last month, more than 20 evangelical leaders urged the NAE
not to adopt "any official position" on global climate change because
"Bible-believing evangelicals ... disagree about the cause, severity and
solutions to the global warming issue."
Another member of the NAE Richard Cizik, termed the letter
a little harsher. According to an April, 2006, Washington Monthly
article by Amy Sullivan, "A month later, I ran into Cizik at the National Prayer Breakfast. That morning, he had opened up his Washington Post to find an article based on a letter to his boss from the
old guard-Dobson,
Colson, Wildmon, and the rest-suggesting, in
the way that Tony Soprano makes suggestions, that the NAE back off
its plan to take a public position on global warming. "Bible-believing evangelicals," the letter-writers argued, "disagree about the cause,
severity and solutions to the global warming issue." The leaked letter
was a blatant attempt to torpedo Cizik's efforts, and it had worked.
The NAE would not take stand on climate change. "There was no
doubt that the administration had prevailed on the more pliable figures of the Christian Right to whack one of their own. Cizik was
beside himself. It was hard to resist the "I told you so" moment, and
I didn't. But when I suggested to him that this was an example of the
way that business seemed to win out most of the time when religious
and business interests came into conflict in GOP politics, he stopped
me. "Not most of the time," he corrected. "Every time. Every single
time.""
The letter's signers amounted to a Who's Who of politically

powerful evangelicals, including Charles W Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on
the Family; the Rev. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries;
the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention; Richard
Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University; Donald E. Wildmon,
14
AMERlCAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE
chairman of the American Family Association; and the Rev. Louis P.

Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.
Do those names sound familiar? Calvin DeWitt, a professor of
environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin who is a leading
evangelical supporter of environmental causes, called the statement "a
retreat and a defeat." According to a February 9,2006 Salon Article
written by Katharine Mieszkowski, if you strive to love your neighbor
as yourself, then God calls you to join the fight against global warming. That's the message that a group of86 evangelical leaders, dubbed
the Evangelical Climate Initiative, (http://www.christiansandclimate.
orgl) preached at a press conference in Washington, quoting scripture
and calling on Congress and the White House to pass national C02emission reductions.
But the spirited call to action took place without the blessing
of the largest evangelical group in the country, the National Association of Evangelicals, whose members represent 30 million of the
faithful. Powerful, politically connected evangelical leaders like James
Dobson of Focus on the Family prefer not to take a stance on global
warming and had requested that the association follow their lead.
The schism among evangelicals reflects political tensions in
their relationship to the White House. Some who side with the Bush
administration's do-nothing policies on global warming even pressured sympathetic evangelical leaders not to speak out, in a strategy
that mirrors the one the White House has used to stifle science it
disagrees with. So the splinter group of principled preachers is striking out on its own, taking on the biggest environmental threat God's
creation has ever seen.
There is a divide amongst the religious leaders. Reverend Jim
Ball the executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network,
Rick Warren, author of the bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life, Rev.
Ted Haggard and Richard Cizik, and Dr. Randy Brinson, founder
of Redeem the Vote, a national voter registration organization that
targets evangelicals are all lining up against James Dobson and the
Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship.
This is not
the only instance James Dobson has recently been attacked. According to Bill Berkowitz's March 10, 2006 article, The coming crack up
in the Christian Right: Fact or fiction?
Dobson is under attack from a variety of Christian Talk Radio Networks. Certainly Dobson wouldn't want everyone to know
that the only reason he's against the environment is because he takes
his orders from the Bush Administration which takes its orders from
companies like Exxon/Mobil and the Ford Motor Company. Obviously Exxon/Mobil and Ford have a great thing going here. The bottom line is that Exxon and Ford's undoing will be their tremendous
fear of losing control and insatiable greed. The religious leaders, like
James Dobson and Father Robert Sirico appear to be valuable pawns
in their little game.
Jeff Wismer is an active

Atheist and amateur writer, with
a liberal arts degree.from Virginia
Tech. He is heavily involved in
the Atheist community, and cofounded a Washington DC based
group, Beltway Atheists (http://
www.beltwayatheists.org/). He has
a background as a Roman Catholic
. Seminarian.
how
it was ...
A MEETING OF THE UNITED SECULARISTS OF AMERICA, INC.
uringthe 1950s, there was an organization known as the

United Secularists of America, USA, and it was based in
New Jersey. Its most notable member eventually became
its President, and that was Culbert Levy Olson, who also
served as Governor of California from 1938 to 1943. When he was
sworn in, he refused to utter the words SO HELP ME GOD.
In 1957, Olson agreed to serve as President of United Secularists of America, and remained in that post until his death in 1962.
USA was incorporated in 1948, and was based in Clifton,
N.J. Those associated with it included William McCarthy, Russell
Palmer, Daniel Berg, Russell, Donald Doremus, Sherman Wakefield
and Henry Klein. The group published a monthly journal known
as Progressive World, and the names of Atheist and heretical writers like Joseph McCabe, Archibald Robertson, J.A. MacDonald and
even Paul Krassner, who you might recognize from THE REALIST,
appeared on its masthead contributors.
In April, 1949-just after the incorporation of USA-two
members of the group filed suit in the Superior Court of New Jersey,
law Division, seeking to end the practice of Bible verse recitation in

the public schools of the states. The litigants were Donald R. Doremus and Anna E. Klein. USA was not officially a litigant, but it
helped to finance the case.
DOREMUS v. BOARD OF EDUCATION
OF BOROUGH OF HAWTHORNE (1952) was eventually heard by the
U.S. Supreme Court. The justices held that Bible verse reading "did
not present justicable controversy," that parents had not attempted to
have their children excused from classes when the Bible recitation was
taking place, and that no state funds were expended in the recitation.
The court also noted that the children involved had graduated from
the school before the case found its way to the high court.
It would be another decade before the Supreme Court began
to dismantle the practice of prayer and Bible verse recitation in the
public schools.
Ellen Johnson has been the president of the United Secularists
of America since 1993.
AMERICANATHEISTMAGAZINE
15
Ihe Hmerican Htheist Hallio ~eries

The following is a transcript from a tape of "The American Atheist Radio Series" broadcast over KTBC in
Austin on the 26th of January 1970. It is from a series of talks on Charles Bradlaugh, this one is entitled
Charles Bradlaugh's "Humanity's Gain from Unbelief".
oodEvening.
This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist, back to talk to you again.
This month I have been acquainting you with
one of the first militant Atheists in western civilization,
Charles' Bradlaugh, a member of the parliament in England.
We are so backward in our culture in respect to religion, that some of
his writing sounds as if they were written here and now, in America
today, instead of England about one hundred years ago.
Let me acquaint you specifically with what he has had to say
about "Humanity's Gain from Unbelief".
I quote: "As an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been a real gainer from scepticism, and that the gradual and
growing rejection of Christianity-like the rejection of the faiths which
preceded it=has in fact addedl and will add, to man's happiness and
well-being. I maintain that in physics science is the outcome of scepticism and that general progress is impossible without scepticism in
matters of religion. I mean by religion every form of belief which
accepts or asserts the supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the
word 'Nature' as meaning all phenomena, every phenomenon, all
that is necessary for the happening of any and every phenomenon.
Every religion is constantly changing, and at any given time is the
measure of the civilization attained by the juste milieu of those who
profess it. Each religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and practice by the gradual development of the peoples against
whom it is professed. Each discovery destroys in whole or part some
theretofore cherished belief No religion is suddenly rejected by any
people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead
religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is a
long and-like the glacier march-is perceptible only to the careful
watcher by comparisons extending over long periods. A superseded
religion may often be traced in the festivals ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions
may often be found in popular customs, in old wives' stories, and in
children's tales. .. ..the ameliorating march of the last few centuries
has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite concede
that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the
pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of
a later generation .
... a ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that
the progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and
the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants
of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the
sects. My allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been in consequence
of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their
direct opposition to precise Biblical enactments ...
Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief,-i.e.
16
the abolition of slavery in some countries, in the abolition of the

slave trade in most civilized countries and in the tendency to its total
abolition. I am unaware of any religion in the world which in the past
forbade slavery. The professors of Christianity for ages supported it;
the Old Testament repeatedly sanctioned it by special laws; the New
Testament had no repealing declaration.
... It is impossible for any well-informed Christian to deny
that the abolition movement in North America was most steadily and
bitterly opposed by the religious bodies in the various states.
... The Bible and pulpit, the church and its great influence,
were used against abolition and in favour of the slave-owner.
For some 1,800 years Christians kept slaves, bought slaves,
sold slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool
(both of England) openly grew rich on the traffic. It was a Christian King, Charles V and a Christian friar, who founded in Spanish
America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. But
prior to that during the ninth century Greek Christians sold slaves to
the Saracens. In the eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as
slaves in Rome, and the profit went to the Church.
... When William Lloyd Garrison the pure-minded and most
earnest abolitionist in America, delivered his first anti-slavery address
in Boston, Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain in which
to speak was the infidel hall owned by Abner Keenland, the 'infidel'
editor of the Boston Investigator, who had been sent to gaol for blasphemy. Every Christian sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd Garrison
the use of the buildings they severally controlled. Lloyd Garrison told
me himself how honoured deacons of a Christian Church joined in
an actual attempt to hang him.
... Large numbers of clergymen of nearly every denornina- \
tion were found ready to defend the infamous 'Fugitive Slave Law' in
North America.
And, in respect to slavery a notable historian says "The men
who advocated liberty (for the slaves in any era) were imprisoned,
racked and burned, so long as the Church was strong enough to be
merciless ..."
It is not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has been
apparent in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on the unbelief in the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were examples either of demoniaca1 possession or of special visitation of deity?
For centuries under Christianity mental disease was most ignorantly
treated. Exorcism, shackles, and the whip were the penalties rather
than the curatives for mental maladies. Every gain in the treatment of
the insane, every step illustrates the march of unbelief
Take the gain to humanity in the unbelief--not yet completeagainst the dogma that sickness, pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine anger, the results of which could neither be avoided
nor prevented. The Christian Churches have done little or nothing
to dispel this superstition (ed's note: remember he was writing this
in the 188 's). The official and authorized prayers of the principal
denominations, today, affirm it. Modern study of the laws of health,

experiments in sanitary improvements, more efficacious in preventing or diminishing plagues and pestilence than has the intervention
of the priest or the practice of prayer.
Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief
in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by Christians
towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment was incalculable great. The inventions of the
past two centuries, and especially those of the eighteenth century,
might have benefited mankind much earlier and much more largely,
but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected. A historian on Scotland alone states:
"The people seem to have passed into cruelty precisely as they became
more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church,
till after many generations the slow spread of human science began to
counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy resisting reason and
humanity to the last."
It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the
Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been
overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our little
children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand
still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record.
As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to
humanity has been almost solely in measure of the rejection of the
Christian theory. A century since it was almost universally held that
the world was created 6,000 years ago or at any rate that by the sin of
the first man, Adam, death commenced about that period.
Will anyone, save the bigoted, contend that it is not certain
gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal torture is the probable fate of the great majority of the human
family? It is not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty
of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life
which providence had awarded them?
If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty for the
utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing unbelief. At
one period in Christendom each government acted as though only
one religious faith could be true, and as though the holding, or at
any rate the making known, any other opinion was a criminal act
deserving punishment. Under the one word 'infidel', even as late as
Lord Coke, were classed together all who were not Christians, even
though they were Mohammedans, Brahmins or Jews. All who did
not accept the Christian faith were sweepingly denounced as infidels,
and in England this most affected the Jew. English history for several
centuries shows how habitually and most atrociously Christian kings,
Christian courts, and Christian churches persecuted and harassed
these infidel Jews. There was a time in England when Jews were such
infidels that they were not even allowed to be sworn as witnesses. In
1740 a legacy left for establishing an assembly for the reading of the
Jewish scriptures was held to be void because it was "for the propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the Christian religion". It is
only in very modern times that municipal rights have been accorded
in England to Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have been allowed to sit in Parliament.
Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right
of any kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt
was payable. In one solemn judgment, Lord Coke says: 'All infidels
are in law perpetui inimici (perpetually an enemy): for between them,
as with the devil whose subjects they be, and the Christian, there is
perpetual hostility'. Twenty years ago the law of England required the
writer of any periodical publication or pamphlet under sixpence in
price to give sureties for 800 pound against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last person persecuted in 1868 for non-compliance
with that law, which was repealed by Mr. Gladstone in 1869. Up till
the 23rd of December 1888, an infidel in Scotland was allowed to
enforce any legal claim in court only on condition that if challenged,
he denied his infidelity. If he lied and said he was a Christian, he was
accepted, despite his lying. Ifhe told the truth and said he was an unbeliever, then he was practically an outlaw, incompetent to give evidence for himself or for any other. Fortunately all this was changed by
the Royal assent to the Oaths Act of 24th December 1888. Has not
humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through unbelief?
The gain to humanity by unbelief is that 'teaching of Christ'
has been modified, enlarged, wide'ned and humanised, and that the
'conscience of a Christian' is in quantity and quality made fitter for
human progress by the ever increasing addition of knowledge of these
later and more heretical days.
For more than a century and a half the Roman Catholic had-in
practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant
Christian than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or the
unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of abjuration, which to a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in effect
an outlaw, and the 'jury packing' so much complained of today in
Ireland is one of the habit survivals of the old bad time when Roman
Catholics were thus by law excluded from jury box."
End quote.
And to sum it up, I repeat his beginning words
in respect to this subject, for Charles Bradlaugh said, "I shall try to
make out that the ameliorating march of man of the last few centuries
has been initiated by the heretics of each age."
One of the most powerful booklets, which Charles Bradlaugh wrote, was completed in 1860 and was titled, "Who Was Jesus
Christ". Only a part of that is available to me now, and that is a chapter titled, "What Did Jesus Teach".
If any of you have any old books on Atheism or Freethought,
we are now making an accumulation of them here in the Atheist
Cen-tre of America in Austin. Won't you please donate them to our
collection known as the Charles E. Stevens American Atheist Library
and Archives?
AMERICANATHEISf MAGAZINE
17
H~min!JWay:~hristian Maniju~
by Gary Sloan
ubsequent to the publication in 1952 of Ernest Hemingway's

The Old Man and the Sea-with its climactic image of the
fisherman Santiago, hands lacerated, shouldering his cross-like
mast-the role of Jesus Christ in Hemingway's fiction began
to attract attention. The Passion, it was said, offered Hemingway an
intelligible and powerful metaphor of the human condition: We are all
condemned to suffer and to die. What matters is how we conduct ourselves in the face of the inevitable. Hemingway's conception of Jesus,
it has been suggested, was shaped by once voguish "Lives of Christ,"
where, in his dying hour, Jesus was customarily portrayed as the archexemplar of heroic manhood. This is poet Ezra Pound's Jesus, a man's
man who "cried not a cry when they drave the nails." It is also the
resolute and imperturbable Jesus of Hemingway's early playlet "Today Is Friday." Here, Jesus merges with Hemingway's "code hero"-a
tough, self-defined individual who rolls with the punches. Santiago,
Nick Adams, Harry Morgan, Robert Jordan, Frederic Henry-each of
these Hemingway heroes is linked with a stoical crucified Christ.
While the link is significant, it is by no means the only nexus
between the Hemingway hero and Jesus. In the case of Lieutenant
Frederic Henry, a young American serving with an Italian ambulance
unit in World War I and the narrator of Hemingway's powerful novel
A Farewell to Arms, a more pervasive link is with what one might call
the Sunday-school Jesus. This is neither the supernatural, second person of the Trinity nor the vengeful proponent of hellfire, but rather
the meek and lowly patron of self-abnegation. Frederic Henry's inability to live up to the Christian ethic of utter selflessness produces
a recurrent self-loathing and a brooding guilt: "You are the remorse
boy," Lieutenant Rinaldi, an Italian surgeon and boon companion of
Frederic, tells him.
In the novel, the ethical pronunciamentos of the Sundayschool Jesus are embodied in an unnamed priest attached to the ambulance unit. Subjected to the men's ribald taunts, the priest remains
humble and self-effacing, a soft answer his invariable defense against
wrath. Frederic, who declines to participate in the priest-baiting,
gravitates to the priest, so much so that Rinaldi kiddingly implies
the two have a sexual relationship. The priest tutors Frederic in the
ethical incumbencies of self-denial: "When you love you wish to do
things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve."
While Frederic endorses the principle of self-denial, he has not
the priest's success in acting upon it. Self-renunciation is something
that, in his words, he is "always able to forget."
Frederic is baffled by the inefficacy of his moral resolve. He
wonders, via St. Paul, why "we did not do the things we wanted to
do; we never did such things." When he opts to visit city brothels
rather than accept an invitation to visit the priest's homeland, the sacred Abruzzi, he feels "badly" about his choice. Dissolute nights produce "strange excitement," but, come dawn, the "niceness" vanishes,
and he is glad to get out on the street. Rinaldi, who knows this "fine
good Anglo-Saxon boy" better than Frederic knows himself, advises
him that he cannot brush away harlotry or clean his conscience with
18
a toothbrush. For Frederic, like the incontinent St. Augustine, the

purchased pleasures of the evening are the sins of the morning.
From beginning to end, the diet of carnal pleasure leaves Frederic unsatisfied. "Good Christ I was hungry," he says in a characteristic double entendre, but he remains forever "hollow." Ham and eggs,
brandy, and beer do not assuage his incorporeal appetite. "I might become devout," he tells the cosmopolitan nonagenerian Count Greffi,
but he never does.
Throughout the novel, Hemingway invites ironic comparisons between Frederic and Jesus. The comparisons tacitly point up
Frederic's sense of moral deficiency, the disparity between his moral
aspirations and his performance. Just before he is wounded, Frederic
enacts a truncated version of the Lord's Supper:
I cut the cheese into pieces and laid them on the macaroni.
"Sit down to it," I said. They sat down and waited. I put
thumb and fingers into the macaroni and lifted. A mass loosened.
"Lift it high, Tenente [Lieutenant]."
I lifted it to arm's length and the strands cleared. I lowered it
into the mouth, sucked and snapped in the ends, and chewed, then
took a bite of cheese, chewed, and then a drink of the wine. It tasted
of rusty metal.
Not only is the sacrament corroded with inefficacy, it is a prelude to disaster. An explosion immediately ensues, Frederic and one
of his men, Gavuzzi, lose their knees, and another soldier, Passini, is
killed. Before Passini dies, he cries out to Frederic, "Oh Jesus shoot
me Christ shoot me." As Savior Frederic prepares to make a tourniquet for the suppliant's leg, Passini expires. All Frederic can do for
him is verify that he is dead.
Frederic's acts of charity sometimes have buffoonish resu1ts,
like episodes from Romulus Linney's farcical Jesus Tales. Before Frederic is wounded, he devises a scheme to rescue from the unholy war
a straggling soldier with a hernia: "You get out and fall down by the
road and get a bump on your head and I'll pick you up on our way
back and take you to a hospital," Frederic advises. Although the soldier does as Frederic bids, the ploy is ineffectual. Before Frederic can
return, the injured man is picked up by his regiment. He will be operated on and then returned to the front. "Jesus Christ," the battered
soldier says to Frederic, "ain't this a goddam war."
In a retreat from Caporetto, Frederic tries to expedite the exodus by taking side roads, but the roads all turn out blind. A car gets
stuck, Frederic shoots a sergeant to whom he has given a lift, and
another soldier is killed by his own troops. Later, lying in a barn near
a stable, Frederic recalls his boyhood, when he shot sparrows with an
air rifle (perhaps numbering each as it fell). Frederic is a bumbling
savior: he has the power to hurt but not the power-nor at times the
inclination-to heal. The point is made quite explicit near the end of
the novel. When Frederic has "a splendid chance to be a messiah" to
a colony of ants, he inexplicably lets them burn.
When his significant other, the English nurse Catherine Barkley, is dying, Frederic tries to be her pillar; instead, she has to bolster
him: "I bent down over the bed and started to cry," he says. "Poor
darling," soothes Catherine.
Unable to spit out the butt-ends of his days and ways, Frederic
becomes the perennial schlemiel. In a league of good hitters, he "bats
rwo hundred and thirty and knows he's no better." With his "ridiculous" Astra 7.65 pistol, he can't hit the broad side of a barn, and he
feels shame when any countryman sees him with it. A St. Anthony
medal is supposed to bring him luck, but he loses it. He backs a horse,
named Light For Me, that finishes "fourth in a field of five." Even his
salute feels phony: "It was impossible to salute [foreigners] without
embarrassment." He is a "masquerader" and a "fake," a performer in
a "comic opera." Like his namesake, opera singer Enrico DelCredo,
he keeps waiting for something big to happen, but remains a colossal bust. While he waits, he seeks bestial oblivion. "Wine is a grand
thing," he says. "It makes you forget all the bad." So do sleeping and
not thinking, consummations he seeks devoutly and often.
Frederic's life is riddled with paradoxes. Although he has "always been happy," he feels "lonely and empty." He is "not made to
think," but searches for "something to think about." He does "not
care about the ourward forms," but misses "the feeling of being held"
by a uniform. He dreams of sultry nights with Catherine, then forgets
they have a date. He is uninterested in his family, but worries if he
talks about them. "Anxious to please," he is despised by nurses Van
Campen and Ferguson. He is praised for lack of conceit and faulted
for bragging. When scorned, he no longer picks fights, but he hones
his pugilistic skills, speaks in the imperative mood, keeps train seats
that are not his, gets angry when women spurn his amorous advances,
shoots uncooperative sergeants, and kicks carabinieri in the shin and
groin. When he deserts his unit, his separate peace leaves him unpacified: He would like to be in a unit called the Peace Brigade, but those
in it would like to kill this hapless Prince of Peace.
He says he has no religion, but he believes a son should be
baptized. He prays, but disavows love of God, of whom he is afraid
in the night. He aspires to be "gentle like Our Lord" and "become
Christian" in defeat, but he does not believe in defeat, though he
concedes that defeat may be better than victory.
Through Catherine, Frederic hopes to escape the disquieting contradictions. Their separate selves will fuse, and they will be
one: "There isn't any me," she tells him. "I'm you. Don't make up a
separate me." With their identities thus merged, he can love her as
himself She will be his religion even as he, she says, is hers. He will,
like F. Scott Fitzgerald's great Gatsby, "wed his unutterable visions" to
perishable flesh. He will no longer be "terrifically hungry."
It was, in the words of another Hemingway hero, Jake Barnes
of The Sun Also Rises, "pretty to think so." Yet from start to finish,
Frederic and Catherine are poor players in an elaborate masquerade
of mutual deceit. What Frederic says in the opening phase of his relationship with Catherine is true to the final curtain: "This was a
game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards."
Shortly after they meet, he tells her he has never loved anyone. Rarely
thereafter does he exhibit an equal candor. The first time he swears
he is made of truth, she eschews pretense. "Let's not lie when we
don't have to," she tells him. Soon, they have to. To keep the elixir of
passion potent, they must replenish it with vials of pretty falsehoods.
Frederic's language betrays the nature of the enterprise. He speaks
the hackneyed idiom of starry-eyed adolescence: "I'm crazy in love
with you," "I'm just mad about you," "Everything turned over inside
of me," "God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her," "I
felt faint with loving her." The breathless hyperbole, conspicuously

discordant with Frederic's usual laconic restraint, bespeaks an unquiet
desperation.
In retrospect, if not along the way, Frederic recognizes that he
and Catherine had a sublunary lovers' love. At the races, when she
asks him whether he likes being alone with her, away from the entourage, he answers "yes," but shortly the truth outs: "After we had been
alone awhile we were glad to see the others again." In Montreux, after
they seal their pact of oneness by agreeing to fall asleep "at exactly the
same moment," he violates the pact by staying "awake for quite a long
time thinking about things." In their Edenic garden-they spend a lot
of time in or near gardens-the little weeds of routinized domesticity
begin to sprout. His comments, ostensibly playful, develop a hard
edge. "You say it so cautiously ... as though you didn't want to offend
anyone," he says in response to a soft rejoinder. When she wants to
talk, he is incommunicative:
"What are you thinking, darling?"
"About whiskey."
"What about whiskey?"
"About how nice it is." Catherine made a face.
"All right," she said.
He dislikes the beard he grows at her behest, and she plans to
cut the luxuriant hair he likes to lie tangled in. When she voices her
intent, his response is characteristic. He registers discontent via silence
and then, recalling the demands of charity, feigns acquiescence:
"I did not say anything."
"You won't say I can't, will you?"
"No, I think it would be exciting."
While Frederic was hospitalized with his damaged knee, Helen
Ferguson, Catherine's friend, with Cassandra-ish insight, prophesied
the future of Frederic's affair with Catherine:
"Will you come to our wedding, Fergy?" I said to her once.
"You'll never get married."
"We will."
"No you won't."
"Why not?"
-,
"You'll fight before you'll marry."
"We never fight."
"You've time yet."
"We don't fight."
"You'll die then. That's what people do. They don't marry."
Catherine's death (she dies of a hemorrhage shortly after giving birth to a dead baby) keeps the fighting-and the boredom-inchoate. The affair is exempted from the crucible of time. But all along a
deadly undertow has swirled beneath the innocent surface. In a bar in
Stresa, Frederic, with unconscious irony, identifies the problem. Before he met Catherine, his life, he says, was "full of everything." Now
he has only her. Unable through romantic love to achieve selflessness,
he feels imprisoned. While he and Catherine lie awake in their room
in Montreux, he notes "the bars on the window-panes." Later, in their
hotel in Lausanne, he sees through the window "a wet garden with a
wall topped by an iron fence."
The cynical Rinaldi, not Catherine, is Frederic's true alter ego.
Rinaldi is consciously what Frederic is unconsciously-or
what he
AMERICAN ATHEISf
MAGAZINE
19
will become. "You are just like me underneath," Rinaldi tells Frederic:
"All fire and smoke and nothing inside." Although Frederic denies the
characterization, he concedes that he and Rinaldi "understood each
other very well." Rinaldi recognizes the fragility of romantic illusions.
He is the "snake of reason" in lovers' gardens. "You're dry and you're
empty and there's nothing else," he tells Frederic. Despite the jaded
posturing, Rinaldi, like Frederic, yearns to be what he sardonically
says he is: pure.
Frederic seeks immunity to Rinaldi's cynicism, but the surgeon prophesies that Frederic will catch it anyway. He mocks Frederic's aspirations to moral perfection: "I am like you," he says, "call me
Rinaldo Purissimo." By novel's end, Frederic and Rinaldi have undergone a psychological merger. Each has eaten the fruit of knowledge,
and each now knows the way it is. The primal Eden is inaccessible.
The wall of egoism, Frederic discovers, is impregnable: it can be neither scaled nor breached.
Although in his management of the plot, Hemingway distanced himself from Frederic, the two are psychologically close.
Hemingway himself seems fully to have subscribed to an ethic of
self-abnegation, though he honored it more often in the breach than
the observance. The image of the Sunday-schoo! Jesus was imprinted
early on the choirboy in Oak Park's First Congregational Church and,
at sixteen, stalwart pillar of the Plymouth League for young people.
At eighteen, making his way in Kansas City as a cub reporter for the
Star, Hemingway effusively assured his anxious mother that he was
still in the fold: "Don't worry or cry or fret about my not being a good
Christian. I am just as much as ever and pray every night and believe
just as hard so cheer up!"
But within the year he was, he crowed to a friend, "hitting it
up with about 18 martinis a day" and entertaining lascivious thoughts
about nurses. Soon, he was blithely invoking sweet "Jo heesus" and
lacing his speech with manly "gaoddams." A.5the years wore on, his
letters to friends and associates show, the callow naughtiness evolved
into chronic irreverence. Becoming increasingly splenetic, he felt
benetted round with villainies. Editors were "dried up old bitches,"
reviewers full of "crap," "wordy, sentimental bastards," while fellow
writers were, he said with unwonted civility, merely "hampered by
lack of intelligence." By the time Hemingway wrote A Farewell to
Arms (at twenty-nine), the nasty streak that later suppurated into fullHedged paranoia, culminating in his suicide, had become broad and
deeply i~bued. Soon, even Jo heesus came in for it. "Remember,"

Hemingway told fellow novelist John Dos Passos, "our Lord yellowed
out on the cross and was only successful because they killed him"
The curmudgeonly strain was accompanied by bouts of remorse and asseverations of atonement. "I wish I could wipe out all
my meanness," he told Harold Loeb. To F. Scott fitzGerald, his steadfast confessor, Hemingway wrote: "Jesus Christ, some time I'd like to
grow:up," and "Christ nose [sic] that when I cant sleep I have enough
sons of bitching things I've done to look back on." In such moods, the
erstwhile choirboy, chastened and prayerful, re-emerges. He assured
Pauline Pfeiffer, his wife-to-be: "I pray for you hours every night and
every morning when I wake up." He also interceded for his soon-tobe ex-wife, Hadley, "I pray God always that he will make up to you
the very great hurt that I have done you." With unfeigned pride, he
told his family how he taught his young son "all his prayers in English" and took him to church on Sunday. Hemingway's well-known
irascibility, observed biographer Carlos Baker, was counterpoised by a
"ready sympathy for the ailing, the bereaved, and the downtrodden."
But such displays of sympathy were at best intermittent.
In a chapter titled "The Sins of Christianity" in Atheism: The
Case Against God, George H. Smith observes: "Christianity thrives on
guilt. Guilt, not love, is the fundamental emotion that Christianity
seeks to induce-and this is symptomatic of a viciousness in Christianity that few people care to acknowledge." This inculcation of guilt
was played out in the lives of both Hemingway and Frederic Henry.
Each was torn between rational self-interest and irrational self-immolation. Fortunately, great novelists can transform the foibles of
Christian indoctrination into artistic virtues.
Gary Sloan, a retired English

professor and frequent contributor to
American Atheist, lives in Ruston,
Louisiana. He receives e-rnail at:
sloangg@bellsouth.net
editor's desk
continued from page 4
ship of the newsletter to American Atheists President Ellen Johnson,

who has performed that task admirably for some years now.)
Unfortunately, even without the burden of the newsletter,
publication of American Atheist even as a quarterly has fallen woefully behind. Clearly, something had to be done. President Ellen
Johnson realized that publishing two separate periodicals not only
was logistically impractical, it was very costly as well. Her solution?
Combine the two periodicals into one quasi-monthly publication
and assume the burden of production herself I will continue as a
contributing editor (rather than managing editor) of the combination journal, and Ann will devote herself full-time to design, lay-out,
and production of books and the many miscellaneous publications
produced by American Atheist Press. I will continue as managing
editor of those publications.
The new publication now in your hands continues with the
ISSN of the magazine American Atheist. The ISSN of the newslct20
ter is being retired. This new American Atheist seeks to fulfill all the
promises of the masthead, which reads "A Journal Of Atheist News
And Thought." While the quarterly did a reasonably good job of
keeping up with Atheist thought, it fell woefully behind in conveying
Atheist news. This new American Atheist will provide, I am confident, a more balanced offering of news and thought. Best of all, this
new magazine will be provided free as a perquisite of membership to
all members of American Atheists Inc. and will not require a separate
subscription. Like the newsletter, it will be issued ten times per year.
A.5 I pass on the task of editing American Atheist to Ellen
Johnson, I wish her all success. I hope that she will have the encouragement and support of readers that Ann and I have enjoyed for a
decade. The exhaustion that we feel is nevertheless saturated with a
feeling of satisfaction - a sense that what we have done has been not
only worthwhile but important. Our only regret is that we were unable to have done more.
news
Romney, a Mormon, forges ties with Boston
Catholics as he eyes White House
by Steve LeBlanc
'South Park'-Scientology
BOSTON(AP)-FouR decades after John F. Kennedy reassured a nervous electorate that a Catholic could be president, another Massachusetts politician with presidential ambitions is hoping to break a
different religious glass ceiling at the White House.
Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, who is testing the waters for
a 2008 presidential run, would be the first Mormon to serve in the
Oval Office.
But unlike Kennedy, who downplayed his Catholic roots to
convince voters that as president he would answer to the American
public and not the Vatican, Romney has been publicly supporting key
social issues backed by conservative Catholics in Massachusetts.
That makes political sense, according to observers who say
Romney's support for issues close to the heart for Catholic leaders
in his home state could resonate with conservative Republican voters outside Massachusetts----especially those who might otherwise be
leery about supporting a Mormon.
"He's showing and demonstrating that the social and moral
values he possesses as a Mormon are identical to those of conservative
Catholics and conservative Protestants," said Rick Beltram, chairman
of the Spartanburg Counry Republican Parry in South Carolina.
Last year, Romney sided with the Catholic church's efforts to
resist a law requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to
rape victims, although he later backed off. He recently filed a bill that
would exempt the church from a state law requiring they consider
same-sex couples when putting children up for adoption.
Romney's ties the Catholic church-the dominant religion in
Massachusetts-have become so close he was invited to Rome to attend Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley's elevation to cardinal at the
Vatican.
Romney's alliance with Catholic leaders on conservative social
issues like abortion and gay marriage could reap political rewards as
he seeks to cultivate support outside Massachusetts among conservative Christians, one of the Republican Party's core constituencies.
That's particularly important as Romney courts evangelical
voters, some of whom don't consider Mormons true Christians, according to Douglas Laycock, a church-state expert at the University
of Texas law school.
Romney, 59, said he differs with the Catholic church in some
areas-he would allow abortion in the case of rape, incest, or the life
of the mother-but said that on many social issues, he sees eye to eye,
not only with Catholics but with other people of faith.
On Beacon Hill, Romney has become one of the church's
strongest supporters.
When church leaders sought an exemption from the state's antidiscrimination law to allow its social service arm, Catholic Charities,
to avoid placing adoptive children with gay parents, Romney rushed
to support it, filing a bill that would create a religious exemption.
The church got far less support from Senate President Robert
Travaglini and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, both Catholics and
Boston Democrats, who oppose the exemption.
Not all conservative Catholics in Massachusetts are enamored of
Romney. c.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League,
faulted Romney for not trying to push through a religious exemption
administratively rather than filing a bill that will likely fail.
battle rages
by Erin Carlson
NEWYORK(AP)-"South Park" has declared war on Scientology.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated cable
television satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist
Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the Comedy Central schedule
Wednesday-with
an Internet report saying it was covert warfare by
Cruise that led to its departure.
"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!" the "South Park" creators said
in a statement Friday in Daily Variety, blending a parody of megalomaniac overtones, nonsense words and cult-like Apocalyptic concepts.
"Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from
keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies ... You
have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will
fail!" they wrote.
The Internet blogger hollywoodinterrupted.com said Thursday that Cruise threatened to not promote "Mission: Impossible 3,"
a surefire summer blockbuster, if the offending episode ran. Comedy
Central is owned by Viacom, as is Paramount, which is putting out
the film.
But Cruise's representative, Arnold Robinson, told The Associated Press Friday that the mega-star made no such demands.
"Not true," Robinson said. "I can tell you that he never said
that."
A call by The Associated Press to a Paramount representative
was'not returned Friday.
The episode in question, 'Trapped in the Closet," which first
aired last November, shows Scientology leaders hailing Stan, one of the
show's four devilish fourth graders, as a savior. A cartoon Cruise locks
himself in a closet and won't come out. An animated John Travolta,
another famous Scientologist, enters the closet to try to get him out.
The battle began in earnest earlier this week whenlsaac Hayes,
another celebrity Scientologist and longtime show member-voicing
the ladies' man school cafeteria cook Chef-quit
the show, saying he
could no longer tolerate its religious "intolerance and bigotry."
Stone and Parker did not buy that either.
On Monday, Stone told The Associated Press, "This is 100
percent having to do with his faith in Scientology ...He has no problem-and he's cashed plenty of checks-with our show making fun
of Christians."
A Comedy Central spokesman said Friday that the network
pulled the controversial episode to make room for two shows featuring Hayes.
"In light of the events of earlier this week, we wanted to give
Chef an appropriate tribute by airing two episodes he is most known
for," the spokesman said.
Scientology was created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. In "Dianetics" (1950), Hubbard said the "thetan" (soul) suffers
from negative "engrams" implanted in this life and innumerable past
lives. Scientology "auditors" help clients work through problems using
an "e-rneter,' similar to a lie detector. They seek a state called "Clear"
and then advance through various levels of "Operating Thetan."
AMERICAN AfHEiST
MAGAZINE
21
god would be an atheist ...
In Hthei~t~We~on't Iru~t
by Martin Foreman
we believe or who we have sex with, so it's easy to pass as a "normal"

mericans wouldn't let their child marry one.
It seems that I'm not welcome. A recent survey by member of society.
the University of Minnesota found that Atheists are the
Astute observers may note that we don't volunteer information
east trusted group in America, behind Muslims, recent about who we're dating or which church we go to, but we're rarely
immigrants and homosexuals.
challenged. As long as we keep our heads down we'll be all right.
I'll leave it to you to stretch the simile as far as it will go. Some
As the Minnesota Daily (www.mndaily.com/articlesI2006/
03124/67686) reports, the telephone poll, backed up by in-depth in- people argue that gay men and lesbians choose their sexuality and
terviews, found that men and women across the country rated Athe- Atheists choose their "belief". But the debate over sexual orientation
ists were least likely to share their vision of American society. And, it is over (biology won) and most Atheists argue that their lack of faith
is as certain as the distance of the earth from the moon or the temappears, they are highly willing to let their children marry Atheists.
My first response was to wonder why so many busybodies and perature at which water boils-the inevitable conclusion of centuries
legislators are rushing to ban same-sex marriages when the average Joe of deduction and observation.
is most concerned about his son or daughter exchanging rings with a rationalist. I
look forward to Rick Santorum proposing
"What~ an honest Atheist-Rationalist, Naturalist, Humanist, Skeptic
a constitutional amendment limiting maror whatever we call ourselves-to do? Most of us spend our lives like
riage to a solemn union between theists.
My second response was "here we
small-town gays. You can't tell by looking at us what we believe or who
go again". America is in the middle of yet
we have sex with, so irs easy to pass as a "normal" member of society. /I
another cycle of ignorance and bigotry.
Sometimes it's about race. African, Latino-, Chinese-, japanese-, Italian-,
Ccrman-, Irish-, Arab- and a host of other- Americans have all sufWhether Atheists are the African-Americans, Wobblies or gays
fered significant discrimination at some point in the country's history, of the twenty-first century, the truth remains that in 2006 in middle
and, to America's shame, many still do.
America the average Rationalist is nervous that someone will discover
Or it's about sex. Long before the outcry about homosexual
their secret and the word will be out.
And if that happens, what then? Whispers and cold smiles and
men and women, there was astonishment and anger at the idea that
some women might have sex before marriage. Add race to the mix ostracism at the workplace. Children shunned or laughed at? Neighbors suddenly reticent, babysitters difficult to find? The world sudand many twentieth century honest citizens were outraged when
their child dated someone of a different skin color, language or cul- denly a cold and lonely place?
tural background.
Whether in our own minds or grounded in reality, none of
Or it's about ideas. Remember the anti-communist hysteria of us should let our lives be dictated by fear. We have nothing to be
the 1950s? Or the IWW-the
Industrial Workers of the World, aka ashamed of We are good, honest, moral citizens.
the "Wobblies" -which a generation previously appeared to threaten
The only one way to gain respect-from ourselves as well as
the foundations of capitalism and therefore America itself?
from others-is to stand up and be counted. To show that Atheists
In other words, prejudice is as American as Mom and apple are no different from other Americans. To insist that the American
pie. Most of us live in small geographical areas and our social group
Dream encompasses reason as well as myth.
America is a wonderful country in so many ways. It has so
is limited to people like us. We have little experience of people who
much to offer its citizens and the rest of the world. Face to face, most
look or think differently from us, but we happily listen to opinionated-and equally ignorant-politicians
and preachers and media Americans are hospitable folks who welcome strangers with open
commentators who save us the trouble of thinking for ourselves. If arms. It is only ignorance that prevents them from understanding
that the atheists in their midst help bring out the best in America.
Ted Haggard or Rush Limbaugh tells us that Atheists are evil, then,
It's time for millions of Atheists to come out of their closet.
by God (or by George or by whoever) it must be true.
So what's an honest Atheist-Rationalist,
Naturalist, HumanTime to tell our best friends. To tell our families, our work colleagues.
ist, Skeptic or whatever we call ourselves-to do? Most of us spend
Tell the world that we are proud to be a rational human being. It will
our lives like small-town gays. You can't tell by looking at us what
make us stronger people and America a much stronger nation.
..
22
Phil Butler & Barbara Baldo~k

octor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate ofthe United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack,
carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of
war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars,two Legion of Merits,
two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D.in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness
consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School
in Monterey, California.
Phil then founded Camelot Enterprises, a management seminar, professional speaking and consulting services
business. As a professional keynote speaker he told his dramatic and inspirational story of how POW'swere able to
survive and succeed. As an organizational development consultant he specialized in team building, leadership development, interpersonal skills, strategic planning, organizational re-structuring and other topics. In 2000 he retired
as a traveling professional speaker and consultant.
Today Phil mentors business and organization leaders. He currently serves as a trustee for the Big Sur Land
Trust, Docent at Point Lobos State Reserve and he is a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace and other
organizations. Phil lives in Monterey, California and is married to Barbara Baldock.
Barbara Baldock attended Monterey Peninsula College for 3 years and San Diego State University for 3 years.
She has an AA degree in Photography and Business.She was a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines for 20 years.
She served as the Marketing Director of Camelot Enterprises from 1986 to present. She has served on the Board
of the SPCAof Monterey County for 6 years, including 5 years as Chair of the Board. She volunteers as a Docent
At Point Lobos State Reserve with Phil and is also active in peace and justice issues with Veterans for Peace,The
Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, the Peace Coalition of Monterey County, The Reproductive
Rights Coalition of Monterey County and The League of Women's Voters. She is married to PhillipButler
Phil and Barbara have both been Atheists for most of their lives and have been life members of American Atheists for over 15 years.

American Atheist Magazine April 2006

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

American Atheist Magazine April 2006

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

ABOUT AMERICAN ATHEIST,INC.

American Atheists, Inc. is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, educational organization dedicated to the

AMERICAN ATHEIST' MEMBERSHIP INFO

Associate Member (newsletter not included)

$15/year, International $25/year

From The President

James Dobson, Other Religious Leaders, From Unholy Alliance

Hemingway: Christian Manque

God Would Be An Atheist

The American Atheist Radio Series

Atheists & Co.

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Editor,American Atheist Press

2006 by American Atheists Inc.

My friends, don't fool

New Life Members

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

AFRICANS RECEIVE DESPERATELY NEEDED BIBLES

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Reaction among Niger residents has been mixed.

Draw the Prophet Muhammad

Hubert Henry Harrison

Hubert Henry Harrison

The Founders Friends ...

So many of you help American Atheists with donations and

TUE CASE AGAINST RELIGION:

The Case Against

Joseph L. Dorsey, MD-$SO

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Mr. Smalkowski has' been charged with a misdemeanor. The

want them. We believe in the Constitution of the United States. We

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

life." Whatever. The whole affair was upbeat and light-hearted.

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

ack in 2000, the Interfaith Council for Environmental

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Why is Father Robert Sirico.. a Roman Catholic priest, so

to Acton's website, "Acton has no ties with any particular church or

incineration of highly toxic medical waste and the use of pesticides,

sensus" on this issue and using that perceived consensus as a filter

The letter's signers amounted to a Who's Who of politically

AMERlCAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

chairman of the American Family Association; and the Rev. Louis P.

Jeff Wismer is an active

A MEETING OF THE UNITED SECULARISTS OF AMERICA, INC.

uringthe 1950s, there was an organization known as the

law Division, seeking to end the practice of Bible verse recitation in

Ihe Hmerican Htheist Hallio ~eries

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

the abolition of slavery in some countries, in the abolition of the

denominations, today, affirm it. Modern study of the laws of health,

ubsequent to the publication in 1952 of Ernest Hemingway's

AMERlCAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

a toothbrush. For Frederic, like the incontinent St. Augustine, the

felt faint with loving her." The breathless hyperbole, conspicuously

deeply i~bued. Soon, even Jo heesus came in for it. "Remember,"

Gary Sloan, a retired English

ship of the newsletter to American Atheists President Ellen Johnson,

AMERlCAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

god would be an atheist ...

we believe or who we have sex with, so it's easy to pass as a "normal"

AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Phil Butler & Barbara Baldo~k