Atheist for president?

American culture strangely has a way of marginalizing just about everybody in some way. Political campaigns especially pull from some kind of internalized "normality" which represented the demographic face of the country years ago--white, rural or small town, protestant, working or middle class, moderate educational level (and of course, heterosexual). Who fits this mold any more? Ethnic minorities were always excluded. Now most of us (80%) live in metropolitan areas. Still, political candidates spend a lot of time at diners and VFW Halls.

In this election we heard about "real" America versus the elite. And scary Muslims. Obama couldn't "prove" his Christianity to satisfy some. Islam unfortunately has a wholesale connection with terrorism in many minds. But belief in God, the Christian God, is a necessary indicator of morality and patriotism.

Given my ethnicity and background, I meet just about all the Palin criteria for being a "real American," except that I'm excessively over-educated. Maybe you can chalk it up to all the higher education that I chucked the childhood Methodism and realized that I was an atheist all along. I never believed in god.

I've gradually become aware that people are horrified by atheism. Not too many people will admit that they don't believe in god. They'll waffle and say they're agnostic. Atheism is getting a hardcore reputation these days from people like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, who are anti-religion.

A reactionary stance like that is not too unusual in the face of prejudice. It's like being a Black Panther. Obviously, it's overkill and doesn't reflect more moderate beliefs. Well, maybe that's not obvious, because we don't hear from any other self-described atheists. We don't even think of there being a prejudice against atheism because we have a strong secular culture in place alongside the overtly religious, but consider this:

When the lion lies down with the lamb, when the president is a Republican Muslim and the Democratic speaker of the House is a vegan Mormon lesbian, when the secretary of defense is a Jain pacifist from the Green Party, they will all agree on one thing: atheists need not apply. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president. (By contrast, only 43 percent wouldn't vote for a homosexual, and only 24 percent wouldn't vote for a Mormon.) As Ronald Lindsay, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, told me in an e-mail: "Atheism spells political death in this country."

Indeed. Only one current congressman has confessed to being an atheist: Rep. Pete Stark, a Democrat from the lefty East Bay region of Northern California. If he ever ran for president, he would need God's help just as surely as he wouldn't ask for it.

(15 to 20% of Americans still think that Obama is a Muslim. Some of them probably voted for him anyway. Would they vote for him if they thought he was an atheist?)

Are there more gays or atheists in the closet? There aren't any atheist pride parades. Or even "let's tolerate the atheists" discussions by pundits.

This Slate article briefly discusses morality and its connection or lack of to religion, and reports on how atheists in America, in contrast to those who live in atheist European states, are an unhappy bunch:

American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "[S]cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."

The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.

Atheists, then, aren't getting the benefits of religious or civic community, and they are also experiencing the isolating effects of those on the receiving end of prejudice.

This description may only apply to the pure atheist who does not participate in any kind of spiritually. I have a spiritual practice, contrary to the stereotype of atheists, and have been part of several spiritual communities throughout the years. I wonder how many people fit this bill, but would not describe themselves as "atheists." Like "feminist" and "liberal," it's a label that most avoid, even if it applies.