Susan Jacoby, in her final On Faith article at WashPo wrote of American atheism’s identity crisis. In it she rightly calls for atheism to reject the religious right’s emerging ideal of religious liberty, which is “liberty only for themselves.” Instead it should look to the founders’ broader notion of religious liberty, which not only gives all believers the right to “believe and proselytize as they wish without government interference” and secures “the rights of minority religions and of those who do not believe in any religion to be free from harassment by a state-favored religious majority.”
She is exactly right about this. But there are problems, she says. One impediment to moving this agenda forward is the cartoon version of atheism many Christians—many of whom are in power these days—carry around with them. It is indeed a serious issue. The stereotype, held by many religious believers, of “atheists [as] bloodless elitists (never honest Christian folk) who substitute science with a capital ‘S’ for God with a capital ‘G,’” is untrue, and therefore damaging to all involved.
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