Good but not good enough

Published January 23rd, 2009

I posted recently on how excited I was to hear President Obama refer positively to non-believers in his Inaugural Address. And it’s true, that one comment was worth a great deal to me. However, that does not negate the overwhelming presence of religion and god worship in general during the Inauguration. And there really was an overwhelming amount. I mostly ignored it, as I always do - I’m pretty used to it. I was just glad to have something different and positive happen, any positive acknowledgment is like food to a starving person. Doesn’t matter what else has happened that day, the food is what matters.

But I am not unsympathetic - nor disagreeable - to people who may not have reacted so thankfully to the acknowledgment. Example, one Greta Christina and her recent post. She was not pacified by the crumb thrown to atheists starving for respect and recognition by the American Government. I could post almost her entire entry, there’s so much to agree with. She does not reject Obama’s acknowledgment, let that be clear.

I was watching the Inauguration, with pride and hope and history and joy and relief. And the message I kept hearing was, “We are one country. This country belongs to everybody in it. Everybody has a voice. Everybody has a part to play. Everybody’s experience matters.

“Everybody — except you.

“Everybody except you and the roughly 15% of Americans who don’t believe in God.

“Not you. You’re not part of this. This isn’t for you.”

Yes, yes, I know. I know what you’re about to say. Yes, Obama said the word “non-believers” in his speech. He said, quote:

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.”

And yes, that was pretty neat. As far as I know (does anyone know for sure?), this was the first time that a President’s inaugural address said anything about non-believers in a positive, inclusive way. I’m not going to underestimate that. He said it, and it was pretty darned cool. A milestone, even.

But, she continues on to show how that statement was a solitary island of respect in the great sea of religious fervor.

He said it once… in a speech, one of a series of speeches over the inaugural ceremony, that over and over again hammered home the message, “This is God’s country.”

She goes on in great detail to show exactly how often a god is invoked during the ceremony. If you are a religious person, you probably don’t realize just how often it happens. How pervasive it is. And how exclusionary it feels. Greta minces no words:

Look. You can’t spend all day talking about how God’s grace is upon the nation, and how everything that happens comes from God, and how equality and freedom and opportunity are promised to us by God, and how the elected leader of a democratic country is God’s servant, and how forgetting God is a sin that requires forgiveness — and then mention once that some of the people making up the strong patchwork of this country are non-believers — and call that real inclusivity and recognition of non-believers.

And I happen to agree with her. As excited as I was, I hold no illusions that suddenly the atheists and agnostics are welcomed with open arms. There is a long, long, LONG way to go before atheists are no longer considered unelectable by over 30% of the general population - higher than pretty much any other group. Greta goes a little further in her frustration than I do:

I’m done with it because, when Presidents and other official representatives of our country and our government insist that this is God’s country, the implicit — if unintentional — message is that, if you don’t believe in God, this is not your country.

Screw that.

This is my country, too.

But I totally undersatnd her feeling. It is a very difficult thing to take. Very. I have hope that things will improve, but I’m also prepared for letdowns. This is my country too - I sincerely wish the majority of my countrymen, my “representatives” agreed.

 

Category: religion, Personal, opinion, obama, politics | Tags: