The New Atheist Movement

In the winter semester of 2009 I gave a presentation in the course Theology of Mission at Trinity Lutheran Seminary about the “The New Atheist Movement.” This was a talk, and what you find in this post are my notes, slightly modified to be readable. (I did some more editing at Jan 27, 14:04 EST).

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I am not sure that this name, “The New Atheist Movement” is accurate for what I am going to address here. Movements, having “new” in the name do not age well.

I am aware that Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary uses the name “Evangelical Atheists” for this group, but I dislike it because it indicates something religious, and I assume, that such name calling is insulting to people that are in their own minds at least, everything and anything else than religious. Therefore, I will stick with “The New Atheist Movement.”

In this presentation, I use the word atheists, whether I am referring to atheists, agnostics, non-religious humanists, skeptics, and freethinkers. I am fully aware that they are not synonyms, but it is not relevant in this context.

I have not heard the “New Atheist Movement” mentioned frequently in my studies. My presentation is based partly on my own personal background, and therefore it is likely that not everything fits an American context. However, I think it might be helpful, at least to open our awareness to this reality of a strong reactive atheist presence in our western culture.

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Helgi Hóseason was born in Iceland late in the year 1919 and baptized as an infant in a Lutheran Church, Helgi was confirmed either 1933 or 1934.

This would not have been relevant to us if Helgi would not have asked the church and/or public authorities to have his baptism revoked in 1962 and been refused. After that Helgi Hóseason dedicated his life to fight this evil system of church and state, which forced upon him an agreement he never signed, with a being he did not belief existed.

Helgi’s battle was a lonely one, a battle of one man against the empire. He was arrested a couple of times, must famously in 1972, when he throw a Skyr (an Icelandic dairy product for sale at Whole Foods for a high price) at members of the parliament when they walked from the Cathedral to the parliament building after attending a worship service. (It is a tradition in Iceland to mark the beginning of a new parliament session with a worship service in the Lutheran Cathedral in Reykjavik.) Helgi was in the eyes of most an eccentric old man, and was for long considered the token atheist in Iceland.

When more people began to move to Iceland in the late 20^th century, the monopoly of Lutheran tradition became somewhat troubling, at least for the newcomers.

In 1988, a group was formed around non-religious ceremonies, offering rites-of-passage for people without religious convictions. Naturally (or not) this threatened the Lutheran Church somewhat and to this day, you can still find Lutheran pastors and parishoners, that have issues with those non-religious rites, especially a humanist confirmation. In Norway, similar group has received a standing as a religious group. However that has not happened in Iceland, for reasons I cannot explain, at least not on record.

This group has had few confrontations with the church around various issues. Most of them connected to the privileged situation the church has (Asking for what one might call “Preferential option for the poor”).

Having now scanned very briefly over 70 years of atheism in Iceland, and left out few published books criticizing the church and in some cases faith in general, I would now like to begin describing “The New Atheist Movement”. When I e-mailed a former chair of Vantru, the most visible atheist movement in Iceland and asked if I could send him my notes, he reminded me not to forget the importance of the internet in the formation of the movement.

So I go there next. I first came across the group on the internet. I joined a chat-group about religion sometimes in 1999, and from time to time, I saw there these aggressive posts criticizing both church and religion in a way I had never seen before. What those comments had in common were the pseudo names of the writers, calling themselves thew, krolli, and zorglub. For the atheists the internet not only opened a way to anonymously express their opinions. It opened for access to books, articles, and information about atheism which was not easily available in Iceland before.

When the atheists became aware that they were not alone with their thoughts and understanding, they started to meet outside the chat rooms, got support and strength from each other and that led to the formation of Vantru. Vantru has now for almost 10 years been the strongest voice of the New Atheist Movement in Iceland. It has an active webpage, focusing mostly on the negative aspects of religion and superstition.

I am telling this story as an outsider, and this is how I saw it, I am sure someone inside the group might see it differently.

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I will mostly use the Vantru group as a representative of the movement in general, and that is probably not completely fair, either to them or the global movement of atheism.

One important aspect of Vantru, is how they function as a re-active group. This reactive nature of Atheist groups is visible elsewhere as well. Their “evangelization” is a response to a behavior by religious groups and individuals. In Iceland, Vantru does not plan to enter public elementary schools with their message, but they have re-acted strongly against Lutheran worship services and presence of pastors in elementary schools. (Being part of the Lutheran church in Iceland, trying to justify the presence of a Lutheran pastors in public Elementary schools is not my favorite past time.)

Vantru has publicly asked questions about the close cooperation between the Red Cross in Iceland and the Lutheran Church Aid. They actively monitor sermons and statements from the church and highlight what they consider wrong/evil/dangerous message. They help people to change their religious registration with the government.

We see similar reactivity on an international level. The Bus-campaign in London was a response to a bus campaign by a church, threatening people with Hell. The debaptism thing in UK, can be seen as a reaction to false reports about the status of the Anglican Church.

One could of course debate whether the children book “Golden Compass” is a proactive or a reactive work by a well recognized Atheist, but at least the evil hierarchy was not named the Church but the Magisterium when it was filmed.

The New Atheist Movement is vocal and the critic is sharp, sometimes hurtful, and blunt. Having said that it is important to dismiss the notion that this is the most vicious attack the Christian faith has witnessed. Such statements can only be made by self centered academics that have forgotten all about history or never seen the world out there. Nobody has died, due to Dawkins writings, at least no Christian I have heard off.

The complaints from church leaders, about the evilness of the atheist critic, reminds my somewhat of the new Microsoft ads, trying to fight of Apple, forgetting that Microsoft has 80% market share, but Apple is somewhere around 10%. The only difference is that the majority is right when it comes to God, and wrong when buying computers. 🙂

It is also necessary to be remindful, that complains about improper use of language or inappropriate behavior has been used and is used against all minority groups by the ruling classes.

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The New Atheist Movement is not only reacting to the institutionalized church, but to faith in general. There is a strong sense in the movement that the church is not a harmless group of oblivious people but “an evil force” spreading a virus or “meme,” which the mind has difficulty to get out of its system once it is in. Some in the movement believe that most people become immune to the evil God virus when adults, if they haven’t been infected before turning 18. It is also, not uncommon to hear voices describing the church as a group of self serving leaders, using lies and distortion to stay in power.

I think we need to come to terms with the reality of some of their accusations. Christianity has been, and is used to kill people, and the same goes for Islam and Judaism. I don’t assume like “The New Atheist Movement” does that religion is necessarily evil, but religious institutions are at least not inescapably good. Ask Jesus!

Claiming that God of Christianity is gracious, in light of the horrible deeds that have been done in Gods name, is not going to sound likely, and we have to admit that. And at least I have a problem accepting the claim, that if only we are confronted with gracious God, we would lose interest in all other gods. Such claim as Ted Peters seems to make is naïve.

However, I think there is a need to reject the notion from “The New Atheist Movement” that faith is evil due to its lack of justification and arguments. Faith calls for a knowledge of the Story, and though such knowledge might not be scientific, it does not make it invalid, or without arguments and critical thinking.

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Here I have looked mostly at the movement as I know it in an Icelandic context.

It is important to keep in mind that the nature of this movement lays deeper than I have described so far. The claim for Theology as a scientific discovery, open to methods and techniques of the Modernity without regard to revelation and the work of the Spirit, can be said to have marked some of its beginning. The loss of the Story aspect of theology is an important premise for the atheist movement. As a theologian, one might say that Schleiermacher is at least partly responsible for this new movement.

The death of God, both in WSCF (World Student Christian Federation) and to some extent in WCC (World Council of Churches) between 1960 and 1970, can also be seen as prerequisite. It is important that WSCF and WCC not only lost God, during this time, but forgot somewhat the importance of laity, and my gut tell me that can be seen in the atheist critic (but I am not ready to go there without further research).

It is worth noting that Dawkins wrote his first really controversial book 1986, Dan Barker, a former Pentecostal preacher came out as an atheist 1984, Sam Harris wrote his first book 2005, and the film Religioulos came out last year, so one can argue that this is in fact a new movement.

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You might ask, so what – how does this relate to our Theology of Mission. You can even point to Bosch when he says:

The first position, that of atheism (“no religion is true” or “all religions are equally untrue”) can be ignored for our purpose since it is not a view entertained by any branch of the Christian theology of religions (David Bosch, 1991, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission,
478).

I think however Bosch is wrong here. First of all I think that the view of atheists is in many ways similar to the exclusivist view of Barth, which Bosch actually quotes later on the same page.

Religion as a human fabrication (478-479).

I think in many ways that Barth’s view is closer to that of the atheists than the self proclaimed know-it-all exclusivist view of the fundamentalist movement or other pre-modern Christian thoughts.

Having said this I am also convinced that the church is in a desperate need to address, attempt to understand, and open a window for dialogue with the atheistic/agnostic minority, not only for their salvation, but due to the fact the majority of them in the Western world are former Christians. The question we must ask and be ready to hear an answer to is “Why did you leave?” Why is the grace not intriguing enough for them? In my opinion, Bosch’s stand, I quoted earlier, rejects the openness needed to start this necessary dialogue.

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We have in Paul’s epistles reference to atheists. In the oldest writing of the New Testament, I.Thessalonians, chapter 4, it seems as Paul is actually refering to moral teachings of Epicureans (which were atheists) as an example of just and good living. However, he adds that the difference lays in the hope of Jesus’ resurrection. This is quite far from the notion that can be found widely in sermons and public opinion, that atheists are somewhat immoral beings (It is worth noting that the biggest giving community on kiva.org the most visible micro loaning operation in the world, are the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious group.).

However this assumption that Atheists must be immoral, is strong and many people are afraid of acknowledging their non-religiosity. In Iceland there are still individuals active in Vantru, that do not use their real names, when writing on Vantru’s website due to possible repercussion in their workplace or by their family. It seems that a lot of nonreligious people are afraid of being considered part of this immoral group. This is even more prominent in the US.

It is important to take notice that the new atheist movement is not unified. One of the branches is to be found with the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, Greg Bernstein. He talks about the movement slightly moving from this reactive mode I described above, to a more proactive mode and stronger “congregational”-like movement, with its own agenda.

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I have been describing a movement I don’t belong to and have fundamental issues with, but I hope I am doing them justice. I have actually been to one of Vantru’s meetings. It was early on in their formation, I had communicated with them on the internet for couple of years, and saw this ad about a gathering. So I went. The topic was a new documentary called “Mótmælandi Íslands,” or “The Protestant of Iceland”, a film about Helgi Hóseason.

Issues to discuss further.

• The lack of usefulness in quoting Tillich and his ultimate concern.
• Kosmin and Keysar: American Religious Identification Survey.
• When addressing the atheist movement, do we go with creeds or deeds?
• If we are one in Christ with all kinds of nut heads, are we still obligated to choose them above the atheists? This is the only time I like to be able to judge between real churches and pseudo-churches.
• How does the critic from atheist affect our understanding of the church, do we repent or do we fight back?
• The recognition Obama gave to the existence of atheists in the US in his inauguration address.
• When we gather for interfaith dialogue, it is popular to warn against proselytizing and talk about the need for respect and common recognition. How does the atheist movement fall into that?

(For Ted Peters take on the movement, see: Atheist Stimulus & Faith Response by Ted Peters, Trinity Seminary Review, Vol. 30, Nr. 2, p. 87-102)