The University’s Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics club hosted Reason on the Bayou on Sunday, Louisiana’s first-ever convention for the secular community.
Overall, it was an impressive event, featuring secular student groups from universities across the South and speakers from across the country.
Given the overwhelming Christian majority in the South, it’s vital for such groups in the region to unite, organize and act.
But the nonreligious community needs to be careful not to become known as the anti-religious community.
Andrew Seidel, an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, spoke at the convention, highlighting the importance of vocally opposing every violation of the separation of church and state. He referenced Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point,” saying that every intrusion of religion, no matter how small, sets a precedent that can allow larger violations to happen.
But I think the conference could take a different lesson from Gladwell.
The secular community itself is at a tipping point right now, and there are two paths it can take: It can work its way into the public dialogue by becoming an important part of community, or it can continue to antagonize religious organizations and be dismissed as just another side of the fanatic fringe.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t pursue violations of church and state, because it’s on the right side. We shouldn’t be teaching creationism in public schools or opening legislative sessions with a prayer.
Several speakers gave accounts of brave people who stood up for separation of church and state and suffered for it. One woman in Oklahoma was beaten, threatened and had her house burned down for trying to close a prayer group in her kids’ elementary school.
It was a harrowing story, but from the way it was framed, you might start to think it was the norm.
The simple fact is religious people are the majority in the United States and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Demonizing them will only create division and make your people look bad.
If you want to stop intolerance against atheists and fight against religious hegemony, make people like you. Work with religious groups. Volunteer for good causes. Contribute to the community.
It’s not fair that secularists have to work just to be accepted by the general public, but that’s the way it is. They can deal with it, build up some esteem in the community and eventually get their goals accomplished, or they can whine about it and continue to be ostracized.
This is where the secular community’s leadership needs to come in. You can’t make social change without organization and planning.
Gladwell wrote a column in The New Yorker in 2010 criticizing so-called “Facebook activists” for overestimating the impact of social media on social change. Real revolutions, he said, must be planned and executed meticulously to be successful. It was only due to organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the NAACP that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was successful in changing society.
The secular community needs its own version of the NAACP to make a plan and choose its battles.
Gordon Maples, regional coordinator for the Secular Student Alliance and the first speaker at the conference, seemed to be one of the few speakers aware of this need.
The SSA is a national organization that offers support to University secular groups, and it is in a prime position to take the lead for the secular community.
With the right people in charge, they might just be able to get something done.
Gordon Brillon is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Lincoln, R.I.
