January 1990

A
OFO

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

$2.95

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Alerican Atheist

A Journal

of Atheist

News and Thought

January

Editor's Desk
R. Murray-O'Hair

Director's Briefcase
Jon G. Murray

As the year 2000 approaches, Atheists

must take time out for "Planning the
Good Fight"and evaluatingthe Cause's
needs.

Ask A.A.

Cover art and design by Czes-

Yaw Sornat.

An answer is found for someone who

wants to know why we bother livingif
there is no afterlife. A more practical
reader queries the legality of religious
tax deductions.

1990

23

Tom Monaghan/Word of
God Connection
Ted Sylvester
Watch that pizza! Ifit's from Domino's,
the profits from it help fund the political aims of the Roman Catholic
church.

Abortion Rhetoric and

The Politics of Suffering
Diana Blackwell

26

Are two common pro-choice arguments really anti-woman?

29

Talking Back
Theists aren't talking about feet when
they ask what happens to one's soul
after death. But Atheists straighten
them out in "Wither and Why."

30

Historical Notes
From Liverpool to Honolulu, Atheists
have fought censorship for over a
hundred years.

32

Report from India

Margaret Bhatty
"Naked Philosophers" are common
pests in Indian cities and villages.

News and Comments

Volume 32, No.1

Austin, Texas

Poetry

35

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair

36

11

American Atheists Call for Real Tax

Reform - Land taxes are not bringing
in enough funds, so Texas officials
want to tax income. But American
Atheists have a better idea. - 11
The Presidential Pulpit - George
Bush does two things at once: promise
the moon to Roman Catholic leaders
and insult.Atheists. - 15
The Place of Religion in the Schools
- Believe it or not, some people are
saying there isn't enough religion in
the public schools. American Atheists
agree - but not in the sense religious
education advocates want. - 17
January 1990

Any time the Roman Catholic church

needs a fact or two to back up its
position the "Religious Forgery Mill"
starts churning them out.

39

Me Too
How can religionists explain the goodness of their gods "When Bad Things
Happen"?

Letters to the Editor

41

Classified Advertisements

44
Page 1

Allerican Atheist
Editor
R. Murray-O'Hair
Editor Emeritus
Dr. Madalyn O'Hair
Managing Editor
Jon G. Murray
Poetry
Angeline Bennett
Non-Resident Staff
Margaret Bhatty
Victoria Branden
Merrill Holste
Arthur Frederick Ide
John G. Jackson
Frank R. Zindler

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Page 2

o Atheist
o Freethinker
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o Objectivist
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o Unitarian
o Secularist

o Agnostic
o Realist
o I evade any reply to a query
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I am, however, an Atheist and I hereby make application for membership in

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but are invited to subscribe to the American Atheist magazine.) Both dues and
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Date

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August 1989

American Atheist

Editor's Desk

The importance
of being educated
ducation
is a word said with a
special reverence in our society.
Even its symbols are held with a
special affection in our culture: the ivycovered halls, the diploma, the scholar's
mortarboard. Dormitories conjure up
images of youth and scholarly brotherhood; school libraries are thought of as
temples of knowledge. The devotion to
studies by students and teachers, particularly on a university level, is imagined
- even by its participants - as a selfless quest for honesty of thought and
purity of knowledge, a sort of tweedjacketed search for the holy grail.
It is not just the symbols of education
which have been so enshrined in our
society, it is also the idea of the same.
Education is seen as a sort of cure-all for
community problems. Unwanted pregnancy, substance abuse, overpopulation,
poor drivinghabits, pollution - problems
from the personal to the societal - all
these, we chant, can be solved by education. We might argue over how to effectuate or improve that education bickering over whether the kids need
more computers, more books, or more
beatings - but as a society we all reverently agree that education will cure
this, that, and everything. We may hate
the eggheads and praise the school of
hardknocks, but a sneaking admiration
for the Rhodes Scholars of the world
comes over the most parochial in our
society.
The word education is often on the
lips of Atheists, and I think we have the
greatest admiration of all for what it
could do for our society. For Atheists, of
all people, have firsthand knowledge of
what a twisted and perverted education
can accomplish. Atheists fought their
way out of an "education" that insisted
religion was of paramount value to the
community at large. They learned that
this was not just a matter of bias, of a
teacher slanting facts to shed a better
light on her religion (though most reli-

R. Murray-O'Hair
Austin, Texas

gions thrive best in darkness). Through

years of the most challenging, difficult
self-education program imaginable,
Atheists learned one by one, for most
often they can find no others of their ilk
to help on their quest, that the facts concerning religion they learned in school
were most often not facts at all. Moses
didn't exist, much less establish the first
system of ethics. The Church didn't
save libraries but burned them. Priests
didn't teach Indians; they tortured
them. And so on through the pages of
history, Atheists painstakingly learn for
themselves that the information previously presented to them was in fact disinformation - but exceedingly effective
for indoctrination efforts nonetheless.
We Atheists reason that if others had
the facts we have finally gathered, they
too would be freed from the bonds of
religion. Throughout the history of
Atheism, the banner of education has
always been held high; the need for education, of free honest inquiry, has been
our continuing war cry. It should be no
surprise that American Atheists itself is
defined as an educational organization.
Unfortunately, our competition, religion, has also always realized the importance of what we in the West so loosely
term education. The churches have
known for many years that a bombardment of slanted facts and pseudo-facts
aimed straight at young and tender ears
can ensure yet another generation of
kneelers and tithers.
It is exactly this regard for what education should be, is, and might be which
concerns two of our "News and Comments" articles this month.
Since there has been such a thing as
land taxes to support public school systems, churches have refused to pay
them. The saved money, of course, puts
the pulpiteers in an advantageous position to start school systems of their
own, in which students may be sorted
according to race, religion, and sex.
(Direct government supplements don't
hurt them any either.) For at least a hundred years, Atheists and secularists
January 1990

have urged the equal taxation of church

property to no avail. American Atheists
is once again putting up a fight on this
front, which is chronicled in "American
Atheists Call for Real Tax Reform."
Religious leaders are as aware as
Atheists that honest education on the
subject of godism and its history would
be destructive to their livelihood and the
scope of their influence and control.
And for that reason, they are once again
pushing for public school courses describing the positive contributions of
religion (read: Judeo-Christianity) to
our grand and glorious civilization.
What about its negative contributions,
you ask? Well, that would be hostility to
religion to mention those - and we all
know that the First Amendment says
the government can't be nasty to religion,
or so the religious leaders say. The current efforts by individuals posing as
"religious liberals" (an oxymoron if ever
there was one) are reviewed in "The
Place of Religion in the Schools." It is
crucial that Atheists be aware of the information in this article and that they
keep abreast of the efforts of such "liberals." Propaganda was once honestly
propaganda, frankly presented by intellectual fascists who said "believe or be
damned." For our sound-bite age, the
approach must be more sugarcoated
lest the audience switch channels.
AllAtheists reading these two articles
know what a struggle they had to break
through the layers of misinformation
that smothered their inquiring minds and the continuing exertions they must
make to stay unstifled as they are bombarded by all the media and by all society with specious and untrue information
and conclusions.
Each of us, knowing the difficulty of
that effort and the true importance of
education, should be as devoted to the
struggle for unbiased, fact-based instruction as the mythical knights of the
round table were in their quest for the
holy grail. Only something more impor~an~~han the pleasure of a m~thical ~od
IS riding on our success or failure. ~
Page 3

Director's Briefcase

Planning the good fight

he start of a new year is traditionally the time for looking ahead,
planning, and reassessing the successes or failures of the year recently
past. In many cases there is always the
sotto voce hope that the new year will
bring more prosperity or fewer problems
than the old, but that is rarely the case
in reality. So it is with American Atheists. We begin this month not just a new
year but a new decade. This decade will
be a very important one to the future of
organized Atheism. I am certain that
such a line has been
written or spoken before by one of many
dissenters to religion
who have come along
in the course of our
nation's history. That
does not make my statement any less true at
the present moment.
American Atheists
must change the overall thrust of its operations in this new decade. It must do so to .
survive. The attitudes
and opinions of Americans toward religion are changing in a
way that signals to us, as Atheists, that
we need to take a somewhat different
approach than the freethinkers who
came before us. Nonetheless, it is instructive to take a look back at what
was important to our forebears in the
fight for freedom from religion.
I have mentioned, in more than one
previous editorial, "The Nine Demands
of Liberalism," first published in The
Index, a freethought newspaper of the
late nineteenth century, in the issue of
April 6, 1872. (See "Nine Demands of
liberalism.") The freethinkers of the
time thought that these nine demands
were ones which they had to pursue
with vigor. They realized, 118years ago,
the need for an enforced separation of
state and church in distinction to just a
ceremonial or attitudinal separation.
That need is more acute today than it

A long list of needs

(not wants) face
the American Atheist
community in the new
decade.

A graduate of the University of Texas

at Austin and a second generation
Atheist, Mr. Murray is a proponent of
"aggressive Atheism." He is an
anchorman on the "American Atheist
Forum" and the president of American
Atheists.

Jon G. Murray
Page 4

Januar':} 1990

was over one hundred years ago, yet

only part of the fourth of the Nine Demands has been realized. In the decade
of the 1990s we must rededicate ourselves to meeting all of these demands
by the year 2000.
In order to meet the rest of the Nine
Demands, we cannot do so in the same
way in which those freethinkers of 1872
envisaged their struggle. They pamphleteered and held large conventions; their
leaders went from town to town to hold
public debates with the clergy; they lee,
tured at many a town
or college hall;and they
published.
Oh, did they publish. The freethought
movement of the mid.to late 1800s published
newspapers,
flyers,
books, posters, and
anything and everything else it could. That
was a time when reading was an art and a
pleasure. In our electronic age, it is difficult
to get anyone to read.
How many lectures do
you attend in person each month? I venture to guess not many, as no one else
does these days. The freethinkers of the
nineteenth century did not litigate, at
least not very much. The phenomenon
of litigation as a means of achieving separation of state and church is a twentiethcentury one. Here at the American
Atheist General Headquarters we have
seen the "handwriting on the wall," as
the saying goes, concerning the efficacy
of litigation in the state/church arena
since the beginning of the decade of the
1980s.Those "Reagan years" proved an
almost impenetrable barrier to Establishment Clause arguments as the lower
courts and then the Supreme Court
shifted gears in favor of Free Exercise interpretations. Here and there a point
could be scored in the lower courts, but
overall the battle for separation swung
in favor of those religious.
American Atheist

POLITICAL
(THE

A case in point
The events of just this past year with
regard to the pro-choice versus right-tolifedebate are instructive as an example.
The pro-choice forces thought that they
could use the nation's legal system, with
a reliance on the First Amendment, as
a primary vehicle to uphold reproductive
freedom for women. The Reagan years
put an end to that methodology when
the president appointed two-thirds of
the federal judiciary with right-wing, for
the most part right-to-life, judges. Then
the Supreme Court Webster* decision
finallyofficiallyshifted the battleground
from the courts to the state legislatures.
The pro-choice movement was then
faced with the prospect of trying to sway
public opinion to its side and to work on
a grassroots level, instead of from the
perspective of an educated, elite, snobbish majority who would not care to get
their hair mussed or their fingernails
dirty. The battle was not in courtrooms
between high-priced lawyers anymore.
.It had been the case for some years that
the right-to-life bunch was putting pressure on legislatures, lying down in front
of abortion clinics, writing to congressmen, holding ralliesat state capitols, and
all the rest. It took a Supreme Court
decision for the pro-choice side to see
that they had to get into the fight on the
same levelas the right-to-lifeproponents.
No longer could the better educated,
liberal, sophisticated, pro-choicers sit in
their middle-class suburbs and read Ms
and not wish to interrupt their busy
schedules to ~? to a rally, pass out campaign literature, write letters, or get out
and vote. They now had to hit the
streets and appear in equal or greater
numbers wherever the right-to-lifebunch
reared its ugly head.
.
There is a point to be made here. The
fundamentalist, biblical inerrancy, bornagain crowd has been primarily drawn
from the lower socioeconomic strata of

*Webster, Attorney General of Missouri v.

Reproductive Health Services (July 3,1989).
Austin, Texas

our nation. This was true with all

the movements from the Moral
Majority on down during the last
decade. Among persons of those
lower strata, a scrappy demeanor
is more commonplace than among
the better educated and high income level persons. Someone
who needs to fight for the slightest
advancement, or get tough to
earn a modicum of respect, is
more easily persuaded to join a
picket line or be part of a sit-in or
street demonstration than an upper
middle-class individual, who is
more apt to either donate to an
advocacy group to do his fighting
for him or hire an attorney to write
some threatening letters. The
middle-class intellectuals of the
1980sneed to be transformed into
the hard-knocks street fighters of
the 1990s.How many suburb dwelling, managerial class heads of
household do you think would be
willingto go and lie down in front
of a Roman Catholic church on
Sunday morning to block the entrance in a tit-for-tat measure
against the Operation 'Rescue
Christers? Not many. I think that
the battle will need to come to
that: You block my clinic entrance,
I'll block your church.
It is now time for Atheists to
learn a lesson about their movement from what has happened to
the pro-choice versus right-to-life
battle.

DEMANDS OF LIBERALISM.)

1. We demand that churches and otber

ecclesiastical property shall be no longer
exempt from taxation.
2. We demand that the employment of
Chaplains in Congress, in the Legislatures,
in the navy and militia, and in prisons.
asylums, and all other institutions supported
by public money shall be discontinued
3. We demand that all public appropriations for educational and charitable institutions of a sectarian character shall cease.
4. We demand that all religious services
now sustained by the government shall be
abolished; and especially that the use of the
Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book
ot religious worship, shall be prohibiteu.
5. We demand that the appointment by
the President of the United States or by
the governors of the various states, of all
religious festivals and fasts shall wholly
cease.
6. We demand that the judicial oath in
the courts and in all other departments of
the government shall be abolished, and that
simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its
stead.
7. We demand that all laws directly or
indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
8. We demand that all laws looking to
the enforcement
of "Christian"
morality
shall be abrogated and that all laws shall
be conformed to the requirements
of natural morality, equal tights, and impartial
liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the Constitution of the United States and of the
several states, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privileges or
advantages shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our
entire political system shall be founded and
administered on a purely secular basis; and
that whatever changes shall prove necessary
to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and- promptly made.

Upcoming
The greatest external threat to our
movement we have to face, as Atheists,
in the decade we have now begun is the
capturing of the minds of each new upcoming generation by religion. Organized religionhas been layingthe groundwork for this action during the .1980s.
Small groups of dedicated religionists
have been applying pressure, on the
local level,to school boards and textbook
selection committees, while the Atheists
January 1990

NINE

PRINCIPLES.

have lost by default because their viewpoint was not represented. Go out and
pick up a history textbook that is being
used to teach your children in the public
schools. You will find, in the majority of
cases, that any references to religion in
history are kind ones. Religion is portrayed as a good thing that made people
happy, solved their problems, cured
their ills,and drew groups of persons together. The church is billed as a gentle
arbitrator, a purveyor of social justice,
Page 5

Religion is an escape into a fantasy world

where all mistakes are forgiven, and no one really dies,
and anything is worth a try.
It is like stepping into a Disney cartoon.
peace, and good will toward men. We
know that nothing could be further from
the truth. It is because only the religious
have had influence over what is to be
taught in our schools that they are able
to have as rosy a picture as possible
painted of their sordid past. Generations of young people are going to be
taught that religion is generally a good
thing and the answer to human problems.
They should be taught that religion is
the problem and not the answer.
No true or correct history of religion
is being taught, but no history of Atheism
is being offered at all. I have not done a
survey on this point, but it would be my
educated guess that the majority of
those of you reading this journal each
month are fairly ignorant as to the history of the intellectual development of
what we now call modern Atheism. You
don't know who your heroes were because the leading personalities in the
history of dissent to religion have been
hidden from you by the religious majority. It is damned difficult to go into a
library and find any information about
Atheism, let alone information of a positive nature written by Atheists about
Atheists. I would also venture to guess
that if I listed the names of the twenty
most important, landmark Supreme
Court cases on separation of state and
church issues handed down since the
end of World War II, a very tiny minority
of you would be able to identify them
and explain the issue each concerned
and what the Court's decision was and
why that decision is important.
Yet, at the same time, although you
don't know your legal history, you wish
to claim those cases as your own to
uphold your right to freedom from religion today. Many of you want to rub religionists' noses in their sordid past, but
your plan fails because they don't know
really any more about it than you know.
Atheists must know their own history
and the history of religion as well, and
most know neither. Religionists should
know the history of the development of
their belief systems, and most of them
Page 6

don't. In order for the religious to understand what is wrong with religion, they
need to know whence those religious
ideas came and how they developed.
The Atheist needs to know this history
also to aid in that instruction.

The born-again movement

Think about the nature of the modern
"born-again" movement in light of this
dearth of background knowledge. Bornagai.nChri.sti.ani.t'Y
is slick, glib, h'Ypedto
the max, and presented with style, flair,
and flash. It's not very intellectual, but
more "game show" oriented. The television studio sets are gaudy; there are
Christian rock bands; the hosts have
too much makeup; and Power Team
strongmen rip telephone books and
split chains and boards for Christ. The
televangelists know that they are in a
highly competitive market - cable television. I don't know about cable in your
town, but in Austin we have over fifty
channels on our cable system. That is a
lot of choice and a lot of competition. I
watch television like most modern
Americans do, from an armchair with a
remote control. I can flip easily from
channel to channel without even getting
up. If I come across a program that is
dull, flat, lifeless, just "talking heads," I
can just flipthe channel and find a colorful, captivating, educational, or entertaining programming alternative in just
seconds. That is why the televangelists
present their message as they do, because they know what their competition
for audience attention is. They also
know their audience is, for the most
part, a bunch of religious illiterates.
They can't lecture to them; they must
put on a show for them.
Born-again Christianity is free. Think
about that for a moment. One does not
have to earn the title "born-again" or
really work hard at it at all. One just
needs to "believe" and show the occasional outward signs of hysteria common to the born-againers. Being bornagain is a "cheap thrill." It is cheaper
than doing drugs and has much less
January 1990

wear and tear on the body. I could be

"born-again" in appearance tomorrow,
if I wanted to be. Any Atheist could. It is
an easy act to copy and requires no intelligence or sincerity. Since the manifestations of born-againism are subjective, who can tell from the outside
whether or not you really believe? No
one. If I say that I had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ, who would
know for certain? Only I would, and it
would be m'Y word agai.nst 'Yours. I
cannot prove that anyone does not
think that they talk to god, inside their
own head. If they say they do, I can only
take that at face value as silly, but it is
totally subjective. I could say tomorrow
that I hear god's voice talking to me
once a week, on Wednesday afternoons,
let's say. Who could prove me wrong?
No one. My point is that anyone can be
a born-again Christian, because it is just
so easy. One does not have to study,
read the Bible, or anything else. The
only work would be picking up a set of
key phrases that are common to the
born-again movement and you're in.
Born-again Christianity is billed as the
solution to all problems. You can supposedly solve all your problems without
working to solve them. Isn't that nice?
Just belief is enough. To wish or hope or
pray for that raise, for your marriage to
work out, for that "A" on the big exam,
that is enough. A cheap emotional commitment willdo. Religion is the easy way
out, and that is particularly attractive to
our increasingly lazy youth. If you do
anything wrong, it is only "a sin" and all
sins can be forgiven. If you have a problem, "Jesus" will fix it. It's easy, all you
have to do is ask, and tithe 10 percent.
Religion is an escape into a fantasy
world where all mistakes are forgiven,
and no one really dies, and anything is
worth a try. It is like stepping into a
Disney cartoon. If Porky Pig sets off a
gun in Daffy Duck's face, the next frame
has Daffy with powder burns and his
beak on upside down, then he just turns
it around right side up and it's back to
action again. If Sylvester eats Tweety
American Atheist

I~

Tent speeches were one of the most

effective forms of outreach in Robert G.
Ingersoll's day, but today more technological methods are necessary. The
"American Atheist Forum" is taped in an
up-to-date television studio in a state-ofthe-art studio (control board shown
here).

Bird, Grandma is always there with that

umbrella to beat him over the head and
make him cough up the bird.
We are in the age of marketing, and,
religion is a very appealing product. It
gives you prestige, it makes you "special," it provides a social outlet, and you
don't really need to layout much money
to start, although you may get hooked
and end up shelling out more than you
bargained for in the end.

The need for image

America has been a primary producer of fantasy for years. The movies are
by and large fantasy, most of prime-time
television programming has been for
years, and the same with radio. What
about those television commercials?
You can have the prettiest girl in town if
you just use the right toothpaste. A particular underarm deodorant will give
you confidence. Driving a certain kind
of car willbring excitement into your life.
This is all bunk, but it sells and millions
of persons fallfor these lines every day.
You never see a car commercial of a
brand-new model stuck in a massive
traffic jam, inching along, with horns
. blowing and tempers flaring. That would
truly represent the bulk of the driving
conditions these days. Yetwe are always
shown a new shiny car racing down an
empty country road, which is fantasy. In
the same way, we never see religion pictured as a scene of a Protestant husband
and a Roman Catholic wifefighting over
which Sunday school the kids are going
to be forced to attend. We see instead
the fantasy of a happy, smiling, welldressed family all going off to church
together to have a wonderful time. The
point is that once you get a population
used to fantasy, by pumping them with
it every Sunday, then fantasy in one
arena begets fantasy in another.
The hard media (newspapers, magazines, and the like) has shifted to an emphasis on human interest stories. These
are stories of single persons in valiant
struggles of perseverance, against great
odds. The cripple who overcomes his
Austin, Texas

handicap and finds the

perfect job, the small
rural church that has
its dream of a new organ for the choir come
true, the ailing child of
a poor family who gets
the money for that lifesaving operation. The
popular stories are those of individual
struggles against adversity, or individual "salvation." Meanwhile the stories
about things that affect all of society are
given the back page. I noticed recently
a front page story about a small group
of Hispanic women going on a pilgrimage
to a particular shrine of the Virgin, color
photo and all. In the back pages of the
same section was a small article about a
governor's conference on trash. We
have a real-life problem, of gigantic proportions, with regard to waste disposal
and it is a problem that will affect everyone, the young and the old, and for
generations to come. The real-life concerns are back-paged to the personal,
emotional, and the spiritual. When was
the last time that you saw a substantive,
issue-oriented coverage of a political
candidate instead of emphasis on the
personal, moral, or emotional life of the
candidate? The "soul" of the individual
needs to be squeaky clean first, before
positions on the issues can be considered.
Democracy is a fantasy now. When
this nation's founders laid down the
principles of government in our Constitution, they never thought in terms of a
woman ever voting, or a Black ever being anything but "property." They envisaged only free, White, male landholders, who were educated as participating in a democracy. We now have the
masses shouting for "democracy." Direct participatory democracy is simply
not possible given our population and
the complexity of issues that need to be
legislated. We have had for some time,
and will continue to have, an oligarchy.
Yet "democracy" is a magic word like
"prayer" throughout our land. It is not
January 1990

really understood, but everyone wants

it just the same. Just having a "democratic" system is not the magic answer
to all of our problems any more than
having a religion is.
The stock market is another example: paper wealth, not real wealth. Easy
come and easy go. Rich today and poor
tomorrow or a quick trip from rags to
riches. What percentage of persons
really make it big, Donald Trump-style,
in the market? Darn few.There is always
that hope though, that dream, that
some day each of us could be a millionaire. It is a kind of faith in the free market
system as "provider."
Faith in one area breeds faith in another. Iffantasy is accepted and nurtured
with regard to religion, it can and does
spill over into all areas of our lives. This
is a lesson that even few Atheists understand.

Needs, not goals

What does all of this have to do with
the future of American Atheists during
the 1990s then, you ask?
It all goes to point out that we must
get out of the closet and put our Atheism
on the line. We have a really sick culture
out there, full of all kinds of crazy, irrationally based ideas. It is up to those
of us who can see through the surface
down to that irrational underpinning to
bring that vision to others. We cannot
keep our knowledge and understanding
to ourselves.
The outreach of American Atheists
into cable television has to be improved.
The "American Atheist TelevisionForum"
must be made better, slicker, but not
mindless. We must concentrate also on
development of locally originated shows
Page 7

Below: The American Atheist Press

frequently displays at library and press
exhibits.
Right: In the old days, Madalyn O'Hair
taped the "American Atheist Radio
Series" by herself, but a more elaborate
effort is planned for a new American
Atheist radio outreach.

in addition to those produced by the

national General Headquarters. Local
shows can concentrate on local issues
of importance to the maintenance of
state/church separation, while the national show should do more to teach the
history of Atheism and reveal the true
history of religion. Television is an extremely important market for the future
dissemination of the Atheist point of
view.
American Atheists used to produce a
weekly, fifteen minute, "American Atheist Radio Series" during the 1970s with
host Madalyn Murray O'Hair. That
series must be reworked and produced
again in the 1990s,perhaps in a half-hour
news or historical analysis format, with
a variety of moderators.If the religionists

can use radio for their outreach, we

cannot be left out of that audience.
The videotape sales and rental market
is just wide open for Atheism. We need
to be marketing the "American Atheist
Television Forum" or other specialized
legal or historical presentations in the
home video format, for sale or for rental.
There is much room for expansion
and innovation in the area of telemarketing of Atheist ideas. Dial-An-Atheist
services need to be enlarged and expanded into new markets. Surveying
and soliciting need to be initiated by
telephone.
There are new forms of electronic
Page 8

outreach presenting opportunities every

day, but we still need "hands-on" materials to back up any such outreach programs: this journal, the monthly newsletter that many of you also receive, the
books and booklets offered by American
Atheist Press, and then in addition new
types of subject-specialized newsletters.
There is a need for a quarterly publication and perhaps a resurrection of the
"Little Blue Book" concept of small,
pocket -size booklets on specific Atheist
topics for the "working man."
What I am saying is that we need to
get into the ring and join the fight for
mankind. We can either stay ringside
and watch those of narrow mind, short
vision, and faith beat up on the world or
we can jump in and help. We must be
willingto get down and get dirty
if need be. We cannot remain
aloof or unwilling to use the
very same tactics with which
our opponents are beating us.
The phrase "Just Say No To
Religion" has to be more than
just a slogan in this new decade;
it must be a rally call to action.
It is up to Atheists to demand
that government meetings, the
workplace, the schools, and
hospitals, be religion-free zones.
We must be emphatic about
declaring government, work,
our kids, and our bodies off
limitsfor the intrusion of religion
and its absurd ideas.

Atheist musts
Atheists must get into the textbook
fight. We cannot lose by default. We
must be present to make certain that
succeeding generations understand
that there has always been dissent both
internal and external to religion. We
simply must not allow religion to be
presented as having saved mankind,
when its prime function has been to hold
it back.
Atheists must get involved in the
school board wars. The religionists have
been allowed to terrorize local school
January 1990

authorities for too long with no one

saying them nay. Atheists must start to
show up at every school board meeting
at which the religious nuts show up and
speak up for the rational point of view.
If our elected officials are too timid to
stand up to the religionists, then we
simply have to show them how and
maybe they will develop some spine by
example.
Atheists must get into the creationism
fight. We cannot countenance the intrusion of the Bible into science classrooms.
Ifthe liberal religionists are too yellow to
stand up and say no to the creationists
then we can do so for them.
Atheists must get into the pro-choice
battle over abortion. The right-to-life
persons base their position almost entirely on biblical parameters and if the
pro-choice groups are unwilling to point
that out and hammer away on it for fear
of turning off their mainline religious
supporters then we can speak out in
their stead.
Atheists must get into the battle over
legislatures allowing religious withholding of medical care from minors. Parents
who withhold medical treatment from
their children on the basis of religious
teachings and watch a child die are murderers and must be treated as such. If
the judges and legislators are too afraid
of the religious vote to take a hard-line
stand on this issue, we Atheists are not.
Atheists must also take back the natural celebration days. The Christians
stole the Winter Solstice from the world
for their mythical Christ. We can take it
back again, and the other three natural
celebration days as well. We can make
them days of international celebration,
cooperation, understanding, and peace.
We have been fighting since 1%3 to
gain just a "toehold" and not yet even a
"foothold" in the climb toward a rational
world. If we can get both feet firmly
planted in a sound intellectual, ethical,
educational, and strategic base we can
liftthe world with Atheism in this decade.
It is up to all Atheists to help make that
foundation a reality. ~
American Atheist

Ask A.A.

To be or not to be ... ?
Here is the Question of the Ages;
what is your answer - if any?
If there is no life beyond this life - is
this life worth living?
It has assets - sex, music, hikes in
nature, love, etc. But it also has loss of
loved ones via death (sorrow), loss of
one's own life (fear), hate, anger, loneliness, illness, frustration.
Even ifwar and poverty are overcome,
frustration, sorrow, and fear remain.
Why not (ifno afterlife)campaign against
reproduction - ending all sorrow, fear,
etc.?
Why not argue for the peaceful ending
of the human enterprise (if there is no
life after death)? Let us see your arguments in favor of human life!!
Ifthere is (as I believe) lifeafter death,
this life would be an important school.
H.W.W.
California
All you will ever know or ever experience is living. Why whine about it?
Accept the joys as they come to you;
overcome the sorrows as you must. Dip
into the rich mixture of living that
spreads in panorama around you constantly. You need no excuse for living
other than that you are.
If you don't want to reproduce don't. There are enough of the species
that can and will so that human life will
be continued.
We don't intend to knock the only
thing we know, or to campaign against
it.
In "Letters to the Editor," readers give
their opinions, ideas, and information.
But in "Ask A.A.," American Atheists
answers questions regarding its
policies, positions, and customs, as
well as queries of factual and historical
situations. Please address your
questions to "Ask A.A.," P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 787140195.

Austin, Texas

I would appreciate being informed as

to your position in this matter and what
has been done to oppose the existing
situation.
Arnold Coopersmith
Pennsylvania
On two occasions members of American Atheists have filed lawsuits with
Internal Revenue Service asking for the
deductions to be discontinued. The first
was Vowles v. U.S. (1982), dismissed on
grounds of lack of jurisdiction and sovereign immunity; the second was Tucker
v. U.S. (1982), in which the court ruled
there was no standing to sue. There is
also a suit to end exemption of religious
property from taxation, Murray v. Travis County (1987). This case has not
been concluded.
We are in total agreement with you
that deductions taken on a 1040 IRS tax
return for contributions to religion are a
subsidization of religion. The law certainly gives a positive inducement to a
religious person to make such a contribution. This results in gross inequality
to those who are not religious. An Atheist with a $50,000 annual income pays
more taxes than does a Christian with
a $50,000 annual income when the latter can reduce his tax base by giving to
his church.
Although we lost in both of the above
legal tries, American Atheists will try
again as soon as that is feasible. Legal
costs are always astronomical and the
persons involved in such litigation usually have some difficulties with the IRS
before it all ends.

Religious tax deductions

I have received your information
package sent in response to my inquiry
to your organization. I don't see anything
in this information respecting your position against the deductibility of contributions to religious organizations on individual and business tax returns. This
is something which has always bothered
me as it IS undeniably government support of religion.
January 1990

Slavery - Christian plot or not?

Not so long ago as Isat down to watch
a Sunday morning gospel show on television, I had before me, live and in color,
a dim-witted pulpit cretin who told his
audience that the Christian Church was
(in the early and middle parts of the
nineteenth century) at the forefront of
the United States anti-slavery movement.
Page 9

The following quotes were taken from the New International Version of the
Bible.

I'm no historian, but it seems to me

that during this period the "moral"
church was poised in the opposite direction, and stood, as always, in the forefront of the effort to retard progress in this case by laboring to perpetuate
the "divine" institution of slavery. This is
the conclusion I came away with after
reading The Southampton Insurrection
by Drewry, the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and other material on
the subject of slavery in the Old South.
I willconcede, however, that this question isn't as clear-cut as it may seem,
and that in some states the church may
have been involved in the anti-slavery
agitation to some extent. I wasn't there,
of course, but at least we should try to
get at the facts before starting out on another round of church-bashing.
It seems apparent to me (but please
correct me if I'm wrong) that Wendell
Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison
were both of our type - that is, outright
Atheists - and that both of these leaders were joined by other Atheists in the
fight to rid the world of slavery. But did
they go it alone, or did they receive help
from the religious? On at least one account Iknow for a fact that they did: the
story of John Brown does much to bolster the claim of those who insist that
religion was a key force in the abolition
of slavery. After all, wasn't John Brown
a religious fanatic? And what of his followers at the Harper's Ferry raid?
Weren't they religious fanatics?
The point of this issue is to determine
where the so-called "mainstream" of the
church stood with regard to slavery. It
may be hard to gauge all of this in retrospect, but if it can be determined that
the (pre-war) antebellum religious mainstream was involved in the task of defending, cultivating, and shoring up the
institution of slavery, then it follows that
men like John Brown were nothing but
mere eccentrics, and were outsiders
who stood at the radical fringe of the
Christian Church. If this is true, they
cannot be counted as typical members
of the church in the nineteenth century;
Page 10

1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not
only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those that are
harsh."
1 Timothy 6:1: "All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their
masters worthy of full respect."
Titus 2:9: "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try
to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but
to show that .they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they willmake
the teaching about God our Savior attractive." The word masters here is
"despotes" in Greek, a sovereign master or despot.
Ephesians 6:5-8: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear,
and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not
only to win their favor when their eye is upon you, but like slaves of Christ,
doing the willof God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as ifyou were
serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward
everyone, for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free."
Colossians 3:22: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it,
not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity
of heart and reverence for the Lord."
but if, on the other hand, they were the
rule and not the exception, then perhaps the church has a point in its favor.
Was the slave trade a casus belli to
Christians and Atheists alike? What's
the verdict?
Also, Robert Ingersoll, in Some Mistakes of Moses, says that the New T estament is "even more decidedly in favor
of slavery" than is the Old Testament,
but fails to provide quotes and paragraph numbers. Can you please print
these quotes in black and white, as a
way of showing me how the New Testament gives an imprimatur to slavery?
What a fine piece of enlightenment that
would be! I'd look for these quotes myself, but lack the time and energy I'd
need ifever Ifelt like sifting through such
a massive pile of putrid filth. Thanks!
Kenneth M. Avery
Mississippi
Your query is an excellent one. As we
review the efforts of the abolitionists of
the day we find that often they had no
forum where they could speak except
for halls and meeting places provided
by. many of the scattered freethought
(pre-Atheist) groups of that age.
Research in this area is extremely difficult since all of the religious groups in
the United States tend to get on the
bandwagons once there is a clear indication of which way events will cast the
January 1990

future. Generally the religious groups

have been tailgaters who, when the
wagons stopped, rushed out to the fore
to tell how they won the battle.
Recently we were advised that a
class was being taught at the University of Texas in Austin that placed the entire "blame" for the Civil War squarely
upon the Baptist church and its insistence upon the retaining and bolstering
of the institution of slavery. We are attempting now to obtain the texts and
lecture notes that may be available.
This is an excellent area to research.
Although we do not have the answers
for which you ask at the present moment,
we will be trying to obtain them. As
soon as possible our findings will be reported in future issues of the American
Atheist magazine.
In answer to your query about the
New Testament, we refer you to the
sidebar on this page.
Your letter is an example of recurring
inquiries which elate us and inspire us
to even further work. You have, injust
this one letter, opened up to us an entire
new area to explore. It is an excitement
to read a letter such as this and to
realize that many of you are beginning
also to question every event in every era
of history. Usually your suspicions
about events pan out to be pure gold.
We are most anxious to get going on
this research. Anyone out there who
can help - let us know. ~
American Atheist

News and Comments

American Atheists call for

real tax reform
n November 2, Bill Hobby, the
lieutenant governor of Texas,
proposed that personal and corporate state income tax be levied in
Texas, one of the seven states in the
A Texas official wants
Union which does not encumber its
to impose ail income
citizens with this extra burden.'
This came in a speech made before
tax in order to support
the Texas Association of Taxpayers. All
of the political leaders of the state had
his state's school. But
been confronted with the aftermath of
case of Edgewood vs. Kirby, the apan Atheist leader has a the
peal of which had been decided by the
Texas Supreme Court in October 1989.
better idea: tax church
The court held that the current method
land.
of school financing in Texas was unconstitutional. Since each school drew primarily on the tax base of real estate
which it serviced, poor districts had
poor income which made for poor, substandard schools - inadequate educational facilities and low-paid personnel.
In Texas, in 1989 SAT scores dropped
again and more than one-third of high
school graduates did not pass the basic
skills test required for graduation. The
actual result of this is that as students
come out of the poor schools, they are
unable to meet employer demands and
the employers often need to give extensive education to them. In colleges and
universities, it has been necessary to
provide remedial courses to incoming
freshman students so that they may
pass the freshman academic skills test.
Yet Texas has been very slow to recognize that its educational system
needs a radical overhaul to make it function adequately enough to meet current
The news in this magazine is chosen to
demands. A realization that there was a
demonstrate, month after month, the
need for money to correct the system
dead reactionary hand of religion. It
came only in the aftermath of the court
dictates our habits, sexual conduct,
and family size; it dictates life values
decision, since Texas state politicians
and life-style. Religion is politics and,
had insulated themselves against the
always, the most authoritarian and reidea of improving the state's substandard
actionary politics. We editorialize our
. educational facilities. The Edgewood
news to emphasize this thesis. Unlike
decision simply pointed out the state's

t+J
,

any other magazine or newspaper in

the United States, we are honest
enough to admit it.

"Tbese seven states are Alaska, Florida,

Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington,
and Wyoming.
Austin, Texas

January 1990

responsibility to provide an efficient

system of public schools, and the court
saw a constitutional mandate that the
tax burden must be equal.
Lieutenant Governor Hobby then
commented on the source of the money
for public schools:
Most of the problems of the current funding system are related to
the fact that local property taxes
form the primary basis of school
funding. The state contributes
about 41 percent of total public
school funding, but the majority of
that is spent trying to equalize the
inherent imbalance caused by the
property taxes.
Hobby opined that "I would call the
funding of the public schools a crisis."
He therefore suggested that an income
tax of 4 percent should be used to replace the school property taxes. (Of
course, religious corporations would be
exempt from that income tax.)
In Texas, as elsewhere, school funding has traditionally been obtained
through ad valorem taxes, which is to
say a tax on the land, and the single
biggest private owner of land has been
religion. The institution which, historically, throughout the ages has fought
secular education is, of course, religion.
We see then that the institution which
loathes and which has contested secular
education has been the one which has
demanded that it be able to hold land
without the obligation to pay the taxes
- especially since that tax goes toward
the general secular education of the
children of the nation. This now entrenched situation reflects, again, religion's hatred of enlightenment. Its battles have been many, and long, to see
that its own schools are totally taxexempt, on tax-exempt land, while it
demanded subsidies to operate them.
Texas legislators have gone on record
as being in opposition to any personal or
corporate income tax; most statewide
candidates are committed against it in
Page 11

News and Comments

order to be able to attain election; and

the income tax issue is the most unpopular proposed in the Texas state
political climate.
Exclusion of religious organizations
from real estate taxation, the source of
money for education needs, is at the
root of the problem of subsidization of
the public schools. Instead of the schools
being subsidized by a tax, across the
board, on all privately owned land, it is
religion which is reaping the harvest.
This was made plain in the recent (1983)
case of Regan v. Taxation without Represeniatiotv which. was decided by the
United States Supreme Court, with the
decision written by the reactionary
Chief Justice Rehnquist.
... tax exemption [is] a form of
subsidy that is administered
through the tax system. A tax exemption has much the same effect
as a cash grant to the organization
of the amount of tax it would have
to pay on its income.
Incensed by Hobby's suggestion that
an even greater burden be put on the
average homeowners, Jon Murray,
president of American Atheists, entered
the fray with a press release pointing out
2461U.S. 540,103 S.Ct. 1997,76 L.Ed.2d 129.
JIIII"""""'

Page 12

#"iigh Court Ba~s Review of

E~emptions in Maryland
NEW YORK m8peel&l te TIl. N York Tim
more's militant athei:
WASHINGTON, Oct. -The j
Madalyn
Murray,
: SU1)reme Court declined today 1
__

.,..

..

__

.1

_.1

that religion owns land valued at over

$45 billion in Texas alone, all of which is
tax free. If this land were to be taxed at
the current assessment rate in Austin,
Texas, it would yield$630millionannually
to assist rehabilitating the Texas public
schools system.
Murray challenged Hobby to include
religious-owned land in the ad valorem
tax base rather than to lay an income
tax on both individuals and business in
Texas in order to raise the necessary
funding. He pointed out that there was
no ethical, legal, or equitable reason that
clergy should not pay taxes on their
homes, as do all other home owners. He
continued that hospitals, being moneymaking institutions, are under scrutiny
in many states of the union and are being subjected to tax on their real property
sites, whereas in Texas no such tax is
levied. Hammering away at the impropriety of religious exemptions, Murray
also discussed how many religious organizations and persons are tainted with
January 1990

corruption, this being most recently

demonstrated
in the affairs of Jim
Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Oral
Roberts.
Most states of the union have protective constitutional or statutory laws
which prohibit an advantage to religion.
That of Texas is in its constitution:
Article 8, Sec. 1, Texas Constitution
Taxation shall be equal and
uniform. All real property and
tangible personal property in this
State, whether owned by natural
persons or corporations, other
than municipal, shall be taxed in
proportion to its value, which shall
be ascertained as may be provided
bylaw.
Of course, American Atheists has
been in the argument about the tax situation of churches for over thirty years.
In 1986 when Texas first came into exAmerican Atheist

News and Comments

Opposite: When Madalyn O'Hair first tried to make churches pay their fair share
of taxes, the newspapers were ablaze with reports of what the nation's most militant
Atheist was trying to do.
Opposite page, bottom: At the 1987Convention of American Atheists, Jon Murray
explained why the time was right to attack the tax exemption of the churches again.
Below: During the past few years, Atheists have been so fed up with church tax
exemption that they have even taken to the streets with their protests. .

treme financial difficulties, American

Atheists contacted every state legislator,
the governor, the secretary of state, and
the media suggesting several remedies
for the state deficit:

dated a tax exemption for religious-held

land, is discussed below.
But not one to give up the fight, Jon
Murray and his sister Robin MurrayO'Hair, as real estate holders, next sued
the state of Texas in the case of Murray
1. the discontinuance of tax exemp- u. State of Texas on April 27, 1987.The
tions on the enormous land holdings thrust of the suit was that the churches
of churches and religious organiza- should be "privatized" instead of being
government-supported
institutions.
tions in Texas;
2. a special tax on income from bingo Since Reagan was making much of priand lottery games run primarily by vate enterprise, it was felt that the
the Roman Catholic church in Texas; churches should engage in the same. In3. the discontinuance of tax funding for stead of being subsidized by tax exempreligious institutions of all kinds, but tion and preferential treatment, what if
particularly for religious schools and the churches were simply put on their
hospitals;
own to sink or swim by their own efforts,
4. a special tax on income from negotia- being treated like any other organizable instruments (stock/bond portfolio) tion - such as Sears Roebuck. After all,
holdings of churches and religious religions were selling a product: lifeafter
organizations.
death. Those who wanted the product
should pay for it, instead of the general
These suggestions were deliberately populace being subjected to increased
ignored by the religious-whipped elected taxes for the benefit of the few who were
officials of the state.
involved in religion.
The Murray-O'Hair family has a long
It would do well then to briefly note
record of fighting for the taxation of real what has gone before and see where we
property owned by the state. The first stand now in respect to taxation of
such litigation was in 1%6 while the religious holdings. The primary rule was
family still lived in Maryland. In that laid down in the case of Horace Mann
case, Murray u. Comptroller of Trea- League of United States of America, Inc.
surY,3the court held:
u. Board of Public Works, 1%6.5 This
held that:
In view of the secular justifications for exemption, including secNo tax, in any amount, large or
ular activities of religious organismall, can be levied to support any
zations and tendency of edifices to
religious activities or institutions,
attack persons [sic] and increase
whatever they may be called or
general assessment, and in view of
whatever form they may adopt to
possible constitutional restriction
teach or practice religion.
on taxation, the exemption from
taxation of property held for public
Unfortunately, this was a state case and
worship did not violate the [First]
the Supreme Court did not review it. It,
Amendment.
therefore, is applicable in Maryland only.
A bitterly fought New York case finalLater, American Atheists participated
ly stood, alone and appertaining only to
in the famous 1970Walz u. Tax Commis- New York, but nonetheless there was
sion of City of New York case, as an People u. Life Science Church, 1982.6
amicus curiae. That case," which vali3216 A.2d 897,241 Md. 383.
Austin, Texas

490 S.CL1490, 397 U.S. 664, 25 L.Ed.2d 697.

5242 Md. 645, 220 A.2d 51.
January 1990

This held that:

Taxation of religious organizations is
constitutionally permissible under the
free exercise of religion clause of [the
First] Amendment.
In the same year, religion received a
setback in California, when the case of
Erzinger u. Regents of Uniuersity of California7 held that:
The right to free exercise of religion does not justify refusal to
pay taxes.
These are all generalized statements
which would need to be made applicable
to specific situations, for the Supreme
Court case of Walz u. Tax Commission
of City of New York, 1970, supra, is still
the law of the land. And in that case the
court held that:

6450 N.Y.2d 664, 113 Misc.2d 952.

7187 Cal. Rptr, 164, 137 C.A.3d 389.
Page 13

News and Comments

Jon Murray protests outside of a typical

church he would like to see pay its land
tax. But can Jerry Falwell afford it?

1. real estate tax exemption for the

churches created only a minimal and
remote involvement between church
and state;
2. real estate tax exemption restricts
fiscal relationship between church
and state;
3. real estate tax exemption tends to
complement and reenforce the desired
separation of church and state,
insulating each from the other.
The three reasons are so much bullshit. Sending out tax bills to all land
owners, and collecting those taxes,
have nothing to do with entangling religion and government, but giving an
obvious subsidy to the church by passing
laws which exempt their land from such
taxation does.
Since that time, some lower courts
have been in conflict with the Walz
decision. For example, in Ohio, in 1972,
in Kosydar v. Wolman,8 a court held:

This means, simply, that the

issue is not settled and that
there is a seething unrest which
will finally boil up one day.
Meanwhile American Atheists
tried in 1%6, in 1970, and are
now trying again, beginning in
1987, to bring the issue of tax
favoritism of religion to task.
In early November 1989, the
current Murray-O'Hair tax case
came on to be heard in the
126th District Court of Travis
County, and the state of Texas
pled that state "administrative
remedies" had not been exhausted. The attorney for the MurrayO'Hairs argued that the Travis County
Appraisal Board did not have the legal
power to issue an opinion on the constitutional issue involved. The judge went
with the great state of Texas. Therefore,
this suit is now (1) going up the appellate
ladder on the issue of whether or not
state administrative remedies first needed
to be exhausted; and (2) Jon Murray
and Robin Murray-O'Hair are filing an
administrative appeal in respect to the
tax assessment on their real estate
holdings.
Cases such as these take years of lit-

igation. The court dockets are full, the

judges are hostile to any challenge of
religion's privileges, and there is stonewalling by state officials since they all
rely on religious votes to get into office
and then to remain there. Yet the only
avenue open is for such litigation as
Atheists have not rallied to form a
political force.
Nonetheless, American Atheists is in
a constant and aggressive campaign to
see that religion and its institutions pay
their fair share of the ad valorem tax
burden which supports the American
public school system.
It should be noted here that this is not
an effort to "Tax the Church" as so
many churches claim. The position of
American Atheists is that since tax
follows land, the government - under
the Establishment Clause of the Constitution of the United States - cannot
exempt religious organizations from the
payment of that tax. Religion must be
made to understand that it grabs up
land at its peril, knowing that all land is
taxed, and consequently must pay - as
does any land owner - that ad valorem
tax on its land, which now constitutes 25
percent of all privately owned land in the
nation. - Madalyn OHair ~

Aid provided to religion by tax

exemptions is not constitutionally
permissible if it is foreseeable that
the prime beneficiary willbe organized religion or a particular religion in relation to other social activities and institutions.

8353 F.Supp. 774, affirmed 93 S.Ct. 3062, 413

U.S. 901, 37 L.Ed.2d 1021.
Page 14

January 1990

American Atheist

News and Comments

The presidential pulpit

et me confess that as I was looking
forward to tonight, I got to thinking
and wondering. Thinking about
how Pope John the 23rd said, "Religion
makes mankind specia1." And wondering: What is it about Catholic University
- and these six men of God - which
makes them, in their special way, so extraordinary?
The first reason, Ithink, is belief in the
Almighty. For you accept the eternal
teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
You believe that political values without
moral values cannot sustain a people.
You know that there is no State religion
- nor should ever be - but spiritual
principles were rooted in our Nation's
origins - and always must be.

Good old George

~ insults the Atheists of
<America again. This
time, he puts a
"believers only" sign on
the oval office.

SUMMARY:We reprint the full and

completely unedited text of remarks by
President Bush at the American
Cardinals' Dinner in Washington, D.C.,
on December 12, 1989. In his presentation, he makes a number of promises
to support the political and social
positions of the Roman Catholic
church. He also makes a gratuitous insult to the Atheists of the nation he
leads.

Austin, Texas

Next, service to others. This, too, has

helped the Church uphold Christ's special mission to mankind. Think of the
Catholic charities who illumine "A
Thousand Points of Light." And of individuals - heroes, really - like Helen
Marino Connelly, this year's recipient of
Catholic University's American Cardinals
Encouragement Award. Reflecting - as
Catholics do from Villanova to the
Vatican - the belief that we were placed
on earth to do God's work.
The lesson that God helps those who
help themselves is central to the third
special quality of the Catholic communiJanuary 1990

ty: Its devotion to higher learning. Two

hundred years ago, America's Catholic
Church hierarchy was born. And in
1887,it founded a national Catholic University to teach all branches of science
and literature. Historically, education
has been the great equalizer, buoying
the Catholic experience. Today - more
than ever, as these Cardinals show - it
remains the great uplifter.
Finally, thinking of tonight, I thought
of Catholics' fidelity to freedom. For it is
freedom which brought Catholics in the
18th and 19th centuries to Boston and
Baltimore and Chicago and New Orleans.
And it is freedom which sustains you today in 1989.
Catholics, for instance, believe in that
most basic freedom - the right to life.
You believe, as I do, that we need to pursue public policies that preserve the
sanctity of life.
Catholics also want the freedom
which allows parents, not the government, to choose the best child care for
their children - be it with a grandparent,
a neighbor, or a local church. So we
have sent legislation to Congress to
make good on this pledge: I am determined to protect the right of every parent to send their children to the care
center of their choice and that includes
church-sponsored centers.
Catholics, too, want the freedom
which allows their children to say voluntary school prayer. I share that belief. So
I support a Constitutional Amendment
restoring voluntary prayer. We need the
Faith of our Fathers back in our schools.
Finally, last week, I met with Chairman Gorbachev off the coast of Malta
- where we talked of another freedom:
The freedom to dismantle barriers between nations. And, how principles
based on conscience can move mountains or - as in East Berlin - even
move a wall.
I know that many of you still have
relatives in Prague and Budapest, Warsaw and Berlin. I know that you want
them to have the same freedoms with
which God has blessed America. The
Page 15

News and Comments

future, and the world.

Let me close, then, by returning to
last week's Summit. For I met there with
a man who will help shape the world.
Our meeting revolved around the need
for lasting peace. And as we spoke, I
thought of how God does move in mysterious ways. And of Chairman Gorbachev's meeting the day before with one
of the great men of this, or any, age. His
Holiness Pope John Paul II. Who could
have imagined - even weeks ago that this long-awaited meeting could
occur? Or that we would hear these
words from a Soviet leader? "Not only
... should no one interfere in matters of
the individual's conscience, we also say
that the moral values that religion embodied for centuries can help in the
work of renewal of our country, too."
For although I've been
And then Chairman Gorbachev added:
fact, this [renewal] is already hapPresident for less than "In
pening."
What a wonderful message for this
a year,
Christmas Season - a message of the
I believe - with all my renewal which springs from faith, hope,
generosity, freedom. What a wonderful
heart - that
legacy to leave our children - the
knowledge that God can live without
one cannot be
man, but man cannot live without God.
For my own part, I know that this is
America's President
true. For although I've been President
for less than a year, I believe - with all
without a belief in God, my
heart - that one cannot be America's President without a belief in God,
and in prayer.
and in prayer.
Every day, I am blessed by my wonderful family. They give me strength to
And we will do everything we can to serve the most wonderful country on
bring to justice those who murdered the the face of this earth. And strength, too,
six Jesuit priests. And in Nicaragua, too, comes - as a great President observed
we cannot rest until liberty's victory is - from time on one's knees. For although
won. We want this to be the first hemi- not yet tested as Abraham Lincoln was,
sphere made up entirely of free, demo- I know that faith can make all things
cratic countries. So we have and will possible for a nation, and a people.
Through faith, and family,we can help
oppose exported revolution. And have
and willbe resolute for freedom. Yes,we America serve all mankind. For today,
speak different languages, attend differ- the times are on the side of peace. Beent places of worship, but human dignity cause the world, increasingly, is on the
eclipses Nation. As does "Love thy side of God. For that, I thank this colNeighbor." For the Golden Rule remains lege, and these Cardinals. As our Nation
the most ennobling Rule - for our does. As our children will. ~
right to think and dream and worship as
we please. The right of free expression.
The right to equal protection under the
law.The right to choose our leaders and
our destinies.
Time and again, the Church has reaffirmed such freedoms - in Eastern
Europe, for example, where democracy
is on the march. Or the Philippines,
where a freedom-loving people struggles
valiantly to preserve a hard-won democracy.
In this season of peace on earth, let us
renew our commitment to the principle
of liberty in other parts of the world. In
El Salvador, where we condemn terrorism and murder, whatever the ideology:

Page 16

January 1990

American Atheist

News and Comments

The place of religion

in the schools

Il

The wonders of religion

will be taught in the
schools - if
Williamsburg Charter
advocates and liberal
theists get their way.

SUMMARY:We present here a very

short summary of the seeds planted to
grow an impermissible tangle of state
and church. The roots now sprouted
and growing probably cannot be
stopped in their spread. We are too little and too late even as we know we
must stop the spread.

Austin, Texas

n order for religion to survive in the

world today, it is imperative that it
captures the child - for the child is
the future. The child, vulnerable and defenseless, is an ideal target.
In our culture, the child from age six
to age sixteen is separated out from his
parents every day and is carefully and
thoroughly indoctrinated into the majoritarian culture of the nation in the public
school system. Unfortunately, many
children are also in intense programming
by their parents for the value systems
which those parents have - and into
which they, themselves, have been
acculturated. One factor in the majority
culture is religion.
A dedicated theist can do irreparable
intellectual and psychological damage
to a child before he reaches the age of
one. Even a child so small can recognize
that his parents dress up one day a week
to go to a certain place and that they
consider that place with awe. The small
child understands that in this sacrosanct
place no one may talk and laugh. There
is peculiar music and responsive readings, and his parents act differently
there than anywhere else. He sees his
parents on their knees; he hears them
praying and singing certain sonorous
songs. Already a child so small can see
the emphasis that his parents put on
taking money to the church, talking
about it in his presence, having it ready.
He sees the collection plates being
passed in a solemn ritual within that
place. He sees that the family discommodes itself in order to be in attendance
there. He sees the rosaries in their
hands, the crucifixes on the walls of his
home. He is involved in prayerful blessings before he eats food; in prayers
before he goes to bed; in God-blessyous when he sneezes.
. All of this is absorbed by him before
he has a rational basis on which to accept it. Religion is so inextricably bound
up with parental figures that he is, even
before age one, unable to discriminate
between them. Each religious idea is implanted in the child early and often.
January 1990

As he begins to encounter the culture

of the nation outside of his home, or
even within it through the electronic media and his parents' immersion in it, he
understands that religion is a part of his
life, his parents' lives, his extended family's life, his neighborhood's life, his culture's life.
Religious indoctrinators are astute:
give them the children before they are
six and they have them for life - so ingrained has the dogma become in those
formative years. The hope of religion is
to gain the child early and keep the child
late so that it can instill into the young
mind those patterns of thought that will
preserve the authority and the unquestioned irrationality of religion.
If at all possible, each religion desires
that the child be saturated with it. Often
an ideological environment is created
which surrounds the child - his home,
a religious school, his neighborhood. In
nations such as Iran, this environment
includes the entire country. In other
nations and cities, there are ethnic corners in which certain religious groups
carefully rear their young, retaining their
own language and customs which are
often different than the host city in
which they live. We see this in Florida
with the Cubans, in New York and New
Jersey with the Puerto Ricans; in California and Louisiana with the Vietnamese; in south Texas, southern California,
New Mexico, and Arizona with the Central-and South American Hispanics.
But the United States early in its history opted for government schools
which were, basically, secular in nature.
Horace Mann! concluded the fight to exclude all sectarian religious instruction
from such schools by the mid-nineteenth
century and, basically, they have been
secular since.
It was well after Horace Mann that the
famines in Ireland drove Roman Catholics to the United States by the millions.
And after the Civil War more waves of

-American educator, 17%-1859.

Page 17

News and Comments

Below: Horace Mann

Right: Mulberry Street on New York's east
side, teaming with immigrants in 1904.

Roman Catholics came

from Italy, Germany, and
Poland. So great was the
influx that by 1917, the
first restrictive laws were
passed to curtail entry
into the land. By 1921,
"quota" laws were being
passed.
As more Roman Catholics entered the country,
the secular school system
became a battleground as
to which religion would
permeate it. And that fight,
generally, was between
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism,
with most of it centered around the
reading of the Bible and the recitation of
a prayer each morning in the public
schools. Court cases proliferated, with
the arguments spilling into physical
brawls. Finally the Roman Catholics,
defeated in the battle, decided to put
into place their own parochial school
system. The idea was separated from
any hoped-to-be-obtained objective by
reality: this would cost money the
immigrant Roman Catholics did not
have. So, as the outreach began, there
was a quick movement to see if they
could obtain any state funding for this
adventure. The Protestants fought
back. It was in the period of the last
quarter of the nineteenth century that
the Blaine Amendment laws- were
passed in most of the states of the
Union. These provided that no tax
money would ever be used for sectarian
education and the laws are still in the
constitutions of most of our states.
The next major fight of the Roman
Catholics was to remove their children
from the clutches of the secular public
schools. As Roman Catholic immigrants
poured into the nation, it became obvious
that ifany religion would be represented
in the schools, it would be Protestantism

2Named after James G. Blaine (1830-1893),

American statesman.
Page 18

and the Roman Catholic

church did not desire its
children to be exposed to
this heretical influence.
Two fights continued side
by side: either introduce Roman Catholicism into the public schools, or take Roman Catholic children out of them.
When the public schools were finally
seen as unconquerable
through infiltration, the Roman Catholics slowly
began parochial schools of their own
where and when they could.
Still there were truancy laws which
compelled attendance at the secular
public schools. It became imperative
then to challenge these laws. The religious, particularly the Roman Catholics,
wanted their children released from
compulsory attendance at these secular
schools because they threatened the
hegemony over the children born to
those who were already in the faith.
They desired to provide their own educational environment to surround the
growing child.
This culminated finally in a lawsuit,
Pierce v. Society of Sisters? in 1925, in
which the Supreme Court of the United
States ruled that children could attend
religious schools rather than be included
in compulsory public school attendance.
But given the legal right to have their
own school systems, the religious found
that this was an intolerable burden for
many of their parishioners could not, or
would not, financially support the religious school systems. And a school sys3268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070.
January 1990

tem is expensive. There developed, at

the religious end of the fight for the children, the hopes of religions to have the
government support their indoctrinating institutions, be they schools or
churches, in whole or in part. The Blaine
Amendments stood in their way.
There then developed the majority
secular public school system supported
entirely by taxation and a minority private religious parochial school system
supported by the adherents to particular
religions. Attendance at the former was
free and compulsory; at the latter, voluntary, but often with the payment of
tuition, if not the sustaining of a church.
The religious who did not have their
own school systems looked longingly at
the large pool of children thus assembled
in the public schools, desiring to get
their hands on them - the younger the
better. The religious who did have their
own school systems had a double desire:
moving their influence into the public
schools but also acquiring public funding for the maintenance and expansion
of their own school systems.
Those large groups of children, everywhere throughout the land, assembled
in public schools were an enticement
which religion could not resist. The religious forces went after the children
how they could, desiring to bring them
under the influence of religion, and the
younger the better. No church had ever
been able to do what the state had managed: to congregate all the children in
any given community and to be able to
present ideas to those children in an organized, teaching manner. For entry
into this heaven they would do anything:
American Atheist

News and Comments

Below: "The Public School Question what sectarian appropriation of the
school fund is doing - and what it may
lead to" appeared in Harper's Weekly in
1873.

the assault of religion against the bastion

of the public schools has been a continuing unreported phenomenon in our
nation in its history.
The religious were working both sides
of the street:
A first proposal by religious schools
was that the state subsidize all general
nonsectarian instruction in the church
schools.
The second proposal was that biblical
studies be pursued in the churches, but
that public schools would award credit
towards graduation for these courses of
study.
A third proposal was that the public
schools would "release" children during
the school day so that they could, in a
group, go to religious classes at a nearby
church, and then return to schools later.
The Supreme Court agreed."
A fourth proposal was to have a cleric
actually come into the public schools to
teach religion on the premises. S The
Supreme Court held this to be an unconstitutional exercise.
All of the above activities are still ur. gently pursued, where possible, in diverse school districts across the nation.
These very old plans have been joined
by many more innovative ideas, all often
supported by test cases in the federal
district courts of the nation, many decided at the level of the Supreme Court
of the United States.
The religious schools desired that the
state should purchase and supply textbooks to their children. Inventing a
theory of "child benefit," the Supreme
Court approved the practice."
Religious institutions sought funds for
remedial education in their sectarian
schools."
4Zorach v. Clauson

(1972), 72 S.Ct. 679,343

U.S. 306, % L.Ed. 954.
sMcCollum v. Board of Education (1948) 333
U.S. 203, 68 S.Ct. 461,92 L.Ed. 649.

6Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of

Education, 281 U.S. 370 (1930).
7Aguilar v. Felton (1985), 105 S.Ct. 3232, 87

Religious schools demanded that local governments provide tax-supported

transportation of children to and from
their homes. The Supreme Court of the
United States agreed."
They desired to teach their children in
schools which were not approved, with
teachers who were not certified.
They demanded that there be no
racial mixing at their schools. At college
level the Supreme Court disagreed,
mandating that discrimination, even in
religious schools, was unconstitutional. 9
They demanded that public school
books, if not purchased outright for
them, should be "loaned" to their schools.
The Supreme Court approved.'?
They demanded school lunch provisions and public health facilities for their
schools. The Supreme Court agreed.'!

They demanded that they be reimbursed for testing required by government for all school children. The
Supreme Court said yes to some-? and
no to others.P
They demanded that the government
supply public teachers for their schools
or reimburse the schools for their hire,
or pay salary supplements to such
teachers. The Supreme Court disagreed. 14
They demanded that religious parents receive tuition reimbursements for
money they paid to sectarian religious
schools, in a number of highly inventive
forms. The Supreme Court agreed that
they could deduct tuition from their income tax."
But they also kept their eyes on the
public schools - and all those children

8Everson v. Board of Education (1947), 330

12Wolman v. Walter (1971), 433 U.S. 229, 97

S.Ct. 2593, 53 L.Ed.2d 714.

U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. %2, 91 L.Ed. 711.

9Bob Jones University v. United States

13Levitt v. Committee for Public Education

(1983), 461 U.S.

L.Ed.2d 157.

(1973),413 U.S. 472, 93 S.Ct. 2814, 37 L.Ed.2d

376.
14Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), 91 S.Ct. 2105,
403 U.S. 602, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 and School

574, 103 S.Ct.

2017, 76

L.Ed.2d 267.

lOBoard of Education v. Allen (1%8), 382

U.S. 236, 88 S.Ct. 1923,20 L.Ed. 2d 1060.
llMeek v. Pittinger, Pa. (1975),95 S.Ct. 1753,
421 U.S. 349, 44 L.Ed.2d 217.

Austin, Texas

January

1990

District of The City of Grand Rapids v. Ball,

105 S.Ct. 3216 (1985).
Page 19

News and Comments

they wanted to capture - and their demands grew there.

They demanded the right to distribute
Gideon Bibles in the public schools or
on its property.
They demanded that Transcendental
Meditation be introduced into public
schools.
They demanded reverential, oral
reading of the Bible in the public schools
as well as oral, unison, recitation of the
Lord's Prayer. The Supreme Court disagreed. 16 And when that was prohibited,
they turned to silent prayer, or "meditation," its substitute.'?
They demanded after school prayer
groups, before school prayer groups,
lunch time religious groups, and they
demanded prayers at football games,
basketball games, and other sports activities. They demanded convocations
at graduation.
They posted the Ten Commandments
in every classroom, but the Supreme
Court ordered them removed from the
school walls."
They demanded that teachers who
were religious be given the right to wear
religious garments in the public schools.
Since 1925the schools had been under attack by the "creationists" who
hoped that evolution could be barred as
a subject in the public schools. The Supreme Court held that evolution alone
could be taught in 1%7.19But everywhere
the pressures remained to take the
Genesis tale of creation into the classroom. It was not until twenty-two years
later that the Supreme Court, reviewing
it again, held that creationism could not

ISMueller u, Allen (1983) 463 U.S. 388, 103

S.Ct. 3062, 77 L.Ed.2d 721.
16Murray u, Curlett (1963) 374 U.S. 203, 83
S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed. 844.
17Wallace u. Jaffree (1985), 472 U.S. 38, 105
S.Ct. 2479, 86 L.Ed.2d 29.
18Stone u, Graham (1980), 449 U.S. 39, 101
S.Ct. 192, 66 L.Ed.2d 199.
19Epperson u. Arkansas,
393 U.S. 97, 89
S.Ct. 266, 21 L.Ed.2d 228.
Page 20

be given equal handling with evolution.s?

And finally they demanded "equal
access" for religion in the public schools.
If equal access was undertaken at a college or university level, the Supreme
Court agreed that it should not alone be
granted, but state financed." But the
theists wanted to make this applicable
first in secondary and then in primary
schools. In this cause they had help.
But it is a convoluted story.
The censorship of school books by
fundamentalists' pressures on school
boards and textbook selection committees has been an open and notorious
scandal in the nation for the last ten
years. Particularly, the activities of Norma and Mel Gabler of Longview, Texas,
have brought a focus of attention to
Texas - one of the largest textbook
purchasers in the nation's public school
system.
Just half a dozen years ago, in 1983,
an organization came into being headed
up by Norman Lear: "People for the
American Way" (PAW).It purported to
be anti-Falwellian, but ominously its
board of directors was composed exclusively of major religious figures. Almost
immediately it began to look at the problem of censorship of the textbooks in
public schools. But it quickly developed
that an immediate concern of the group
was whether or not religion was being
"treated fairly" in textbooks - one can
only surmise that the concern came
from its very religious board of directors.
With every part of our established religious order represented on that board,
PAW naturally found in its initial survey
that religion had not been adequately
represented. PAW "discovered" that
textbooks had avoided religious subjects
in literature and historical events in
which religion played a prominent part.
By mid-1987the results of the survey
persuaded the California State Board of

Education to start rewriting history

texts to include more emphasis on the
role that religion had played in shaping
the history of the United States and the
world. But, by this time, PAWwas off on
its romp to thwart the confirmation of
Robert Bork to the Supreme Court of
the United States. That is, it suddenly
had other priorities than the schools of
the nation.
On June 1, 1988, the PAW group put
out an official report to be distributed to
public school boards on just how important it is to teach good things "about"
religion in the public school curriculum.
The teaching "about," it was emphasized, should include "consideration of
the beliefs and practices of religion; the
role of religion in history and contemporary society; and religious themes in
music, art, and literature." Rather explicit instructions were given on how religion could be slipped into elementary
schools disguised as lessons in "family
and community life," and in secondary
schools in courses of social sciences.
Americans United, a Baptist and
Seventh-day Adventist group, picked
up the primary survey funded and concluded by PAW and began a one-year
study of it. Prior to that, however, Americans United gathered as allies every
powerful mainline religious organization
in the nation. Inherent in the instructions now put out was a notice that no
critical inspection of religious values or
history would be permitted. Additionally, a phrase was picked up from a Supreme Court ruling22 that
... the account of creation found
in various scriptures may be discussed in a religious studies class
in any course that considers religious explanations for the origin of
life.
Americans United then announced
that it would attempt to implement the

20Edwards u. Aguilar (1987), 107 S.Ct. 602.

21Widmar u. Vincent (1981), 454 U.S. 263,
102 S.Ct. 269, 70 L.Ed.2d 440.

January 1990

22Edwards u. Aguilar, op. cit.

American Atheist

News and Comments

program in a five-year period with the

aid of every possible religious organization, public school officials, politicians,
and others.
In June 1988, another organization
was being put together, having been
preceded by months of media coverage.
This consisted of a group of powerful,
influential, business, professional, and
religious people who met in Colonial
Williamsburg, Virginia, to reaffirm "our
religious heritage." The object of the
meeting was to sign a "Williamsburg
Charter" which would preserve and
rededicate religious liberties "granted
by the Constitution." This had been put
together by the "Brookings Institution,"
a liberal think-tank in Washington, D.C.
Two million dollars were raised for the
Charter project in 1986,with most of the
money coming from Mutual of America
Life (insurance company). The basic
objective was to work toward bringing
the nation to a consensus on the place
and importance of religion in public
life.23To do this, the fiction was adopted
that there are "Religious Liberty" clauses
in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which
depend on "ultimate beliefs," i.e., god
ideas.
The Williamsburg Charter fitted beautifullytogether with the PAWand Americans United ideas that everyone needed
to be awakened to a respect for religious
ideas - but especially the little kiddies
in the schools. Faith then becomes the
mainstay of any school curriculum and
doublespeak becomes the order of the
day. As an example, the Supreme Court
of the United States has put forth a tripartite test by which to judge if an activity is constitutional or not. One of the
three tests is whether or not the law
(regulation, rule) has a "secular purpose."
Knowing that the average person does
not know this Supreme Court rule, the

23Anexcellent analysis of the Williamsburg

Charter appears in the July 1988 issue of the
American Atheist.
Austin, Texas

What is religion's place

in the schools?
The following position statement by Jon G. Murray appeared in
USA Today on Thursday, November 30, 1989, under the title "Have
Atheists Teach about Religion."
American Atheists, as a watchdog
organization for separation of state
and church issues, has never opposed
teaching about religion in the public
school. We have stood firmly against
the introduction of religious ceremonies into classrooms and any form of
indoctrination into theistic dogmas of
any sort.
The study of origins, development,
sociopolitical and cultural impact, and structure of diverse world religions is a valuable part
of any young person's
education. But we fail
to see how true impartial instruction in comparative religion, religious history
and sociology or the psychopathology
of religion could be achieved in our
public schools. We are now, untrue
to our heritage, a nation saturated in
religion.
American Atheists is of the conviction that only an Atheist could conduct
an objective, non participatory classroom evaluation of religion.
Therein lies the rub with initiatives
for infusion of the study of religion
into public school curriculums. We
fear a whitewash of religion by its reintroduction into the schools.
Students must be made aware in
any "religion courses" that there has
always been dissent both with regard
to religion in general and as to doctri-

January 1990

nal disputes within and between denominations. Entire nation/states,

monarchies, cities, towns, villages,
families and individual lives have
been rent asunder over questions religious - both substantive and trivial.
The divisive nature of religion and its
illogical and irrational bases must be
explored in any rational study of the
subject.
The textbooks now
offered by major publishers contain, substantively, a picture of religion as the savior of
modern civilization: all
was dark, allwas doom,
until good, kind, sweet,
wonderful Christianity bloomed upon
Europe to save the day.
Nothing could be further from the
truth. Christianity came by the sword
and plunged the known world into
five hundred years of Dark Ages followed by those great exhibitions of
religious love and toleration, the Crusades and the Inquisition, which extolled murder, torture and death.
The negative aspects of religion
are what has been dropped from the
texts and curriculum, not the mention
of religion, as some argue.
American Atheists is willing to do
battle to have the true history of religion revealed to students, for out of
that study come more Atheists than
from any other single endeavor.

Page 21

News and Comments

Charter proposed that "secular" should

no longer be "nonreligious" but rather
would mean "general public purpose." If
accepted, then it would be impossible to
fight religion since even prayer could
have a "general public purpose" with
the federal judges now on the benches.
By November 1988,public school administrators were being flooded with literature and counselors were being
sought out to write new textbooks for
the schools. Over 600,000 teachers had
been contacted to be advised that yes,
indeed, the Bible could be used to teach
"objective" courses about religion and
that "elected" courses could be offered
with the Bible as literature or the Bible
as history. The situation was frightening.
But another factor was woven into
the assault against the public schools.
Back in 1977, American Atheists had
attempted to stop the pope from delivering a fullRoman Catholic mass on the
Washington Mall in the capital. 24 The
suit relied on his presence and the religious program being a violation of the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States. The American
Civil Liberties Union and Americans
United both appeared in court against
American Atheists and on behalf of the
United States arguing that the pope had
a right to use the mall for a Roman Catholic mass because his speech was protected activity covered by the Freedom
of Speech clause of the First Amendment.
It was argued that this clause gave the
pope - or any person - the right to
have Equal Access to the Washington
Mall (despite the fact that the cost of
using the mass for a religious activity
cost millions of dollars for the taxpayers
of the nation). The novel idea won.
From that case the theory was extrapolated to universities.
The "Equal Access" option began
popping up all over the nation immediately after that case. Finally, to accommodate the religious the United States

Congress passed into the law "The

Equal Access Act of 1984."Basically, the
law held that student religious groups
must be given the same access as other
extracurricular clubs in public high
school facilities. The schools were
threatened with the loss of federal
funding if they discriminated against religious groups. The Supreme Court had
laid down the "Equal Access" rule in a
university case, stressing that the students there were not so impressionable
that there needed to be a guard against
the commingling of religion and government.> At the time, American Atheists
prognosticated that the rule would be
applied later to secondary schools and
then to primary schools. Congress had
accomplished the former, and meanwhile
across the nation religious groups were
accomplishing the latter. Lawsuits to introduce the Equal Access concept
sprang up in Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. Finally
one of the cases was accepted for review by the Supreme Court on July 3,
1989.A group of six teenagers attempted
to organize a Christian Bible-study club
at Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska. The club was to serve as a vehicle for proselytizing in the name of Jesus
Christ. The school officials refused to
approve the club and suggested that the
students meet in a nearby church. The
lower United States District Court ruled
for the school. The students appealed
and the Eighth United States Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled for the students.
The court spoke directly to the contention that high school students were
more impressionable than college students and should be given more protection from religion apparently sanctioned
by school authorities:
. We reject this notion because
Congress considered the difference in the maturity level of see-

25 Widmar

240'Hair v. Andrus, 613 E2d 931.

Page 22

v. Vinson (1981) 454 U.S. 263, 102

S.Ct. 269, 70 L.Ed.2d 440.
January 1990

ondary students and university

students before passing the Equal
Access Act. We accept Congress'
fact finding.
The handwriting is on the wall. Religion is going to enter the public school
system in a massive invasion through
the use of Equal Access, the Williamsburg
Charter, and meddling of People for the
American Way and Americans United.
Seeing it all spread out USA Today
called Jon Murray, the president of
American Atheists, on November 29
and asked him to send a position statement of American Atheists via FAX for
the editorial page of that newspaper for
the November 30 issue. He was permitted
just four hundred words. When it came
out the paper revealed that in the last
week of November Maryland, New
York, California, Michigan, and North
Carolina finished reviewing a curriculum
by the Williamsburg Charter for the
study of religion in our public schools.
The Macmillan Publishing Company
and Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.
were revising their texts to include more
material on religion. Allof this was going
on because People for the American
Way and Americans United had found
in their survey that schools were not including religion in their studies.
Jon Murray's editorial opinion and
position paper is reproduced here. Astonishingly the changes in his text were
few.
The situation is that this is simply one
voice raised in objection to the complete
takeover of the public school system by
Judeo-Christianity in the United States.
The decade of the 1990s willsee the end
of a secular school system except for
what small, privately owned, secular
schools will be able to continue to exist
or which will be started in that era.
Americans did not realize how precious
their free secular public school system
was - and there is no way to stop the
religious juggernaut now. We pay the
consequences for not guarding our heritage. - Madalyn O'Hair ~
American Atheist

Tom Monaghan/Word of God

connection
Reprinted with permission from
the September 1989 Agenda - Ann
Arbor's Alternative Newsmonthly.

Pizza profits are used

to further the political
and social goals of the
Roman Catholic church
- thanks to the
founder of Domino's.

Ted Sylvester is the co-editor of Agenda. Nan Stoll contributed in the research for this article.

Ted Sylvester
Austin, Texas

Domino's Pizza meets weekly, planning

strategies for mobilizing students here
in Ann Arbor and on campuses across
the country. "Domino's has long relied
on student markets for their pizza profamino's Pizza insists that the current boycott of that company is its," said Engelbert. "It's time they were
for the irresponsible
having no impact on its sales of held accountable
way those profits are spent."
pizza. "We've looked at campus sales
The coalition is demanding, among
nationally," said company spokesperson
other things, that Thomas S. Monaghan,
Ron Hingst in a recent interview, "and
. sale owner of the Domino's Pizza empire,
they are up from last year." However,
an enterprise which boasted $2.3 billion
Hingst admitted that campus markets
in sales in 1988, stop using pizza profits
across the country were registering
to fund the anti-choice movement. In
some boycott activity, and singled out
particular, the group objects to $110,000
Berkeley, Denver, and Manhattan
as
in donations in 1988 made by Monaghan
"hot spots." Hingst said both the pizza
and Domino's Pizza to Michigan Right
stores and the company are receiving
to Life's "Committee to End Tax-Funded
letters and Domino's Pizza coupons
Abortions" (see Agenda, August 1989).
with anti- Domino's messages written on
The seed for the current coalition
them.
boycott was planted in the spring of 1988
The boycott was launched at the Ann
when Monaghan personally cancelled a
Arbor Township-based Domino's Pizza
NOW fundraiser scheduled for May 20
World Headquarters
July 18 by a coaliat Domino's Farms, the complex which
tion of seven groups, including members
serves as corporate
headquarters
for
from NOW (the National Organization
Domino's
Pizza. At the request
of
for Women), the Latin American SoliWashtenawAnn Arbor NOW, on January
darity Committee, and the Ann Arbor
Coalition to Defend Abortion Rights,
13, 1989, the National NOW Board
among others.
passed a resolution urging their 200,000
members to boycott Domino's Pizza.
"I have worked in grassroots organizing for a number of years," said Phillis
"NOW chapters around the country
were also asked to organize events and
Engelbert, a spokesperson for the Coalicampaigns
around the
tion to Boycott Domino's Pizza, "but I letter-writing
have never seen anything like the reo boycott," said Jan BenDor, a spokesperson for SOOmember Washtenawsponse that this boycott is provoking."
Ann Arbor chapter.
"As more people find out about the boyMonagahan, a self-proclaimed devout
cott, and the reasons for it," explained
Roman Catholic who opposes abortion,
Engelbert, "the sales of Domino's Pizza
cancelled
the NOW event when he
will drop in a way that not even the comlearned some of the proceeds from the
pany will be able to deny."
hayride and pizza party were to go to
Engelbert points to a barrage of methe People's Campaign for Choice, a
dia attention - local and national group working to protect the reproducdirected at the boycott as another meative rights of all women.
sure of its success. Engelbert and other
With the help of the ACLU, NOW is
members of the coalition have been
suing Domino's Pizza, claiming it was a
interviewed about a dozen times by
newspapers and radio stations, including
victim of discrimination based on religion, in violation of the Elliot-Larsen
Newsday and Newsweek. The "McNeil!
Civil Rights Act.
Lehrer News Hour" also expressed
Critics of Monaghan also claim that
interest in the story and planned to send
a crew to Ann Arbor in mid-September,
Domino's Pizza discriminates in the hiring and promotion of women. They cite
Meanwhile, the Coalition to Boycott

January 1990

Page 23

a lack of women in the upper echelon of

Domino's corporate structure. Of Domino's Pizza's top ten executives and
seven-member Board of Directors, only
one executive is a woman.
As further evidence of ultra-conservative leanings, and another reason to
boycott Domino's Pizza, according to
the coalition, is Monaghan's support of
the Ann Arbor-based Word of God
charismatic community. Understanding
the Word of God community and its international subsidiary, Sword of the
Spirit (SOS), is important, say boycott
organizers, because the Word of God/
SOS philosophy and world view are
what Monaghan seeks to promote
through profits from Domino's Pizza
sales.

The Word of God connection

The Word of God community, begun
in 1%7, is "arguably one of the oldest,
largest, and most widely known charismatic Christian communities in the
United States," according to Craig T
Smith (Ann Arbor Observer, May and
June, 1987).Word of God's membership
was around 1,600 adults and 1,200 children in 1987,and tithings (10 percent of
members' incomes) totalled nearly $1
million.
The charismatic renewal movement's
roots are in Pentecostalism and the
practice of "baptism in the Holy Spirit."
Begun in 1901in Kansas, Pentecostalism
is a movement specifically devoted to
seeking spiritual gifts, also called "charisms" (hence the term "charismatic renewal"). "Tongues" are one of the spiritualgifts.Others include healing, miracleworking, prophecy, and the discernment of good and evil spirits. Word of
God community members, according
to Smith, view these gifts as "evidence
of God's presence."
The Word of God community is 65
percent Roman Catholic, and its founders - Steve Clark and Ralph Martin are Roman Catholic. Word of God
members belong to one of four fellowships, or congregations: Roman Catholic,
Page 24

Presbyterian, Lutheran, and non-denominational. Word of God members

meet separately in their individual fellowships every week and the whole community meets as a group twice a month.
Former Word of God members describe the community as an almost de
facto, "hybrid" church, according to
writer Russ Bellant (National Catholic
Reporter, 18November 1988),because it
performs such parochial functions as
marriages and baptisms. "The Word of
God group conducts other quasi-sacraments," explains Bellant in the NCR
article,
such as a "Lord's Day Observance," conducted every Saturday
as a kind of eucharist; a "Baptism
in the Holy Spirit," in which the
initiation to charismatic practices
begins; confessions in group or
private settings without clergy;
exorcisms; and anointing of the
sick by the elders.
According to Smith, the Word of God
uses the New Testament as the blueprint for their strict hierarchical structure: "women submit to men, community
members to their leaders, and the top
leaders - Martin and Clark - to each
other and to God." Family life is also
structured accordingly: "The husband
is the breadwinner, the wife is the bread
baker, and the children obey their parents." Word of God's top leadership twenty-five elders or coordinators are all men. The highest ranking job for
a woman is "handmaid," whose job is, as
one handmaid told Smith, "to counsel
other women and obey their coordinaJanuary 1990

tors."
The Word of God community perceives itself as a chosen people - obeying god's law - in the midst of a corrupt
and misguided world. Former member
David Field told Smith that a Word of
God training course portrayed the community as chosen by god to keep true
Christianity from being stamped out, "a
seedbed from which to recapture the
land for the Lord."
Bellant argues that Word of God
members "speak in different tongues
and pursue higher ambitions than charismatics generally." In the last twentyone years, the group has "deviated from
its origins," Bellant writes:
It has created a far-flung network
whose aim is to save the world. To
do this, its members feel, it must
first do battle with the world's enemies and eventually prevail over
them.
To do this on an international scale, in
1983Word of God formed the Sword of
the Spirit (SOS), a federation of fifty
Christian communities that look to Ann
Arbor for leadership and inspiration.
Sword of the Spirit chapters exist locally
in Detroit, Jackson, and Grand Rapids,
and internationally in India, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Honduras, Lebanon, South Africa, and Belfast, Northern
Ireland. Total membership, according to
Bellant, is about twenty thousand.
Sword of Spirit headquarters are in
Ann Arbor, located on Airport Boulevard
on the south side of the city, identified
by the sign: "Servant Ministries." According to Smith, seventy-five Word of
God members are employed full-timeby
Servant Ministries to spread the Word
of God message to five continents.
Bellant's National Catholic Reporter
article, which received a runner-up
award for investigative journalism from
the Catholic Press Association in 1988,
outlines Monaghan's "close working
relationship with the Word of God and
the Sword of the Spirit." Bellant identiAmerican Atheist

fies Central America as a place "where

a number of long-term Monaghan/SOS
projects are in the works."
The most significant of these projects
is Monaghan's sponsorship of Father
Enrique Sylvestre's mission based in EI
Mochito, Honduras.' Bellant identifies
Father Sylvestre as an Sword of the
Spirit-trained coordinator and head of
one of two Sword of the Spirit chapters
in Honduras. Monaghan began sponsoring the priest's missionary work in 1985
and so far has invested "nearly $1 million for equipment, services, and land
for mission projects" (Detroit Free
Press, 4 June 1989).
The story of how Sylvestre and Monaghan met varies widely from source to
source. For example, in a March 15, 1989
Ann Arbor News article, Michael
Kersmarki claims the meeting took
place "in 1984 while the Catholic priest
was studying English at the University of
Michigan." In his 1986 book, "Pizza
Tiger," Monaghan provides a slightly different account, linkingSylvestre directly
with the Word of God/Sword of the
Spirit:
The most fascinating charitable
project I've become involved with
is supporting a Catholic mission in
Honduras. This came about as a
result of meeting Father Enrique
Sylvestre in 1984.He is a Passionist
priest who had come to Ann Arbor
to study English with the Word of
God Servant Ministry, an ecumenical evangelical group.
Monaghan told the Free Press (4 June
1989)that there is no "hidden political
agenda" behind his work with Sylvestre.
"My only objective is to help Father
Enrique . . . I'll support anything he
wants to do."
Sylvestre operates in a mountainous
area about the size of two Michigan
counties. In addition to preaching and
marriage counseling, Sylvestre trains
lay "Delegates of the Word," who help
spread the gospel in the absence of a
Austin, Texas

priest. He is credited by some for turning EI Mochito from a town of brothels

and bars into "a spiritual renewal center" (Detroit Free Press, 4 June 1989).
Father Sylvestre himself credits the
powers of the charismatic movement.
In 1980, Sylvestre attended a charismatic renewal retreat where, he said,
"he had been touched by the power of
the Holy Spirit" (Detroit Free Press,
June 4,1989). "Through this movement,
charismatic renewal," Sylvestre said, "a
lot of people have changed their lives
and started going to church and living
the word of God" (italics added).
More links between Monaghan and
the Word of God/Sword of the Spirit
can be found in Domino's Pizza's Central
American operations. Bellant identifies
Francisco Zuniga as the Central America
coordinator for Domino's Pizza and as
a Word of God member trained in 1988
to be a Sword of the Spirit coordinator.
Zuniga is also the Central America liaison for Legatus, an organization for
wealthy Roman Catholic businessmen
established by Monaghan.
The stated purpose of Legatus is
"supporting moral ethics in business."
Monaghan formed Legatus within hours
of meeting with Pope John Paul II in
Rome in the summer of 1987.Legatus is
"the reason I was put on this earth,"
Monaghan told the National Catholic
Reporter. Legatus is so important that
the office next to Monaghan's at Domino's Farms is occupied by its executive
director, Bob Thorton. Thorton, Bellant
writes, is the former business manager
for Servant Ministries, the outreach
arms of Sword of the Spirit.
"Monaghan's relationship to Word of
God and Sword of the Spirit goes
beyond the Honduran activities," according to Bellant. "Domino's employs
many Word of God members, while
other real estate businesses owned by
Monaghan have Word of God members
as officers."
The corporate chaplain for Domino's
Pizza is the Rev. Patrick Egan, identified
by Bellant as a Word of God member
January 1990

and head of the Word of God's Christ

the King parish. Father Egan told The
Ann Arbor News that he "maintains an
administrative headquarters" near Domino's Farms and holds Mass in different
locations in the area (22 November
1987).Father Egan was recently photographed (The Ann Arbor News, 7 July
1989) saying Mass at Domino's Farms
with special out-of-town guests, Father
Enrique Sylvestre, and Bishop Kenneth
J. Povish of the Lansing diocese. Bishop
Povish is an adviser to the Word of
God's New Covenant magazine, according to Bellant. He is also the Michigan chaplain to Monaghan's Legatus
group.
Monaghan has publicly denied membership in the Word of God and Sword
of the Spirit before. Domino's spokesperson Ron Hingst again denied Monaghan's membership in those groups.
Hingst said Monaghan's activities with
Father Enrique in Honduras are of a
charitable nature. "Father Enrique is
just a Catholic missionary helping poor
people," explained Hingst.
"One of the goals of the Coalition to
Boycott Domino's Pizza," said Engelbert,
"is to dispel the myth that Monaghan is
engaged in charitable activities when in
reality he is only trying to promote his
own right-wing agenda."
"I don't want to give anything if it's
without religion," Monaghan told The
Ann Arbor News (22 November 1987).
Recently, Monaghan told the Free Press
that he is
.
more interested in people's souls
than their wealth or health . . . I
don't want to waste what little
money I have just bringing up
people's standards of living so
they can get in a position where
they can raise hell and sin all the
more. (June 4, 1989)~

~Religintt is
nt~t4-ittfnrnndintt.
Page 25

Abortion rhetoric
and the politics of suffering

Ii

Two arguments
commonly used by prochoicers are very poor
ones.

reserving safe, legal abortion is the

quintessential feminist issue. For
women to be able to control their
reproduction is desirable in itself and a
prerequisite for achieving broader equality between the sexes. Yet much prochoice rhetoric, especially that employed
in the public eye, outside established
pro-choice circles, has curiously non- or
anti-feminist implications that undermine the case for legal abortion even in
the attempt to support it.
As a strong believer in abortion rights,
I feel funny saying these things. Reproductive freedom and its advocates are
already so bludgeoned by anti-abortionists that questioning anything about the
pro-choice movement feels redundant
or even disloyal. But after observing and
being a part of the abortion debate for
the past thirteen years, I am convinced
that the pro-choice movement is cutting
its own throat by an inconsistent approach to defending its position - an
approach rooted in indirect, rather
primitive impulses that need to be understood and redirected.

Hardship and conscience

Diana Blackwell is a freelance writer.

She holds a master's degree in philosophy and has worked as an abortion
rights activist for fifteen years.

Diana Blackwell
Page 26

Though there are many good arguments for legal abortion, pro-choice
rhetoric shows a distinct preference for
two particularly lame ones. The first
might be called "the argument from
hardship," and it attempts to justify
abortion by maintaining that abortion is
necessary to reduce the enormous suffering in women's lives. This argument
relies heavily on case histories of poverty, illness, emotional or interpersonal
problems, and black market abortion
butchery. Its chief strength is its compassionate tone, for women faced with
unwanted pregnancy deserve compassion. Also, compassionate attention to
women tends to undercut the major
anti-choice tactic of drumming up pity
for the fetus.
The other favorite defense of abortion might be called "the argument from
conscience." This argument says that
abortion is morally acceptable because
January 1990

it is a difficult choice which women

make only after much conflict and soulsearching. In some formulations this
argument is merely a variant on the argument from hardship; in its primary
formulation, however, the argument
from conscience is meant to remind
people that women are responsible
moral agents, and to counter the myth,
promulgated by anti-abortionists, that
women choose abortion "lightly" or
without understanding what they are
doing.
Both the argument from hardship and
the argument from conscience seem
reasonably clear and compelling at first
glance. Yet there is something disquieting in their morbid concentration on
suffering and conflict which becomes
more disquieting the more one thinks
about it. The problem is not merely that
these arguments are technically fallacious (the one an appeal to pity, the
other a non sequitur), for the abortion
debate is in practice a propaganda war
in which resorting to fallacies is more or
less inevitable and, regrettably, sometimes even useful. The problem is worse
than that: these arguments are selfdefeating even as propaganda.
Consider the argument from hardship. To be effective, it requires that extremely personal details of the woman's
situation be exposed to public scrutiny
- things like her health, income, religious beliefs, sexual habits, emotional
state, future plans, etc. Not only is this
inherently humiliating, but it presupposes the very anti-choice notion that
the woman must justify her decision to
society. It puts her in the horrible position of having to appear desperate on
pain of looking frivolous.
Even ifshe does look suitably desperate, the argument's practical slant suggests that increasing her access to
"abortion alternatives" can reduce not
only her need for an abortion but also
her right to one. This plays directly into
the hands of anti-abortion front groups
like Birthright. It also does a disservice
to those women for whom the argument
American Atheist

But after observing and being a part of the abortion debate

for the past thirteen years,
I am convinced that the pro-choice movement
is cutting its own throat . . .
from hardship is merely the most easily
produced argument for a decision they
would embrace anyway. And it feeds the
myth that the pro-choice position is
based on crass expediency rather than
principle. (This is especially bad because
the anti-choice position is commonly
portrayed as founded on moral considerations.) All in all, the argument from
hardship, though meant to encourage
sympathetic identification with the
woman who has an abortion, actually invites second-guessing and disapproval.
Similar problems arise with the argument from conscience. Far from convincing skeptics that women who have
abortions are decent human beings, it in
practice escalates "pro-life" moralism
and nastiness. This is not surprising
when one considers that emphasizing
the difficulty of the decision seems to
concede the very thing that anti-abortionists want. It makes no difference
that most ambivalence about abortion
arises from the woman's uncertainty
about what she wants for herself; such
ambivalence is easily misrepresented as
stemming from pity for the fetus. And
stressing this ambivalence undermines
the argument's own claims for the
woman's responsibility by making her
look intellectually confused and morally
doubtful about her decision. "If you
don't like abortion, if you had such a
hard time choosing it, then why do you
support it?" Cruel or stupid as it may be,
this question inevitably arises when the
act of choosing abortion is portrayed as
an ordeal.
This is exactly what happened during
the televised Senate hearings on clinic
bombing in 1985. Representative Patricia Schroeder (D-Colorado) was embroiled in a brave but vain attempt to
convince "pro-life" terrorist Joseph
Scheidler of the need to protect clinics.
Desperate to penetrate his thick hide,
she described the problems that had led
her to have an abortion, and insisted
that the decision had been very difficult.
Scheidler's reply - a cool "Then you
should be pro-life" - was as inevitable
Austin, Texas

(~

as a forced move in chess. Exploding

with frustration, Schroeder retorted
that she is pro-lifeand resents Scheidler's
belief that women choose abortion
"lightly."
If this heavily reported exchange
helped the cause for choice at all, it was
only because Scheidler came off like
such an ass, not because Schroeder had
any real answer for him. On the contrary,
her final denial that women choose
abortion lightly merely reiterated the argument from conscience, which is what
had triggered Scheidler's snotty reflex in
the first place. The scene was painful to
watch because we should have won but
did not. Even an able spokeswoman and
a highly favorable context could not offset the weakness of the preferred prochoice rhetoric. Once again, a potential
victory was derailed.
Why does this kind of thing go on?
How have these two arguments become
so popular and why does their use persist when a moment's reflection shows
them to suffer from grave internal problems? I think the answer to these questions lies not within the abortion debate
itself but within the deeper layer of
power relationships underlying the
abortion issue.
January 1990

Pregnancy and power

"How does one man assert power
over another? . _ . By making him
suffer," These grim words from Nineteen Eighty-Four express the essential,
though often hidden, relationship between superior and subordinate in any
human context, and in the process explain much seemingly avoidable misery.
It is never enough, Orwell reveals, for
subordinate people merely to do what
the power class wants them to, because
their obedience could be voluntary.
Only when accompanied by pain and
humiliation does obedience serve its
real purpose of manifesting the superior
person's power.
When this principle is applied to the
sociosexual sphere, the consequences
are obvious. Women are the subordinate
sex; women must be made to suffer.
This end is accomplished in many ways,
from rape and battery to the feminization of poverty. But it is perhaps most
effectively achieved through the enforcement of compulsory childbearing,
which has great advantages over those
cruder methods, in that it is intimate and
lingering and has an appearance of biological inevitability and religious justification that make it easy to rationalize.
The idea that antiabortionism is rooted
in such ugly motives - power hunger
and the concomitant willto make others
suffer - may at first seem so cynical as
to be implausible. But as much as an
abstract "spiritual" thesis of this sort
can be, it is borne out by the facts. Personal misogyny, adherence to patriarchal religion, and moral opposition to
abortion may seem unrelated, but in
fact they are direct and mutually reinforcing expressions of androcentrism,
the unstated dogma of our society's
power class. Acceptance of any part of
the package in practice means acceptance of the whole.
This is no less true for females than
for males, a fact which helps to explain
the troubling irony of antiabortionism in
women. When women do get suckered
into the androcentric value scheme,
Page 27

It is hard to make credible political threats and demands

from a posture of whining helplessness.
If we hope to preserve our rights,
the least we can do is talk about them as if they are rights.
they find themselves confined to a tra- terms of such deep-seated, primordial
ditional role that is stultifyingly subordi- drives do the passions aroused by the
nate, even by female standards. But abortion debate make any sense.
although these women cannot, ex
Appeasement vs. self-assertion
hypothesi, reject the values that oppress
Based on this analysis, it might seem
them, they can still achieve a relative
elevation of their own status by curtailing that pro-choice rhetoric is doing exactly
the autonomy of other, less subordi- what it should be - that a strategy of
"appeasement" as outlined above is the
nate, women.
This dialectic is especially clear in best approach to protecting reproducstatements by members of Women Ex- tive freedom. I do not think it is, for
ploited by Abortion (WEBA). Ifeven half several reasons.
First, even assuming that legal aborof their confessions are true, WEBA
members are so appallingly passive, ig- tion is or entails a form of suffering, it
norant, guilt-ridden, and oppressed that does not follow that the power class will
their ladylike exteriors must conceal accept abortion in place of compulsory
ferocious frustration and rage. Obvious- childbearing. Elective abortion is by defly such fury will find an outlet; equally inition a voluntary act, and that necesobviously, it will be turned not against sarily reduces its value as an expression
the seemingly invincible power class but of subordinacy.
Second, the appeasement strategy
against the less formidable target offered
has not mollified the opposition. On the
by fellow subordinates, i.e., women,
contrary, during thirteen years of apespecially pregnant women.
Viewed in this context, legal abortion peasement the anti-abortion movement
has steadily gained numbers and infludoes not just give women autonomy it cheats the power class of its pound of ence.
Last, and most important, the apflesh. It therefore becomes necessary
for pro-choice women to preserve, even peasement strategy underestimates the
in freedom, an appearance of suffering, real social power women have achieved.
or subordinacy. Otherwise the power Subordinacy is a relative thing, and
class may retaliate and smash that free- while women are still the subordinate
dom. The curiously self-flagellatingtone sex, this subordinacy is less extreme
of so much pro-choice rhetoric is thus and less accepted than it was even a dean instinctive gesture of appeasement.
cade ago. Correspondingly, legal aborThe two arguments considered earlier tion has broader support than ever. In
in effect offer compensatory forms of view of these facts, a strategy of apsuffering: the argument from hardship peasement is not only inappropriate but
by implying that women's lives are positively damaging. To have power and
already in a mess; the argument from not use it is as bad as not having it at all.
What is needed is for advocates of
conscience by implying that the very
choice to adopt an unapologetic stance
exercise of freedom in itself causes
anguish. In both cases, the underlying vis-a-vis abortion - one which openly
message is: "Our continued suffering acknowledges and celebrates that power.
proves that we are still subordinate to Ultimately the pro-choice side's best
you, so the little freedom we have is no argument is the very one it has been
most squeamish about - namely, that
threat to your dominance."
abortion is a woman's right. When this
Ifall of this seems vague and murky unscientific, if you like - it is because I argument does appear, it is usually
think these feelings and impulses are stated euphemistically ("Abortion is a
vague and murky. They are more like personal decision," or "A woman should
atavistic reversions than like quantifi- be able to decide what happens to her
able demographic trends. But only in own body"), probably because baldly
Page 28

January 1990

asserting the right per se might sound

feminist and scare people off. Euphemistic formulations, however, cloud the
issue by dragging in rights of privacy and
medical consent. Bald assertion at least
conveys the essential idea: that a woman's
right to self-determination and physical
autonomy is logically prior to all these
other rights, and must be secured in
order for other, more specific rights to
have any meaning.
In calling this argument the best, I do
not mean that it is the most persuasive.
(It is not.) I mean that it is both absolute
and fundamental- the pro-choice analogue of the anti-choice formula "Abortion is murder." And like "Abortion is
murder," "Abortion is a woman's right"
tends to quash debate. It is, at the deepest level, unanswerable.
Why advocate a rhetoric that is nonpersuasive and "unanswerable" - one
that "quashes debate"? Because right
now the pro-choice movement does not
need more adherents as much as it
needs more passion. We already enjoy
superiority in the polls, and even most
politicians privately believe in choice,
but these facts do not help us because
nobody takes us seriously. Conversely,
"pro-lifers" are seen for what they are by
most citizens and lawmakers, but tend
to get their way in spite of this, through
bullying and blackmail. (Anyone who
doubts this should consider how Representatives Hyde and Smith have undermined congressional support for popular, non-abortion-related legislation like
Title X and international family planning
aid by threats of a "pro-life" backlash.)
Clearly, an appearance of conviction
and confidence is crucial to getting the
kind of support that counts.
It is hard to make credible political
threats and demands from a posture of
whining helplessness. If we hope to preserve our rights, the least we can do is
talk about them as ifthey are rights. The
least we can do is adopt a more positive
rhetoric. ~

American Atheist

Talking Back

Wither and why

This month's question:

What happens to your
soul when you die?

Bert Schorlemmer, retired sign painter from Texas, replies:

The soul, being a figment of the
imagination, dies when the brain dies.
"And the worms crawl in, and the
worms crawl out."
Norm R. Allen, Jr., a Black historian
from Maryland, replies:
Nothing. I don't have one.
Gipson Arnold, assistant director of
the Houston Chapter of American
Atheists, replies:
The same thing that willhappen to my
pet penguin.

So you're having a hard time dealing

with the religious zanies who bug you
with what you feel are stupid
questions? Talk back. Send the question you hate most and American
Atheists will provide scholarly, tart, humorous, short, belligerent, or funpoking answers. Get into the verbal
fray; it's time to "talk back" to religion.

Austin, Texas

Madalyn O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, replies:

The question presumes the existence
of a soul.
Actually all anyone has is a physical
body and in the grey matter of the brain
is a memory bank, chemical and neuron
tracking patterns in which is housed our
data base which makes each of us a
unique individual personality.
It is just about the same as a computer
disk when it crashes, that is - when the
brain is deprived of the nutrients to keep
it operating, it ceases to function, and
being organic immediately begins to
decompose.
What boggles the mind with a question
such as this, is the underlying presumption that religious loons honestly think
that they are going to hear, see, talk,
smell, taste - and even think in a hereafter when there are no physical organs
extant to accomplish any of that. If
Christians can live in a "hereafter" without a body, why did their good lord give
them a body with which to function on
earth? Why not simply have equipped
them only with a soul?

Primitive religions, in fact, had nothing

to say about life after death.
But the Maccabees, in a constant military struggle with the Romans, invented
the soul. As countless young men died,
the priests had to justify their slaughter
and keep the people war-ready To do
so, the Sanhedrin, the governing body
of Israel, adopted the theory of a "soul,"
first suggested in contemporary India.
Indian warlords found the promise to
young men that if they died "on the field
of battle" they'd live forever in a garden
of "earthly (sexual) delights" committed
them to war.
Christians adapted the concept of the
"soul" so it was committed to constant
adoration of god. No sex.
Merging the Christian with tribal theories and Indian revelations, Mohammed
created an erotic park of delights for
those who died for Allah. In the Islamic
paradiso, dead Moslem warriors would
recline on couches and be fed dates by
dark-eyed maidens.
When Islam threatened to conquer
Europe, Christians added the same
promise: those who died in battle would
spring into heaven. Priests used the soul
as the vehicle to control the masses.
. The soul is one more link in the
churches' chain of fear.

Arthur Frederick Ide, author of

Robertson: The Pulpit and the Power,
replies:
The "soul" is a recent theological concept. Neither the ancient Greeks nor
early Jews recognized its existence.
January 1990

Page 29

Historical Notes

110 years ago

D. M. Bennett, the founder and editor
of The Truth Seeker magazine, featured
an editorial blasting away at the tax exemptions given to the churches. In the
January 24,1880, issueIvol. 7, no. 4) he
was furious enough to ask all of the citizens of the state of New York to petition
the legislative body of that state for "the
taxation of ecclesiastical property in this
state."
Indeed, he went so far as to print on
the last page of the magazine such a proposed petition. It is reproduced here for
your perusal.

100 years ago

The Freethinker magazine, which so

valiantly supported the National Secular

Society in England, in its January 19,
1890, issue (vol. 10, no. 3) reported a
"Threatened Attack on Freethought in
Liverpool [England]."
It seems that an act of Parliament had
then recently been passed, concerning
"the borough of Liverpool," to control
places used for music, singing, and
dancing, ostensibly to control the interests of public order. One such place was
the Gaiety Theatre and Dance Hall.
But the Liverpool Branch of the National Secular Society rented quarters
in the basement of the theatre and hall.
When the hall made application for a
permit to do business from the city
fathers, the local press reported the fol-

lowing development at the hearing:

Mr. Matheson asked ifliterature
of a very objectionable character
was not distributed there?
Mr. Guilliam:Not from our place.
It is from a place underneath the
hall. The people are not our tenants.
A magistrate: What society
uses the place?
Mr. Guilliam: It is an Atheistical
society. The place was formerly a
temperance hall, and I have spoken
in it many a time. It has fallen
perhaps upon evil days. The literature Mr. Matheson has spoken
about is circulated there, and we

To the Legislature of the State of New York:

'Ve, the undersigned citizens of the state of New York, petition your Honorable Body to repeal the present
Jaws of the state which exempt church property and ministers of the. gospel from taxation;
ana we thus pr-tit ion your
Honorable Body for the following reasons :
1. Because by ex:empting church property and ministers' effects from taxation the state is a~sistillg to support
sectarian religion, which is unconstitut.ioual,
and foreign to the purposes for which OUIgovernment
was formed;
and
(2) it is extending charity to the clergy, a class better paid than any of the mechanics who are taxed, and Letter than
members of many other professions, thus constituting
them a privileged class.
2. It is a principle of justice that whoever enjoys the protection of a govern mont should assist in its support.
ChurelWi and ministers demand and receive protection from our government;
and should riots occur by which such
propert.y should be destroyed, the state would be compelled to make good the same, although the property had never
contributed to the revenues of the state.

Tly continued exemption of church property from taxation, ecclesiastical

corporutions
are enabled to amasa
immense wealth, the exemption of which lays much heavier burdens upon secular property.
One corporation in New
York city owns $15,000,000 worth of property, $9,000,000 of which pay" nothing for the support of government,
In
the state of New York tbere are $110,000,000 worth of property exempt from taxation.
4. It is a matter of history, with which every member of your Honorable
Body is no doubt acquainted, that
whenever, by a long term of freedom from taxation, the state has aided the church, it has aL last been compelled, in
self-defense, to confiscate the wealth gathered by the church-which,
by its power and influence, owing to such aid,
was becoming dangerous to the peace and welfare of the state.
The examples of Mexico and Italy are respectfully
submitted.
In the neighboring
city of Montreal the church owns nearly two-thirds of the real estate, which forces
one-third to })ay taxes sufficient to protect the whole.
The value of church property
in the United States is
$500,000,000, and should its increase in the future be in proportion to its increase in the past, ill the yeal' 1900 it will
reach the sum of $3,000,000,000, a third more than our national debt.
Foresight now, Oil thc part of your Honorable
Body, may avert future disaster from our state.
And for many other just reasons which will readily suggest themselves to your Honorable Body.
And your petitioners will ever pray, cto., etc.
3.

Page 30

January 1990

American Atheist

The caption which accompanied this

photograph in the January 1920 Birth
Control Review noted that this threeyear-old sometimes picked twenty
pounds of cotton a day.

would stop it if we could because

it is injurious to our place.
The Freethinker explained that the
place was known as Camden Hall, that
it was not internally connected with the
theatre having, indeed, even its own entrance, and that meetings were held
there on weekends at a time that the
theatre was not open. Formerly, the
National Secular Society had rented the
theatre for the speeches of Charles
Bradlaugh, its founder, and for Annie
Besant, but not recently.
The Sunday following the hearing
above, a sergeant and two constables
entered the hall during the Secular
Society meeting, and others were seen
in the neighborhood. Not knowing what
to do, the participants continued the
meetings as usual - and the police did
not interfere.

70 years ago
That good Atheist who started the
twentieth-century birth control movement in the United States, Margaret
Sanger, in January 1920was busily engaged in a fight against child labor. Her
thesis was that the lack of birth control
methods resulted in the production of
too many children who were then used
for cheap labor in mines, factories, and
fields. Writing in her Birth Control Review (vol. 4, no. 1), she included some
pitiful photographs of a three-year-old
and a six-year-old working stoop labor
jobs in fields. Her appeal attempted to
rid the United States of two evils: (1)
censorship of birth control information
and (2) labor abuse of children. She
wrote:
The folly of bringing children
into a world that offers them only
killing toil in the days when they
should be playing, learning, and
growing stronger for the normal
duties of life,is brought home with
irresistible power when one considers the physical and mental
effects of child labor upon the first
Austin, Texas

victim - the child itself.

She called upon the churches of the
day, we might add in vain, to stop the
abuse of children for profit by manufacturers, canneries, miners, and agriculture. The National Child Labor Committee designated January 25 as "Child
Labor Day" and she reminded it strongly
of its obligation to wipe out child labor.

30 years ago
In Madras, India, charged with having
offended the feelingsof Roman Catholics,
the editor and the printer of an Atheistic
publication were given prison terms of
six months and six weeks, respectively.
P. Ramaswami and P. S. Llango of a
Tamil language weekly called Nathigan
(Atheist) were sentenced to prison after
they failed to pay fines of $100 and $25
each imposed by a city magistrate.
The offensive matter in question included a cartoon caricaturing the institution of sacramental confession of the
Roman Catholic church.
The item was reported in the March
1960 issue of the Age of Reason magazine, (vol.24, no. 3). The source indicated
was The New York Times of January 12,
1960.
25 years ago
On January 7, 1965,radio station KIKI
granted Madalyn [then Murray] O'Hair
three free hours of radio time for a "call
in" program on Atheism. It was the first
such breakthrough in the history of
Atheism in the world.
The program lasted from 2:00 to 5:00
P.M. That was in the good old days when
the lines could be so overloaded that
January 1990

they would break down. The station had

to devote more and more of its incoming lines to the program until the overload put the system out of order. There
was such general astonishment that the
owner of the station appeared and offered to give time for Atheism on a regular basis.
What was this all about?
Madalyn O'Hair had sued sixteen
radio stations in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii
for refusal to sell or give air time to Atheism. She had also filed an administrative
complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against the stations.
On December 28, the FCC then gave all
sixteen stations fifteen days to state to
the commission exactly why they had
failed or refused to give or sell the same
amount of radio time to Atheism as they
had sold or given to religion. This occasioned a meeting of the radio station
owners. Fortunately, two stations opted
for a breakaway from those which
wanted to hold out against the FCC
order. KIKI granted the three-hour interview on January 9 and KAHU contacted Mrs. O'Hair to state that it would
sell time to her at the same rate at which
it sold time to religion, i.e., $25.00/hour.
The audacity of Madalyn O'Hair's demanding the time and the unprecedented
gift of three hours by KIKI captivated
the island for the news of the day. The
program succeeded not alone in drawing telephone calls, exciting radio station owners, and throwing media into a
tizzy - but even more important it
proved that Atheism had something to
say, that it had a spokesman to say it,
and that it had not alone the right but
the intent to utilize the radio airways.
In her usual enthusiasm, Mrs. O'Hair
offered to send a copy of the FCC determination to any member who would
use it in their city to obtain air time and
then appear personally to fulfillthe obligation. At that time, there were no
takers - but it appears now since there
are so many chapters of American Atheists that this approach should be started
all over again. ~
Page 31

Report from India

Naked philosophers
he Greeks called them gymnosophists - naked philosophers.
They astonished Alexander when
he crossed the Indus in 326 B.C. and
found them practising austerities outside
the city of Taxila. The invaders were impressed by the subtlety of their answers
on profound questions of philosophy.
They also noted their arrogance and
sense of superiority - an attitude still
found in them, derived from the superstitious belief that their asceticism and
mortification give them immense magical
and occult power.
Accounts of Alexander's Indian campaign survived only in later texts. Among
the enduring legends were those created
by the Alexandrian writer PseudoCallisthenes. Others who wrote about
the gymnosophists were Strabo, Pliny,
and Plutarch. This was the origin in the
West of the myth that an immense store
of esoteric wisdom was present in India.
And the chief exponent of this esoteric
lore is the cartoonist's stereotype of the
Hindu fakir clad in only a clout, sitting
on his bed of nails.
Then, as now, the Greeks were startled
by the appearance of these naked men
- though nudity was part of their own
culture, and personal dirtiness they had
seen among the Cynics. What amazed
the Greeks was the air of superiority
that sat oddly on the gymnosophists'
bizarre appearance, their matted hair,
their strangely painted faces, and the
generous coating of ash all over their
bodies.
It seems Alexander wanted to take
some of them back to Macedonia and
he sent the Cynic Onesicritus to persuade
them. One old man, Kalyana (Kalanos),
agreed. But he went only as far as Susa.
There, declaring himself tired of the
world, he committed ritual suicide by
entering fire, watched by the Macedonian
army.
Ritual suicide was part of the vow of
asceticism. It rested on the surmise that
he who loses his lifeshall save it. Or the
mercenary belief that if one gives up all,
one gains all. Suicide by fire by the gym-

Strange "ascetics" who

roam the countryside
take whatever they
need or want - if it is
not handed over to
them by a gullible or
intimidated public.

In 1978,your editors, assisted by

Joseph Edamaruku, editor of an Indian
Atheist publication, combed India
seeking writers who would consistently
offer an interpretation of Indian religious events. Margaret Bhatty, in
Nagpur, a well-known feminist journalist, agreed that she would do so in the
future. She joined the staff of the
American Atheist in January 1983.

Margaret Bhatty
Page 32

January 1990

no sophists is referred to in 1 Cor. 13:3,

where such a sacrifice is described as
meaningless unless inspired by "love."
We now know the gymnosophists as
fakirs, sadhus, babas, swamis, sanyasins,
yogis, and god-men. They range from
affluent frauds and conventional orangerobed monks of established orders like
the Ramakrishna Mission and other dogooders committed to social service, to
the unkempt, naked or barely clad vagrant religious mendicants whose detachment from the world is strongly reinforced by the habitual use of cannabis.
The wandering sadhus are the nonconformists of Hinduism whose pious duty
is the promotion of active belief in the
remotest of villages. They should not,
however, be confused with the priesthood, which belongs only to the Brahmin
caste.
The effect of these practitioners of
asceticism on the common mind is of
awe and fear. Even educated Indians,
Hindu and non-Hindu, believe that
ascetics can defy gravity, levitate, travel
astrally, suspend their breathing and
heartbeats, walk on water, be in two or
more places at the same time, make
themselves invisible, materialise gold,
jewels, and sacred ash, etc. Credulous
villagers fear their curses if thwarted or
angered. Food and alms are readily
given to the vagrant sadhu. Otherwise
he is within his right to turn nasty.

Whence asceticism?
Some historians think that asceticism
was not originally part of Aryan belief
with its positive full-blooded delight in
the good life. Negation and pessimism
as found in Hinduism today was probably absorbed from autochthonous cults
of the subcontinent. A man's life was
divided into stages or ashramas, from
childhood, to celibate student days, to a
householder, and finally to that of asceticism. Having fulfilled all his pious duties, a man left the management of his
property and family to his sons, and
went into a forest hermitage to prepare
himself for death. This was distinct from
American Atheist

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886),

left, thought that the final stage of "god
consciousness" could be reached through
Judaism, Christianity, or Moslemism.
His disciple Swami Vivekananda (18621902),below left, was an agnostic before
he came under Ramakrishna's spell.

the professional asceticism of sadhus

who were initiated early and observed
strict celibacy.
The first forms of organised monasticism came into existence with Buddhism
and Jainism, two protestant movements
against the sacerdotal dominance of the
Brahmin caste in the eighth century s.c.
Jain asceticism is harsher than its Buddhist counterpart, and rules framed
twenty-five hundred years ago still prevail. A Jain muni may be a nude digambara (sky-clad) or a svetambara (whiteclad) wearing a piece of coarse cotton
cloth. Their hairs are plucked out one
by one, four times a year, and except for
four monsoon months, they must not
stop anywhere for long in case they develop an attachment. The ideal death is
ritual suicide by starvation.
Ascetics of Buddhist orders live as
monks and nuns in monasteries under
unidentifiable hierarchy, similar to Christian monastic orders. They are not
obliged to subject themselves to such
severe self-torture as in some Hindu
orders.
The first effort to organise Hindu ascetics into orders was made by the
mystic Adi Shankaracharya (A.D. 788820). He devised ten sects whose duty it
was to impart their immense wisdom to
the populace by maintaining contact
with the world, rather than cut themselves off completely. Today there are
affluent maths or monasteries under a
head called a mahant exercising considerable political influence in his area. As
owners of property and lands, they have
been described by one writer as "the
religious wing of secular landlordism."
Vagrant ascetics, "the predatory expression of Hindu religious life," care
nothing for possessions. Sects are recognisable by the implements they carry
- trident, deer skin, iron tongs, necklaces and earrings of human knuckle
bones, and such-like. Some travel with
a python or a cobra coiled about their
necks. They are devotees of Vishnu,
Shiva, and Shakta - the female principle
of energy as represented by the goddess
Austin, Texas

Durga and Kali. One gruesome sect the now rare Aghouri - practised cannibalism and ate their own excreta to
prove their complete detachment from
the world.

Who opts for this life?

A sadhu must sever all family ties. A
researcher, unable to break through this
taboo, had himself initiated into a sect to
find out what kind of people turned to
asceticism. He found 10 percent were
college graduates and undergraduates
unable to find jobs. Others had opted
out of intolerable domestic situations or
penury. A spiritual life was only a minor
reason for their asceticism. They were
content to live on charity, smoke pot,
January 1990

and indulge in liquor, which is also

permitted.
A fourth-century Hindu text lists
sadhu sects on the basis of their lifestyle, food, and rituals. The spiritually
highest was the Paramahamsa who are
so god-intoxicated that they are regarded
as mad. The best known in this century
is Swami Yogananda and Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, after whom his disciple,
Swami Vivekananda named his mission.
It is doubtful if all the ragtag and
hangers-on who pass as sadhus are
really interested in the cultivation of the
intellect. They live strange lives and
cover prodigious distances in their
search for Truth with a captial T. One
sadhu, patronised by Warren Hastings
(1732-1818),went through Afghanistan
and the Caucasus to Moscow, and overland from there to Peking, to return to
Benares through Tibet.
As children we often saw sadhus on
their way to the sacred Mt. Kailash and
Lake Manasarovar along the ancient pilgrim route through the Kumaon Himalayas. It was believed that many ascetics
lived on Mt. Kailash and were centuries
old, having mastered the power of
breath control to keep themselves alive.
Out on camping trips, we often came
across ascetics on remote ridges, or in
villageshrines. They were regarded with
great fear and obviously did not lack for
food or water. Long periods of meditation, breath control, and semen retention helped them acquire occult power.
Even the gods feared those who gained
power by semen retention.
By the early part of the British era,
Alexander's gymnosophists
had so
grown in number that they moved about
like small armies. While travelling to festivals to fulfill their duty of providing
religious solace to pilgrims, they looted
villages. In a report to the directors of
the East India Company, Warren Hastings told of the incursion into Bengal of
a horde of ten thousand sadhus as they
travelled to Jagannath in Puri, Orissa.
On another occasion, even with their
primitive swords and spears against
Page 33

Vasishtha, one of the ten sages "born of

Brahma," is represented here with his
hair in the ascetic's chignon.

firearms, they succeeded in

wiping out two detachments of
the Company's troops after
killing their captains. Their appearance was sudden since
peasants were too terrified to
alert the English of their approach.
Even in peacetime these mendicants were a menace. The
eighteenth-century missionary,
A. J. Dubois, author of Hindu
Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, described their way of
begging as "most insolent, audacious and often threatening."
They intimidated villagers by
blowing mightily on their conch shells
and beating on gongs. If householders
did not comply, they broke into homes
and ransacked a house, smashing everything they could find.
Dubois also recorded that they danced
and sang while begging. And though
their songs were in praise of their gods,
they often sang indecent ballads "interlarded with obscenities."
Places of Hindu pilgrimage such as
Brindaban, Hardwar, Varanasi, Mathura,
are where the akharas (sadhu sects) are
established. They turn up in great numbers at fairs and festivals like the Kumbh
Mela held every twelve years at Prayag
(Allahabad), then at Hardwar three
years later, followed by Masik and
Ujjain.

Blessing the Ganges

At Allahabad eight akharas have
traditional privileges. Without their first
descending into the Ganges the water
willnot be potent enough to wash away
the sins of pilgrims. One such great fair
was held in January 1989. Ten million
Hindus flocked to the Sangam or conjunction of the Ganges, Jamuna and a
mythical river, the Saraswati. The sadhu
sects were accommodated in a tented
area, with food and other amenities at
government expense. They also demanded television sets so that they
could watch the Hindu epic The RamaPage 34

yana, being televised at the time.

The march to the river has deteriorated into a show of strength by each sect,
with much muscle-flexing which would
have perplexed Adi Shankaracharya.
Formerly, each sect paraded with caparisoned elephants, camels, and horses.
The heads of each group were shaded
by fringed ceremonial umbrellas. Flags
were carried to the sound of bands, and
even American cars formed part of the
motorcade. To swell numbers, sects
hire any male prepared to parade with
only a garland of marigolds round his
neck. Pilgrims, women particularly,
closely line up along the protective fencing on the path, to gape. Banter and obscenities exchanged have nothing to do
with piety. A couple of years ago, at
Hardwar, young naked recruits grabbed
women waiting their turn on the banks,
dunked them, and tried to undress
them.
.
Not all the marching sadhus are
naked. The gymnosophists are the
Nagas who are said to have advanced so
high in detachment from worldly consideration that they become digambara
(sky-clad). "To make naked men participate in these processions is to debase
a very high ideal," declared a report on
the Kumbh Mela mishap of 1954,deploring the presence of non-sadhus among
the Naga sects.
Of all the sadhu sects the Nagas are
January 1990

the most aggressive. In 1954,

when the pilgrims happened to
cross their path on the way to
the river, these sadhus attacked
them. In the ensuing melee, the
elephants stampeded and five
hundred were killed, with more
than a thousand injured. But
the number of dead was probably much higher. For days people downstream saw bodies
floating past in the Ganges.
Since then elephants and
camels have been banned. In
Hardwar the head sadhus are
carried on huge decorated floats
with their disciples marching
alongside. The naked Nagas are the
most startling and bizarre spectacle.
Many of them are Falstaffian in proportion, with immense sag-bellies which
asceticism didn't put there. Violence
and mayhem has evidently been a common feature of these events, where the
"enlightened elite of the spiritual world"
descend to the level of the layman to
provide guidance and solace. In earlier
times pitched battles took place between
sects for precedence in descending to
the water. In Hardwar eighteen thousand were said to have died one year.
The British put a stop to it by setting the
order down through the Allahabad High
Court.
The Kumbh Mela can be traced back
to earliest times, and it is possible that
Alexander's gymnosophists visited the
fair. The original idea of three thousand
years ago was that of a "spiritual parliament." It hardly measures up to that
claim today.
For many sadhus detachment and
poverty are outmoded concepts. Sects
have become power bases and a means
to quick riches. With militant Hindu fundamentalists mobilising a vast rabble
army of footloose sadhu sects in communal confrontations, the uglier side of
this huge benign banditti willbe exposed
for what it is - an accretion rooted in
fraud and sorcery. ~

American Atheist

Poetry

Pristine
Crimson streaks of sunrise
push dawn
from night's dark passage
to golden splendor.
The day lies ahead
chaste, ready for the taking;
as unprepared for fog
as a child-mind
which comes trustirig,
unspoiled from the womb,
open . . . fertile
and there for the taking.
Angeline Bennett

Sunday dinner
Sunday dinner,
No time for flirting
For a stiffly-dressed child fresh out of church.
"Eat your meat, it'll give you strength,"
And the meat is greyish and a problem to cut,
Like the minister's sermon;
Chase the peas around your plate with your fork
And the assistance of a furtive thumb,
But you've been told achievement is something
Won only with effort,
So you sigh and use the straight-edged knife
To herd the elusive peas onto your fork;
The gravy of piety is pervasive as smog
And unspecific in its embrace,
Settling into every comer of freedom;
The sermon still promises you that rewards arrive
When you've done the legwork of cleaning your plate,
But the stomach is now so loaded and numb
There is no fresh, ~inpty space for joy.
Why can't I eat my dessert first? .

Unholy alliance
State and church;
Church and state
Go hand in glove,
In unholy wedlock;
Partners in oppression;
Promoting working class division
And race hate.
Boss-man's ministers and priests
Preach hellfire and damnation;
Consignment to perdition
For those who dare to rail
Against their divinely appointed position
With its miserable condition,
Or dare to question
Rigid, mindless creeds
And fossilized traditions.
Now, the reason why
This most unholy alliance
Twixt church and capitalist nation-state
Will never be dissolved;
Except by workers' most forceful defiance,
Is simply 'cause
The boss-man needs religion,
To keep workers enslaved
By fear and ignorance.
Blind obedience
Preached by clerics;
Render unto god
And render unto Caesar ...
Our labor and our lives.
god and country
Motherhood and apple pie;
Well, we'll be goddamned
If we'll settle for crumbs
In the here and now
In vain and futile hope
Of pie in the sky.
Drusilla Davis

B. G. Soldier

Austin, Texas

January 1990

Page 35

American Atheist Radio Series

Religious forgery mill

uring this month I have been acquainting you with the studies of
Joseph Wheless, who wrote early
this century investigating religious
claims. He makes the bold statement
that:

Fraud, forgery, and

greed were the
instruments with which
the Roman Catholic
church wrote and
rewrote history.

Lyingly founded on forgery upon

forgery, ... the Church of [Jesus]
Christ perpetuated
itself and
consolidated its vast usurped
powers, and amassed amazing
wealth [and power], by a series of
further and more secular forgeries
and frauds unprecedented in human history which is a very strong charge.
He charges that the
frauds and forgeries [were] perpetrated for the base purposes of
greed for worldly riches and power,
and designed so to paralyze and
stultify the minds and reason of
men that they should suffer themselves to be exploited without caring or daring to question or complain, and be helpless to resist the
crimes committed against them.

When the first installment of a

regularly scheduled, fifteen-minute,
weekly American Atheist radio series
on KLBJ radio (a station in Austin,
Texas, owned by then-President
Lyndon Baines Johnson) hit the
airwaves on June 3, 1968, the nation
was shocked. The programs had to be
submitted weeks in advance and were
heavily censored. The regular production of the series ended in September
1977, when no further funding was
available.
The following is the text of "American
Atheist Radio Series" program No. 355,
first broadcast on July 26, 1975.

Madalyn Q'Hair
Page 36

The glorious Age of Faith was the

Dark Ages, when men were credulous
and ignorant. And a religion was produced which required great belief and
little knowledge. It was an age of terrible
corruption and social decadence.
It is all well and good to evaluate the
period in such a manner, but who was
responsible for such conditions, "when
only Holy Church existed, was in plentitude of power, [and] was the inspired
Teacher of all Christendom." During
these centuries, "the overwhelming importance attached to theology diverted
to it all those intellects which in another
condition of society would have been
employed in the investigations of science .... A boundless intolerance of all
divergencies of opinion was united with
an equally boundless toleration of all
falsehood and deliberate fraud that
January 1990

could favor received opinions."

The most famous forgeries of that
age, all exposed by modern church historical criticism, included the forged
Apostolic Constitutions. The Constitutions, pretending to be written by the
apostles, laid down in minute detail all
the intricacies of organization. There
were elaborate chapters concerning
bishops, presbyters, deacons, all kinds
of clergy. Despite the fact that church
scholars now admit that they do not
even know ifthere were twelve apostles,
and if there were, who they were, this
forgery contains the following passage
in the apostolic first person:
Wherefore we, the twelve apostles
of the Lord, who are now together, give you in charge those divine
constitutions concerning every ecclesiastical form, there being present with us Paul, the chosen vessel, our fellow apostle, and James
the bishop, and the rest of the
presbyters, and the seven deacons .... Therefore, I, Peter say,
that a bishop is to be ordained ...
and then it goes on to lay down rules.
Out of the same forging hands came
the related Apostolic Canons. All this
was done about the year 400, more or
less. These canons purported to be a
"collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees concerning the government and
discipline of the Church." These canons
were actually passed off on the emperor
and fraudulently used to secure their
enactment into imperial law.
The most famous fabrication now
known is The Book of the Popes. Its
fame and notoriety is for its spurious
accounts of the early and mythical successors of St. Peter. This is an official
papal work, "written and kept in the
papal archives." The church admits in
its Encyclopedias and research work
that in this book
it is recorded that such a pope
issued a decree that has been lost,
American Atheist

or mislaid, or perhaps
never existed at all.
Isidore seized the opportunity to supply a
pontifical letter suitable
for the occasion, attributing it to the pope
whose name was mentioned in the 'Liber'
[The Book of the
Popes].
The forgery which most
affected all Western civilization, the most monumental
one of all, was the "Conversion of Constantine" fraud. I
quote Wheless directly here:
Constantine, Augustus of Rome,
was the bastard son of the Imperator Constantius Chlorus and
a Bythnian barmaid who became
his mistress, and, later, by virtue of
opulent gifts to the Church, was
raised to Heaven as St. Helena.
Constantine was a picturesque
'barbarian' Pagan, with a very
bloody record of family - and
other - murders to his credit,
mostly made to further his political
ambitions. He was the rival of the
four Caesars who shared the divided government, against whom
he was engaged in titanic struggle,
to win the sole crown of empire.
The Christians were now become
[sic] numerous, some two and a
half or three millions out of the
hundreds of millionsof the Empire,
sufficient to make their adherence
and support important to the contestant who could gain control of
them. To curry their favor and
support Constantine adopted the
tactics of his sportive father, Constantius, and made a show of
friendly disposition to them ...
The next we hear is well after the death
of Constantine, when three church historians claimed that he had converted
Austin, Texas

on his deathbed. Bishop Eusebius,

writing in the year 324, and called the
Father of Church History, writes at
length about the decisive contest between rival armies of the claimants to
the empire. The battle which settled the
rivalry was near the historic Milvian
Bridge, in the environs of Rome. Eusebius devotes a large part of Book IX and
all of Book X of his History of the
Church to Constantine and enthusiastically describes the battle of the Milvian
Bridge.
What is most odd in this is the very
famous legend of Constantine. For just
before the battle, in the sight of Constantine, and all his army, a fiery cross
miraculously appeared in the heavens,
arid blazed across this cross was the
famous device, In Hoc Signa Vinces "By this Sign Conquer" - and on the
spot Constantine was himself conquered
for Christ and went on to win the battle
at Milvian Bridge and the empire.
It is obvious then, that the story was
invented later than Eusebius.
In trying to track it down, Wheless
found first mention of it in the writings
of Lactantius, who was a tutor to Constantine's son Crispus - before Constantine murdered this son, of course.
Lactantius tells of a dream Constantine
had in which Jesus Christ personally apJanuary 1990

peared to Constantine and

told him to decorate the
shields of his soldiers with
the holy "sign of the Cross"
before they went into the
fight. He did this, and this
was how the battle was won
at Milvian Bridge. This story
was written, again, after Constantine died. However, it
had long been the practice in
Rome to put something on
shields. Let us look at the
story.
"By either a divine revelation or by priest-prompting,
the Persian Cambyses had
tied cats to the shields of his
soldiers in their campaign in
525 B.C. [that is five hundred years
before Christ] against the cat -worshipping
Egyptians, who thus dared not strike
with their swords." The pagans were
superstitiously afraid in any event. Well,
in this story, Constantine was directed
in a dream to mark a letter X on the
shield, with a perpendicular line drawn
through it. The historian goes on then to
say,
The bridge in the rear . . . was
broken down. The hand of the
Lord prevailed ...
By this time, Eusebius, forgetting
what he had written in the History of the
Church, wrote a Life of Constantine into
which he weaves both the dream and
the miraculous cross appearing at the
bridge. He then extols Constantine as
being a "thrice blessed soul in communion with God himself," in heaven.
Therefore, Wheless records the beautifullife and morals of Constantine by recalling the murders he committed.
He murdered
his wife's father,
Maximian in the year 310.
He murdered his sister Anastasia's
husband, Bassianus, in 314.
He murdered his nephew, son of his
sister Constantina (the nephew's name
was Licinianus) in 319.
Page'Sl

Wherever there was need for a false precedent,

a simple turn of the crank
of the wheel of the forgery mill
produced them to order.
He murdered his wife, Fausta, in a
bath of boiling water in 320.
He murdered his intimate counsellor,
a pagan philosopher, Sopater, in 321,
He murdered his fellowcaesar and his
sister Constantina's husband, Licinius,
in 325.
He murdered his own son, Crispus,
by beheading in 326.
The Christian chroniclers relate that
Constantine's murders did "seem to
cast a reflection on him," and that he
went to the pagan philosopher So pater
for absolution for the murders. We don't
know what the pagan told him, but Sopater was one of the persons he murdered later. He then went to the Christians for absolution from the murders
and when:
some bishops ... told him that he
would be cleansed from sin, on
repentance and on baptism, he
was delighted with their representations, ... and became a Christian,
and led his subjects to the same
faith.
However, in all these stories, "Constantine cautiously denied himself the
saving Christian rite of baptism until he
was on his death bed, in Nicomedia," in
the year 337. He remained until death
Pontifex Maximus, or Sovereign Pontiff
of the pagan religion, a title which the
Christian bishops could not arrogate
until further Christian emperors abandonedit.
Pope Sylvester was involved in the
aftermath of Constantine for the story is
told that he cured Constantine of leprosy
and that subsequently Constantine became a Christian and was baptized.
However, Constantine never had leprosy. This does not matter; Constantine
was then to have taken pen in hand and
actually written a document addressed
to Pope Sylvester Iand consisting of two
parts. In the first he made Sylvester I
and his successors the recipients of certain privileges and possessions - the
pope was to have primacy over the four
Page 38

patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem and also

over all the bishops of the world.
Constantine in the document gives
Rome to the church and says he is establishing the city of Constantinople as
the seat of empire as a secular emperor
should not have power where god has
established the residence of the head of
the Christian religion.
The document concludes with maledictions against all who violate these donations and with the assurance that the
emperor had signed them with his own
hand and placed them on the tomb of
St. Peter.
Of this, the Catholic Encyclopedia
now says:
This document is without doubt a
forgery, fabricated somewhere between the years 750 and 850. As
early as the fifteenth century its
falsity was known and demonstrated ....
And yet, one can hear, any day, in the
United States today, the Christian battle
cry of "In this Sign, Conquer" - the
slogan of a lie, in history.
The falsity of the Donation of Constantine was first alleged and proved in
1440 by Lorenzo Valla, who, thereby,
just narrowly escaped the Holy Inquisition. Yet the document was still used as
authentic by the church until the great
critic Baronius forced the confession of
the fraud from the church. But the
church still clung to the fruits of the
fraud, the revenues derived from it, the
sovereignty it was granted. It was not
until the Italian revolution of 1870 that
the pope was required to give up the
lands which he had held under dominion,
on false deeds, from the year 350 to that
time - over fifteen hundred years.
Wherever there was need for a false
precedent, a simple turn of the crank of
the wheel of the forgery mill produced
them to order. For instance, when Pope
St. Symmachus was in a power struggle
with the anti-pope Laurentius, four apoJanuary 1990

cryphal writings were drawn up which

substantiated that the Roman bishop
(i.e., the pope) could not be judged by
any court composed of other bishops.
With that in hand, the pope on the
throne won the fight.
In fact, a magnificent scheme of false
precedents was devised in the False
Decretals of Isidore. A decretal is a papal
letter giving an authoritative decision on
a point of law. These appeared in the
middle of the ninth century and there
are about one hundred of them. These
documents were simply made up, written
long after the times of the popes to
whom he (Isidore) attributed them. The
popes of the first three centuries are
made to quote documents that did not
appear until the fourth or fifth century,
and so on. On these decretals was built
the concept of papal supremacy over
the different national churches - and it
is because of these Isidorian forgeries
that there is not a Catholic Church of
America, but rather there is only still
that church of Rome, the Roman Catholic church. A legal system was provided
for the church, giving it unlimited authority through the Christian world in all
causes spiritual.
It still has that power today. ~

Where there's a will,

there's a way
(to help Atheism)
Atheists who approve of the work of
American Atheists and desire to contribute to its continuance after their
deaths, can include American Atheists
or the American Atheist Library in their
wills.Both corporations are tax-exempt.
For information regarding the best way
to ensure that your intentions are
carried out, please contact:
American Atheist G.H.Q.
7215 Cameron Rd.
Austin, Texas 78752-2973
(512) 458-1244

American Atheist

MeToD

When bad things happen

ne of the most difficult arenas of
contradiction for a religious person to rationalize is why god
would permit disasters, death, plagues,
and accidents. Most people of faith look
to god for rescue or miracles and fail to
understand why there is no prevention.
"Oh, thank god," we often hear when
somebody is spared from death's hands.
No one thanks god when someone
loved is hurting or dying. Instead, we
painfully watch people agonize, pray,
and beg for mercy on their knees, while
an unfortunate person suffers or slowly
declines.
One of my good lifetime friends and
his wife were critically injured in a car
crash. While his wife's life was not in
danger, he was unlucky. He lay in a hospital bed in deep coma, connected to
various apparatus to help him live. I held
his hand and spoke to him. I knew full
well that he would be unable to hear or
respond, but some studies report that
the brain can help reorganize itself
following head trauma by recognition of
familiar sights and sounds.
Here was death. Chiseling away at my
longtime friend. I swore aloud and my
throat was choked as I watched him.
Since he was allowed only two visitors at
a time, I rejoined his family in the waiting
area. They were about to pray and
asked me to join them. Now I faced the
biggest test of will since I became an
Atheist. This was not the time to stand
up and proudly wave my American
Atheists membership card. Nor was it
time to join them. This was a time for
extreme tact. It is difficult for anyone to
think clearly under such circumstances,
and I tried to be as careful as possible.
"I would rather not," I said as calmly
and caring as I could. "I have hope for
him in my own way."
"YOU COLDHEARTED BASTARD!"
shouted his mother. "You won't even
pray for your best friend?!?"
There was not much further to say
except that I wanted him to live as much
as everyone, and his medical surroundings were the best available. I expressed

t+J

What does an Atheist

do in the face of death
- when those near to
him are praying?

"Me Too" is a feature designed to

showcase short essays written by
readers in response to topics recently
covered by the American Atheist or of
general interest to the Atheist
community.
Essays submitted to "Me Too" (P. O.
Box 140195,Austin, TX 78714-0195)
should be 650 to 1500 words long.

Austin, Texas

January 1990

hope that his injuries were not as serious as the doctors were projecting.
There are times to get up on your hind
legs and be proud of Atheism, and
moments when kind, but firm, gentleness is needed. A noninvolvement position of praying with a group just to
make them feel better is not a road to
travel either.
His mother was able to calm down
after a while. Neither of us raised the
subject of religion or Atheism again.
After a few days, during which time I
visited the hospital twice a day, we were
all able to stand together with hope,
without having to kneel. He survived,
but he will never be the same.
Many religionists are awed by the
wondrous creations of life and attribute
it to god. Do they also stand in awe and
show gratitude for the mutation of AIDS
in 1976?From 1347to 1351,seventy-five
million people died from the plague.
Many probably offered prayer to his
majesty before dying in a delirium. His
holiness obliterated 21,640,000 people
from influenza during April through
November in 1918.
In the years 1311through 1340,thirtyfive million Chinese peasants were exterminated by the Mongols. Perhaps
god does not like Confucians. That may
explain why he allowed twenty million of
them to slowly starve to death from 1969
to 1971, 830,000 to perish in an earthquake in January 1556, and 180,000 to
expire in a landslide in December 1920.
Many Christians believe that not accepting Jesus as personal lord and savior is a guaranteed ticket to Gehenna.
The Bible supports it in Luke 13:23,
Matt. 7:14, and Matt. 22:13, 14, saying
the great majority of mankind's last stop
will be in hell.
Elohim is credited with making the
rainbow as a promise never to impose
death by water again (Genesis, chapter
nine), then cashes in one million natives
of Bangladesh from a circular storm in
November 1970 on the Ganges Delta
isles. In the United States, 689 die in
three hours from a tornado on March
Page 39

Many religionists are awed by the wondrous creations of life

and attribute it to god.
Do they also stand in awe and show gratitude
for the mutation of AIDS?
18, 1925. And nine hundred thousand
Chinese are washed away in the Yellow
River in China in October 1877.
Decision makers in Washington, D.c.,
claiming "god is on our side" snuffed
220,000 Japanese in two quick blows.
Did those responsible offer thanks for
god's gift of free will? Since they were
mostly Buddhists, the lord of hosts
probably thought them lost souls. But
this is small compared to the number of
Jews killed by Roman Catholic and Lutheran Nazis who had "Gott mit uns"
(God with us) inscribed on their daggers.
Some five thousand were trampled to
death in the stampede for free beer at
Czar Nicholas II's coronation in Moscow in May 18%. More than 200,000
were blotted out in the sack of Moscow,
freed by Tartars in May 1571. Oh, well,
probably most were Atheists anyway.
The wonderful, loving alleged god
allowed 913 people to be led astray by a
self-seeking prophet who claimed to
represent him, only to order everyone
to drink cyanide in Jonestown, Guyana,
on November 18, 1978.
On March 27, 1977, the merciful beneficent god let 583 people take a ride of
death on a KLM-Pan Am Boeing 747 in
Tenerife, Canary Islands. Some may
have groveled through a hymn to his
name during the descent.
Recently, in September 1989,the lack
of involvement by a deity to prevent an
airline disaster was readily apparent. Of
2% passengers and crew, only 185 survived. For forty-one minutes a United
DC-10 enroute from Denver to Chicago,
descended to earth after an engine exploded. It crashed in Sioux City, Iowa,
only a few feet from a runway. There
was no multitude of angels hovering in
the sky singing heavenly hymns to guide
the plane. Nor did Jesus appear walking
in mid-air to tell everyone not to worry.
Many survivors of the crash did not become instant believers in god, nor did
they pray on the way down. Personal
accounts reflect the attitudes of modern
Atheists in the face of death, contrary to
Page 4D

the beliefs of some religious that "there

are no Atheists in foxholes."
Kari Milford, age twenty-one, of Marion, Indiana, wonders why she survived
the crash. Fifty-two-year-old Upton
Rehnberg of Rockford, Illinois, felt that
for a higher power to have been watching him, it would have had to ignore all
those who died. Pete Wernick, fortythree, Niwot, Colorado, states essentiallythe same thing, noting that mothers
of young children were burned to death,
not "bad people." Bruce Benham, thirtyeight, Littleton, Colorado, said if he had
been seated ten rows back, he would
have been dead. He does not feel invincible, but now feels more mortal. Terri
Hardman, forty, Boulder, says he is

Roman Catholic, but has trouble thinking that god pulled 185survivors through,
and allowed others to die horribly.
Charles Martz, fifty-nine, Castle Pines,
Colorado, said there was no magic hand
- other than the pilot's - that guided
the plane down that tragic day. (From
September 1989 Life, "Finding God on
Flight 232.")
God must love to murder people.
He's so far ahead of Hitler, Alexander,
Napoleon, and the rest that no one will
ever catch up. He does it every day.
Death continues, almost as regular as
prayer it seems.
- Dale W. Clark
Utah

WILLSIOE

MORTUARY

"We've got the perfect locction. Right across the street is a church that believes
in handling poisonous snakes."

January 1990

American Atheist

Letters to the Editor

The calendar problem

I think every time we date a letter or
anything else we should place the year
in brackets with a question mark behind
it (e.g., 1990?). As if to say, is it really
1990 years since the birth of Christ? Or
did J.e. exist at all?
Rick Wilson
Canada

Atheist's day, do our small thing to bring

about what shall be the greatest victory
in human evolution.
Being over sixty now and retired, I,
like many others, must watch my dollars
carefully, but I can certainly spare a few
minutes per day in the cause. When
everybody pitches in, what may have
appeared to be an insurmountable task
suddenly becomes very easy.

One a day

"Letters to the Editor" should be either questions or comments of general

concern to Atheists or to the Atheist
community. Submissions should be
brief and to the point. Space
limitations allow that each letter
should be three hundred words or,
preferably, less. Please confine your
letters to a single issue only. Mail them
to: American Atheist, P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195.

Austin, Texas

George James
California

I have only just finished reading Jon

G. Murray's "Reply To A Small Town
Atheist" of November 1983. It set me to
thinking and to wondering how courageous American Atheists really are?
Surely it is but a poor excuse for some-

In Shakespeare's time it was customary to deal severely with Atheists. In

countries where the Roman Catholic

A Shakespearean

theory

one to decide s(he) can do little or noth-

church was practically the government,

ing for so infinitely intelligent a cause as

they were burned (alive if torture had

Atheism.

not already done them in).

Being a fledgling member, I am yet a

go-getter, and just in a month or two
have already gotten myself in trouble
several times for my Atheistic stand on
several occasions. One thing I have
been doing is putting Atheist pamphlets
on car windshields in parking lots, some
days as many as fifty or more per day.
Persons often ask what I am putting
there, and I tell them right off what it is.
Some flee as confronted by the devil,
others ask questions, others attack me
as a rotten, eternally-damned sinner,
etc.
While reading Murray's article, the
thought came to me, what if every Atheist got to just one person each day with
a pamphlet and talked up the Atheist
cause? Such should not require more
than ajeui minutes time. Since there are
thousands of members of American
Atheists, that would mean that with determined, concerted effort in this capacity, millions of people a year would get
the Atheist message! Person to person!
Ifwe really value Atheism as the best realization for humanity, and the one sure
way to victory over hatred and war and
misunderstanding, then we should all
put our money where our mouths are,
and taking so few minutes out of each

In Merry Old England, where the

newly formed Church of England had
the upper hand, more humane methods
of dealing with them were in vogue.
There their necks were stretched over
a chopping block, like many a farm boy
has been taught to do with a chicken if
he wanted a delicious dinner.
An up-and-coming young English
writer named Christopher Marlowe
was, in those days off to a promising
career. He dabbled in both prose and
poetry. He was fast gaining experience
- even travelling some outside of England, spending a couple of years among
the intellectual community of northern
Italy.
He was a boy wonder whose writing,
in the view of modern scholars, resembles Shakespeare's; so much so that his
works could easily be viewed as plagiarism - only during Marlowe's short life
there was no Shakespeare .
.Sir Walter Raleigh was a friend of
Marlowe's; the religious nut government of England suspected both of being Atheists. To save their necks called
for drastic action. Raleigh fast-talked his
way to exile in America, the then equivalent of Siberia in modern Russia.
Marlowe, being no fool, chose a differ-

January 1990

Page 41

ent road -- he faked his own death by

a late night mugger, together with a conveniently disfigured corpse full of punctures, and an official looking death certificate. Such a caper wouldn't get far
with a modern insurance company, but
with the religious nut government of England of the time, it was a piece of cake.
Marlowe continued to do what he did
best -- for a long career with an intact
neck -- selling his work with the help of
an obscure stagehand with a comical
name.
The moral of this story is: The life expectancy of Atheist necks has improved
some, but the lot of Atheist writers -not much.
Eric M. Frederick
Montana

Writing letters
I feel guilty every time I write an indignant column about television evangelists hogging the tube and their undisguised greed in spending an hour begging, pleading, beseeching, requesting,
yes, even demanding contributions to
keep their manipulative faces before the
television audience. One .such character and his wife have lately been telecasting from a living room with several
visitors, interrupting each other continually to convey the urgency of the need
for a hundred thousand dollar giftto pay
for network time as well as establish a
studio from which to beam god's directives.
If a spiritual message is contained in

their boring show, it is submerged in

their non-stop solicitation. It is worth far
less than $100,000 of any sucker's
money.
My mother was a gentle soul, a born
Methodist, who taught school in Tennessee and for several years after she
moved to Oklahoma Indian Territory.
After my birth, she retired from teaching a roomful and devoted her full time
to instructing me. When five, I could
read Longfellow's poems and some of
the least naughty passages of the Bible.
At eighty-two, I can think of nothing less
thought-provoking than either.
I have been moderately successful at
writing as a hobby, being careful not to
offend Bible Belt readers with disrespectful mention of the church or its
teachings.
I have felt safe in belaboring the television evangelists, because their tactics
are disagreeable to most "Christians,"
whatever denomination. I would willingly have included all religious elements
had I dared. My feeling of independence
has been tempered by my decision to
apply the same logic to reader acceptance as I apply to my own reservations
about a scriptural hereafter.
I owe the American Atheist a vote of
thanks. It is not that I need its tonguein-cheek ridicule to bolster my disbeliefs.
I simply need a medium in which Ican
vent my outrage at the mythical claims
of Christendom in general, instead of
the Sunday stand-ups exclusively.
Were I already established like the
syndicated columnists, I'd care little

what my neighbors think. I do care.

I have no way of knowing whether or
not the American Atheist is a visitor in
a neighbor's home. Until I do, call me
chicken.
I hope one of them says, "Ken, I read
your letter. Now we can talk." God, I
hope so.
Kenneth C. Snelling
Oklahoma

Word from the north

Early in his term of office, when I first
heard the voice of a former president,
who in his day was innocuous compared
to some of his successors, my immediate impression was of uninspired woodenness, which I never had much reason
to alter.
Of the new boy in Washington, my
possibly premature estimate is of an ultimate doctrinaire mediocrat, rampant
on a field of fakery, who is likely to
plumb even murkier depths of ineptitude
and maladroitness than did Reagan.
The candidates standing for election
were by either foresight or hindsight a
sorry crew, from which with psychic venality Americans consented to be saddled with a misfit, a square peg for an
oval hole.
This is not to praise by faint abuse
Canadian political talent, which by retrograde comparison is likely to garner
what passes here for prizes.
I. Stenebaugh
Canada

Are You Moving?

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Mail to: American Atheists, P.O. Box 140195,Austin, TX 78714-0195

Page 42

January 1990

American Atheist

A little Convention Q & A

The Annual National Convention of
American Atheists will be held this
year in St. Petersburg, Florida, on
April 13, 14, and 15. For those of you
who have had a chance to come to a
Convention of American Atheists,
that's all that's needed to make you
start packing your bags. But Atheists
are a questioning bunch and those of
you who haven't been to one will
want some Convention facts first.

Where does this all take

place?
The Convention

St. Petersburg Hilton and Towers

333 1st Street South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
(813) 894-5000
The Hilton is offering Conventioneers
the special rate of $55 per night (plus
tax) for a single or double room, for
reservations made by March 11.These
rates are good from April 11 through
April 16. When you call to reserve
your room, name the convention or you won't get these rates!

Will I really have a chance to

meet other Atheists there -or will I just be listening to
lectures all day?
What a question! That's what everyone
else is going to the American Atheist
convention for too - a chance to
shoot the breeze and exchange views
with others of like mind.
The convention is scheduled to
make sure that you have time to
wine, dine, and - most importantly
- chat with fellow nonbelievers.
There will be six socials - and hundreds of interesting Atheists (ranging
from the Atheist next door to the
Atheist of the Year) for you to meet.

That sounds good, but I

don't need to listen to a
bunch of lecturers telling me
there's no god. Just what
kind of speakers are there?
Well, certainly no old fogies telling
you something you already know.

How much does it cost to

register?
The speakers and panels are selected
to add to your knowledge and to help
you become a more effective force for
reason and state/church
separation
in your community and your nation.

But isn't this all just for

longtime members
of American Atheists?
Of course not! The aim is to get the
ordinary Atheist out of the closet!
There are some events which have
restricted attendance, such as the
Life Members' Dinner and the Members' Banquet. But the panel discussions, the speeches, the parties, the
Sunday brunch - any conventioneer
is welcome to attend, member or not.

Well, they say the early bird gets the

worm. But in this case, he gets the
discount. If you register by March II,
1990, the registration fee is only $60
per person. After March II, registration is $65 per person. (Registration
fees are nonrefundable.)

When is all this?

April 13, 14, and IS, 1990 (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). That's Easter
weekend, so you will finally be able
to do something good on Good Friday.

What if I have questions?

Call the National Office of American
Atheists at (512) 458-1244. Or write:
American Atheist Convention, P. O.
Box 140195, Austin, TX 78714.

Return form to: Convention Registration, American Atheists, P. O. Box 140195,

Telephone: (512) 458-1244
FAX: (512) 467-9525

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the Christian bible is revealed in The Inconsistencies and Contradictions

of Jesus
Christ. 24 pp. Stapled. Stock #5484. $5.50
postpaid. Write: AAP., 7215Cameron Rd.,
Austin, TX 787S2.-2fJ73. Credit card phone
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Just for kids: Madalyn O'Hair's illustrated
children's book, An Atheist Primer, is a great
gift for your favorite little skeptic. It will
explain to 3- to 8-year-olds exactly where the
gods did come from. 30 pp, $5.50 ppd. Stock
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Seeing spots: Over a big red circle, this

card states, "Blow on this spot; when it turns
blue, god's promises will come true." 30
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January 1990

American Gay Atheists: P. 0. Box 66711,

Houston, TX 77266-6711.Serving the Gay &
Lesbian Community. Dial-A-Gay-Atheist,
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Old and used books, magazines, and

pamphlets on Atheism, freethought, rationalism, skepticism, and agnosticism are
needed for the Charles E. Stevens American
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you bought from Haldeman-Julius, Lewis,
and the RP.A when you were young are
now valuable to Atheist researchers. Send
donations of books to: C.E.S.AAL.A, Inc.,
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American Atheist

suggested

American Atheist
introductory reading list

II
Literature on Atheism is very hard to find in most public
and university libraries in the United States - and most of
the time when you d-o find a book catalogued under the
word A theism it is a work against the Atheist position.
Therefore we suggest the following publications which are
available from American Atheist Press as an introduction

into the multifaceted areas of Atheism and state/church

separation. To achieve the best understanding of thought in
these areas the featured publications should be read in the
order listed. These by no means represent our entire collection of Atheist and separationisr materials.

1. Why I Am An Atheist, including a history of materialism, by Madalyn O'Hair. Stapled. 39 pp. Product #5416
............................................................................................ 4.00

14. Atheist Truth vs. Religion's Ghosts by Col. Robert G.

Ingersoll. Stapled. 57 pp. #5156
4.00

2. The Case Against Religion: A Psychotherapists

by Dr. Albert Ellis. Stapled. 57 pp. #5096

View
4.00

3. All the Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American

Atheists with All of the Answers by Jon Murray and
Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback. 248 pp. #5356
9.00
4. What on Earth Is an Atheist!
Paperback. 288 pp. #5412

by Madalyn

O'Hair.
8.00

5. An Atheist Speaks by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback. 321

pp. #5098
8.00
6. All about Atheists by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback. 407
pp. #5097
8.00
7. Ingersoll the Magnificent
342 pp. #5216

by Joseph Lewis. Paperback.

10.00

8. Essays on American Atheism,

Paperback. 349 pp. #5349

vol. I by Jon G. Murray.

10.00

9. Essays on American Atheism, vol. II by Jon G. Murray. Paperback. 284 pp. #5350
10.00
10. Essays in Freethinking,
vol. I by Chapman
Paperback. 229 pp. #5052

Cohen.
9.00

II. Essays in Freethinking,

Cohen.
9.00

Paperback.

vol. II by Chapman

240 pp. #5056

12. Life Story of Auguste Comte by F. J. Gould. Paperback.

179 pp. #5132
6.50
13. The Logic and Virtue of Atheism
Stapled. 58 pp. #5280

by Joseph

American

McCabe.
4.00

15. Some Reasons I Am a Freethinker

Ingersoll. Stapled. 37 pp. #5184

by Robert

G.
4.00

16. Our Constitution

- The Way It Was by Madalyn
O'Hair. Stapled. 70 pp. #5400
4.00
17. American
Atheist
Heritage: Jefferson,
Franklin,
Lincoln, and Burbank by Joseph Lewis. Stapled. 56 pp,
#5212
4.00
18. Fourteen Leading Cases on Education, Religion, and
Financing Schools. Paperback. 273 pp. #5500
5.00
19. Sex Mythology
#5440

by Sha

Rocco.

Stapled.

55 pp.
4.00

20. Women and Atheism,

The Ultimate Liberation
by
Madalyn O'Hair. Stapled. 21 pp. #5420
3.50
21. Christianity
Before Christ
Paperback. 237 pp. #5200

by John

G. Jackson.
9.00

22. The Bible Handbook (All the contradictions, absurdities,

and atrocities from the Bible) by G.W. Foote, W.P.
Ball, John Bowden, and Richard M. Smith. Paperback.
372 pp. #5008
9.00
23. The X-Rated Bible by Ben Edward Akerley. Paperback.
428 pp. #5000
10.00

All of the above publications are available at a special set

price of $125.00 - a savings of $31 off the single issue price.
Postage and handling is $1.50 for orders under $20.00;
$2.50 for orders over $20.00. Texas residents please add 7%
percent sales tax.

Atheist Press, P.O. Box 140195,

Austin, TX 78714-0195
U.S.A.

"Man always deceives himself when he abandons experience to follow imaginary systems. He
is the work of Nature. He exists in Nature. Heis
submitted to her laws. He cannot deliver himself
from them. He cannot step beyond them even in
thought.
II

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach

The System of Nature