Unbelieveable?

There's an interesting post from UK Polling Report, talking about the factors that might cause people to change their mind about a political candidate, if discovered. The results are interesting, and the post goes through them in a bit more detail, but the one that stands out to me is the one concerning atheism.

While in the UK only 20% would refuse to vote for an atheist, similar to the numbers for a gay or Muslim candidate, in the US the number was 53%. Note the question:

If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be an atheist, would you vote for that person?

So 53% of the American electorate would refuse to vote for a member of their own party who happened to be an atheist. That is, given the binary presidential situation in the US, they would consider someone whose views they broadly agreed with (except, presumably, on religion) to be unsuitable for office, and would either actively help, or passively allow, someone with opposing political views to get into office instead.

Clearly, there is the possibility that some people may have answered a question that was not asked (Would you like an atheist to be president), instead of considering the exact phrasing of the query, but if we assume that this is not a large number (since otherwise the survey results are obviously useless), this means that 53% of the electorate would put the issue of their candidate's personal view on religion above all other issues. They might agree with their candidate on the economy, on immigration, on healthcare, on education, on Iraq, on oil, on the environment, on everything but whether God exists or not, and that would be enough for them to prefer someone who disagrees with them on all those matters to become president.

Perhaps in reality people would react differently - 38% of conservatives said they wouldn't vote for someone who was 72 years old, but McCain doesn't seem to have dropped that much of the Republican vote, suggesting that some of those could be won round by other factors. Also there is no allowance for the opponent's views, which could affect voters, or the existance of third candidates (which would seem to become more important if one of the major parties fielded a candidate with one of these "problem" characteristics).

Overall, the results pretty much exclude an 'out-of-the-closet' atheist candidate from openly appearing in any electoral race, simply because they will not be able to guarantee enough votes from their base to get official backing. They'll never get the votes because there is a large backdrop of prejudice against them across the board, and so they'd get no significant financial backing or public endorsements.

Looking at the historical data that's also linked, running as an atheist candidate today would be roughly equivalent to running as a woman in 1945, or as an African-American in 1958, both of which would be candidates running so much against ingrained prejudice as to have no chance of winning.

I'd encourage people to glance through the other results in those posts, too - there's lots of interesting data there on other demographics and historical comparisons.

So, would you vote for an atheist? And if not, why not?

The House of Bishops

While my Christian credentials may be somewhat dubious, I am nothing if not a feminist, in the truest sense of the word. To me, feminism means simply this: that you believe in equality between men and women. Not subjugation of men by women, not compulsory castration of men by women, but a world of equal rights, equal pay and equal freedoms. Where women don't ever have to be afraid of men and women's behaviour is not limited by male expectation or prejudice.

That's not an all-encompassing definition and could probably use a little work, but it's the best I can come up with on the fly.

In the light of my feminist convictions, and my mother's professional vocation as a chaplain, I would like to bring this to your attention. In a large part because of what she has achieved and had to put up with in her professional life, there is no one I have a higher regard for than my mum.

It's a petition for lay members of the Church of England to be submitted to the House of Bishops asking that they appoint senior female clergy to bishoprics. In my view, the idea of women bishops was effectively sanctioned when they allowed the first women to be ordained. If you're going to let them in at the lowest rung of the ladder and apply a meritocracy, it's inevitable that some will eventually become suitably qualified for such positions.

I'm not saying you have to sign it and for some of you, it might not accord with your own religious beliefs, or lack of. But I thought I'd throw it out there and see what happened...

(cross-posted to An immedia reaction)

Losing my religion

That's me in the corner... that's me in the spotlight

Consider this:
Patrick spent Sunday morning reading Philip Pullman's new short story "Once upon a time in the North" and fannying about on Facebook. Enitrely suitable Sunday morning fare for an atheist you would think. And you'd be right. But he was only up so absurdly early because I had woken him up to buy a new parking ticket for his car before some officious warden slapped a £60 on his ass, and then sodded off to church. Me that is, not the traffic warden.

I had invited him, if he wished to go, the main attraction, other than God, being the chance to see me looking like a meringue in a royal blue cassock and white surplice in my weekend persona, a chorister of St Laurence's Church, Ludlow. I joined the choir for selfish motives: I was lonely and wanted to meet people, for personal and professional reasons. I also like singing and I have a background in (for simplicity's sake) "classical" music. And the part of me that was a practicing Christian for the first 19 or so years of my life idly wondered if getting back into regular contact with religious types might help me resolve my inner turmoil as far as religion is concerned.

I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try...

I've not attended as religiously (hah) as I'd like. Weekends represent golden opportunities to get out of Ludlow (lovely people, very beautiful town, no one between the ages of 20 and 27 in evidence) and I often book them up miles in advance. But recently, I've been trying to be around more. I made a commitment to the choir and they need me to turn up, at most there's only ever four or five people on the alto part, including me. We're the second largest group, but often there's only two or three of us. And very often, as I trip over the hem of my cassock while trying to sight-read the alto line in the processional hymn while we walk between the pews and up into the choir stalls, I wonder what I'm doing there.

My childhood Christianity was not something I had a choice in, but I loved it completely. I was baptised when I was 4 months old. I was admitted to communion when I was 7 (a strange rite only my church seemed to do which let young children have a piece of bread but not drink wine. But yay! Inclusion and a sense of maturity!) and confirmed when I was 14. We were Anglo-Catholic. I think, technically, high church CofE. We believed in seven sacraments (baptism, ordination, marriage, confirmation, communion, extreme unction, reconciliation) not two (baptism and ordination) but we only used incense about three times a year and we sang music from all over the world and from throughout time. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, we learnt the South African National Anthem, in South African. When we got a new vicar from Zambia, we learnt the Agnus Dei in Zambian. It goes like this... Kambelele ka mlungu, muvimyapo viipa, vya vyalo vyonse, tipe tendere wanu, kambelele ka mlungu muvimyapo viipa, vya vyalo vyonse, tichitile lusungu. Though I might have got the verses the wrong way round.

The congregation was a good mix, people of every ethnic background you find in Sarf Eeest Lunnon. Africans, Asians, Europeans. I knew everyone, and a lot of people knew me. All the old ladies cooed over me at my christening. By the time I was 10 I had no idea who they were, but they would comment on every stage of my life as if they were relatives. My mum was very involved in our church and got ordained when I was 12 or 13. I was very proud of her. No one else's mum was a priest. Though I grew tired of fending off questions about whether she was a "priestess" ("Yes, she sacrifices bulls in temples"), was my dad a priest? Do priests have to marry priests? ("Er no, and no."), and "I thought priests couldn't marry/have children?" ("That's Catholics").

I loved God and God loved me. I never knew where I got this image from, but when I was 5, I thought God was a denim-wearing, ginger-haired man with a low-grade buzz cut who drove around the universe on a giant motorbike. A sort of benevolent biker dad if you will. I had a kids' bible that showed God sitting on his throne as a white figure, featureless, shining. A silhouette in reverse. My ginger-haired, extra biker dad fitted right into that outline as a far as I was concerned.

When I reached 16, I stopped going to church. Everyone my age left and GCSEs took up more and more time. Choir practice on a Friday evening and first thing on Sunday got in the way. But I still called myself a Christian, would still have said I believed, and I went to Southwark Cathedral on feast days to hear my sister sing in only the third all girls cathedral choir in the country. She can get married in that cathedral (Lucky cow. I want to get married in a cathedral dammit).

And then, in my first year of university, I went out with The Scientific Atheist. He was supremely confident in his worldview, had read a lot more books than me, debated a lot more than I did and thought Richard Dawkins was lord. After one conversation where he had pretty much destroyed everything I had ever believed in, ("Alright you can say there is room for a god in the creation model as impetus for a big bang but it makes no sense that he'd be a personal god, even if he did exist as a starting force..." The argument was a lot longer than that, but we're coming up for six years ago and I'm hazy on details..) I asked if there was anything else he wanted to add. He said: "I'm a little disappointed you're not taking on board what I've said and have decided to live your life accordingly."

I told him he was just as bad as a religious fundamentalist. And he, who had said discussing these things was all about rationalism, not emotion, was hurt and offended. But I pointed out destroying everything I'd lived my life by up until that point was hardly going to cause me to turn round and embrace him, tears of thanks streaming down my face. "Oh. I didn't think of it like that." Evidently not.

Every whisper of every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you...

And in later years, when I actually started reading the work of Richard Dawkins and seeing him on television, in much the same way that moderate Christians cringe when they hear evangelicals advocating the burning of homosexuals, I decided I was never going to call myself an atheist while Dawkins was guiding that particular bandwagon. He doesn't seem to understand that telling people they are stupid, that they are automatons whose emotions are controlled by chemical reactions, is not going to convince them. He may be correct, but he's never going to convert anyone by insulting them.

The Scientific Atheist expected me to pathetically grateful that he had removed the blinkers from my vision. But too often, I just find myself lost. I'm working out my own morality, piece by piece. It's not self-consistent yet, and it may never be, but I hope one day it will be. And so, we come back to me, in church, on a Sunday. Wondering what's it all about, when you get right down to it. I usually ignore the service, for the most part, unless the preacher grabs my interest immediately. This is not a reflection on the quality of the worship, but I'm having my own communion with God. If He's not there, the Christian framework that I was brought up with, that our country's legal system is based on, at least gives me a good basis for working out my personal dos and don'ts. And if He is there, I know He'll understand why I think what I think and do what I'm doing.

Walking in a Winter(val) Wonderland

There was a story on the BBC website last week about the Christmas message from the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan (full transcript can be found here) in which he rails against 'atheistic fundamentalism'.

I think I would agree with him when he says that fundamentalism of any kind is dangerous, but I would certainly disagree on his point that atheistic fundamentalism is comparable to religious fundamentalism in either occurrence or danger. He lists a number of perceived instances of atheistic fundamentalism, many of which are well known myths (addressed nicely by Oliver Burkeman here) or else simply smaller incidents blown out of proportion (such as the BA uniform controversy). In these smaller incidents, such as the BA situation and a couple of those mentioned in Burkeman's article, the decision or policy was reversed or amended in response to the situation, but this is rarely reported when the incident is brought up later by the media.

I mentioned in an earlier post about Mark Prichard's comments that I thought a lot of the instances of 'Christianophobia' that he mentioned were simply caused by changing social norms and increasing multiculturalism, and I think that the same point stands here. To take the BA example, as the company took on more and more Sikh and Muslim workers, there was bound to come a point when it would need to address its uniform policy on religious garments, and this is what happened. The problem is that the incident is not remembered as the point that BA was prompted to amend one of its employee clothing regulations, it is remembered as the point that a Christian employee was suspended from work for being a Christian.

Dr Morgan says: "To have a coherent and rational debate about the tenets of the Christianity is perfectly natural. To have a virulent, almost irrational attack upon it claiming that what is being said is self evidently true is dangerous". I think I agree with this point, but I think also that it is a point that could be applied to any religious position. I don't believe that he has provided any examples in his address of anyone (particularly anyone expressly atheistic) exhibiting "virulent, almost irrational attack[s]" on Christianity (or, indeed, any religious position), while at the same time, anyone who has heard a sermon in Church has heard a religious leader "claiming that what is being said is self evidently true".

I suspect that there are people out there who fit Dr. Morgan's criteria for a 'fundamentalist atheist', I just don't believe that there exist any in a position of power or influence comparable to those positions held by fundamentalists from other religious views.

The rest of his address does not seem to really touch on atheistic fundamentalism again, since he begins to talk about "the language of expulsion and exclusivity, of extremism and polarisation, and the claim that because God is on our side, He is not on yours". This clearly doesn't make sense with regards to atheistic fundamentalism, and neither does his use of the story of the reaction to Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry: "The God they want is a far more tribal figure, a God made in their own image, a God whom they can control and manipulate and manage", since the atheistic fundamentalist would have no desires at all about the attributes of something non-existent.

Christmas Xmas is coming.

The BBC had an article on Tuesday about MP Mark Pritchard calling for a parliamentary debate on the subject of 'Christianophobia'. The transcript of the debate can be found here, for anyone who enjoys an evening spent reading Hansard. Andy also produced a post on the dilution of Christmas. When I see two articles talking about similar things, I do like to connect them on here, so thought I should at least comment.

Mark Pritchard cites a number of examples of Christianophobia in modern society: the difficulty in finding religious cards and advent calenders and the creeping disappearance of Nativity plays from schools. He wonders why these things are disappearing from our society when he has "never met a single Muslim, Jew, Sikh or Buddhist, or person of any other faith, who has told me that they object to Christians celebrating Christmas". He then describes the idea that anyone might be offended by "Christians celebrating Christmas" as a "false, secular-driven proposition".

I think that I would put the change more down to the changing make up of our society. As we become a more multicultural nation, as more and more people grow up as non-Christian citizens of this country, the socially anchored Christian traditions begin to look more and more out of place. Should a school get children to take part in a Nativity play because it reflects the traditions of the country, or should they be free to do something that the children will be able to relate to more easily. Should greeting cards companies and manufacturers of other seasonal cardboard merchandise be condemned for selling cards that appeal to the widest range of potential consumers? Religious Christmas cards are still available, but, as with many other specialist goods, you may have to go to a more specialist supplier. Luckily, with the internet, such a search can take less than a second.

The point is that it is not a secular plot to stop Christians from celebrating Christmas, it is the reaction of the market (in the case of cards and calendars) and society (in the case of nativity plays) to the changes brought about by multiculturalism.

Mark Pritchard is also concerned about the disparate levels of government funding and attention given to minority religious festivals. He says "The Department for Transport has admitted sending staff to minority religious events, but did not “officially” participate in Christmas celebrations. At the Foreign Office [...] Muslim and Chinese religious events are marked with VIP receptions. I have no objection to that, or to the Home Office celebrating Muslim and Hindu festivals, but why is Easter completely ignored?". I fear that any government involvement in Christmas or Easter would be lost in the huge tidal wave of commercial attention both holidays get from the private sector. Ultimately, the government is giving a boost to minority festivals on the understanding that Christmas and Easter don't need extra funding or support to get their message out. If you are the biggest kid in the class, it's only natural for people to assume that you can stand up for yourself.

He goes on to say: "Today, many people from the Christian tradition feel that any religious allegiance is permissible as long as it is not the Christian tradition, and that everything is tolerated except a Christian world view". This seems like a pretty bizarre claim. In a country where the monarchy, the prime minister, most of the cabinet and 70% of the population ostensibly hold your world view, it is a little rich to come out and claim that your beliefs are not being tolerated.

He ties all of his points together by appealing to the government not to let the Christian heritage that has built and shaped this country be lost, and I would agree that we should not lose sight of where this country has come from. However, it is also vital that we do not try and stifle the changes that are happening in society because they conflict with tradition. We have a strong Christian tradition that has done much good for this country, and that continues to do so. What we should not do is allow the rose-tinted view of that heritage to prevent us from doing the best thing for the future of our nation and our society.

So, how do I feel about Christmas? I have no problem using the word to describe the day, the time of year or the holiday. I have no problem with other people wishing me a happy Christmas and I have no problem with all of the religious overtones of a lot of what goes on. I participate in the religious side of the holiday for as much as I need to in order to see my friends and family, in order to enjoy the time of year with the people I love, and in order to best fill the time I have off from work.

Ultimately, my participation in Christmas and Easter is driven almost entirely by social tradition. We have four public holidays split across the two events, and so I base my seasonal time-off around them, as everyone did when we were at school. If the religious aspect of the celebration was moved to a different date, I wouldn't change when I celebrated or what I did, but if the bank holidays changed, I may alter the way I spent this time of year.

I am happy for people to celebrate Jesus' birth as long as they are happy for me to celebrate being allowed a lie in for a couple of weeks.

This actually took me ages to write, which was surprising as it's the kind of thing I find usually comes pretty easily. I'm not entirely happy with the way I structured it and don't think I included everything I wanted to, but I think I've exhausted my creativity for today, so I'll have to leave it there.