One Nation, Not Under God

Picture this scene: A recently elected president announces that he will decline to place his hand on a Bible when taking the oath of office. When people object, he replies that he doesn’t believe in God, so it wouldn’t make much sense for him to go through the motions of a religious ritual when he does not share that religion’s beliefs.

Chances are you think such a thing is unlikely. After all, the politician would never have gotten elected in the first place without proclaiming his belief in God. It has happened, however—just not in America. The current prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, is forthright about her atheism and did not put her hand on a Bible at her 2010 swearing-in, generating a meaningful but not outsize controversy.

Back here in the United States, however, our politics seem to be consumed more with religion than they have been in quite a while. That’s partly because we’re in the midst of a contentious Republican primary in which candidates are competing to see which totems of identification they can brandish with the most vigor, and religion is high on the list. So Newt Gingrich says that President Barack Obama “has basically declared war on the Catholic Church” because his administration thinks that the Church’s affiliated organizations don’t have the right to decide which laws they will obey and which they won’t. Rick Santorum believes that Satan is “attacking the great institutions of America,” and that mainline Protestantism “is in a shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it,” views which have won him the adoration of evangelical Republicans across the country. And as is the conservative habit in recent years, much of the rhetoric centers on the idea of victimization: that Christians are being hounded and oppressed by an aggressive secular state out to destroy their faith.

To which most atheists would reply: Were we engaged in a powerful conspiracy to destroy religion? I must have misplaced my War on Christianity organizing committee meeting invitation.
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