{"id":20903,"date":"2015-02-19T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T08:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=20903"},"modified":"2015-02-19T00:01:02","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T08:01:02","slug":"the-atheists-are-coming-out-of-a-closet-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-atheists-are-coming-out-of-a-closet-near-you\/","title":{"rendered":"The Atheists Are Coming \u2013 Out of a Closet Near You"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"At<\/a>
Pitching atheism at the Religion Newswriters Association conference last fall were\u00a0Robyn Blumner, executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, and Todd Stiefel of the Stiefel Freethought Foundation. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhal<\/em>l<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. If the folks behind a new movement called Openly Secular have their way, more and more American atheists will be coming out of their religion-free closets to declare their unbelief to friends, family and coworkers.<\/p>\n

And your neighborhood agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and seculars will be joining them.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Religion reporters were offered all manner of stickers and buttons at\u00a0the conference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nontheists are tired of the discrimination they experience in the U.S., according to the folks at Openly Secular, a campaign organized by a coalition of dozens of secular organization across the country.<\/p>\n

In the South, they say, newcomers are commonly greeted with \u201cWhat church do you go to?\u201d and shunned if the honest answer is \u201cnone.\u201d All around the country, nontheists often find themselves losing jobs, businesses, marriages, and even custody of their children because of their non-believing convictions.<\/p>\n

A 2014 Pew Research Center poll<\/a> indicates that the Openly Secular folks might be\u00a0right about how the American public feels about them. On a scale of one to 100, the pollees gave atheists an average score of 41, just one point above the 40 given to Muslims \u2013 the group that received the lowest score of any group.<\/p>\n

(Jews received the highest score, btw, with a rating of 63. And America’s Catholics and Protestants were a close second with scores of\u00a062 and 61.)<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The Openly Secular\u00a0movement hopes to rectify all this discrimination and marginalization by\u00a0encouraging atheists, humanist and secular people in general to come out of the closet and make their world view known to those around them.\u00a0Being openly instead of secretly secular, it is hoped, will de-stigmatize unbelief and demonstrate that secular people are decent,\u00a0ethical people.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The secular movement seems to be growing. At the very least, its efforts to get some positive ink from the media are\u00a0expanding. At last fall\u2019s meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association in Atlanta, for example, a half-dozen a-religious organizations along with their press kits and give-aways occupied a large section of the exhibit space.<\/p>\n

Among them were the American Humanist Association, the Secular Student Alliance, the Center for Inquiry, the Secular Coalition for America, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, American Atheists.<\/p>\n

One of the fattest press kits handed out came from the Openly Secular campaign. \u201cNon-religious people are treated like second-class citizens,\u201d the hand-out states. They are \u201coften shunned by family and friends. Kids are bullied and even assaulted on the playground; activists receive death threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thinking at Openly Secular is that much of this antipathy could be diffused if more nonreligious folks would take a page from the GLBT movement and come out of the closet \u2013 go public with their thoughts and beliefs. Let their neighbors know that they are just folks \u2013 friendly, concerned citizens.<\/p>\n

As for Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and other religion-dissing atheists who like to slice and dice their opponents, Robyn Blumner of the Richard Dawkins Foundation asserts that Dawkins, for one, is incredibly popular with young non-believers.<\/p>\n

Students wait in lines for an hour and half to see Dawkins, she said. \u201cThey are as flush with excitement as they would be if he were Lady Gaga.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you might like “Want to Shock Your Atheist Family? Convert to Christianity”<\/a>\u00a0and “The Rise of the ‘Nones’ — Young Americans Are Doing Without Church.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The Openly Secular movement is calling on atheists in America to come out of the closet and declare their unbelief to friends, family and coworkers. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1011,34,1404,82,1405,484,1406],"class_list":["post-20903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-atheists","tag-dont-miss","tag-nontheists","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-openly-secular","tag-rna","tag-rna-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}