c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) ‘Tis the season to get all worked up over religious imagery in public places. From the talking heads of cable news to local media across the country, the secularization of Christmas _ or should I say, “the Holidays” _ is receiving more attention than ever.

We need not even ask where American secularists stand on this issue. For an obsessive focus on maintaining rigid church-state boundaries is what American secularism is all about.

From bracing for judicial battles when nativity scenes, gigantic menorahs, and inexplicably pious images of Frosty-the-Snowman pop up like mushrooms on federal property; to preventing “intelligent design” theory from making inroads into the nation’s public schools; to scrutinizing Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s position on religious liberty, it is never difficult to predict American secularism’s next political move.

But what if non-belief in America were not defined by excessive entanglement with establishment adjudication? What would its next move be then?

First and foremost, secularism is in desperate need of new ideas. It could start by rethinking its politics, above all its longstanding fealty to the Democratic Party. It is not a coincidence that the term “Secular Right” sounds like an oxymoron.

Of course, when election time rolls around few Democrats would dare associate with secularism. Outside of the nation’s bluest precincts, could one run a successful campaign for Congress as a pronounced atheist or agnostic? Godlessness is a taboo in American political culture. Instead, the rhetoric of personal religiosity is obligatory for those seeking high office (a fact belatedly understood by John Kerry’s handlers who had him quoting Scripture in the waning months of his presidential campaign).

As an experiment, secularists should demand a “Rejecting God is All-American” plank in the 2008 Democratic Party Platform. And if the party is not feeling particularly suicidal on the day of that request, then the Secular Left will have learned a valuable lesson: They are no electoral prize.

This may come as something of a surprise to American nonbelievers who have always fancied themselves to be a mass movement. One thinks of Daniel Dennett’s much ballyhooed “Bright” manifesto published on the opinion page of the New York Times on July 12, 2003. The Tufts University professor concluded that 27 million non-believing “Brights” resided in the U.S.

However, the percentage of Americans actively belonging to one of the many secular micro-movements, as opposed to those who casually tell a demographer they do not believe in God or have no religious preference, is actually quite small. A more thoughtful and cunning secularism would seek to understand how a tiny minority composed of cultural elites can quietly but effectively defend its interests by working both ends of the political system.

Secularism not only lacks ideas about itself, but about its adversary as well. Nonbelievers have expended so much time and energy on political and legal advocacy that they have neglected the foundational texts, history and theological complexities of the religions that they so oppose. Aside from being a political liability, this has resulted in the dumbing-down of non-belief.

By turning their backs on the universe of religious thought, atheists and agnostics have deprived themselves of some of the most important resources civilization has ever produced for the contemplation of philosophy, social justice, art and ethics.

The days of towering secular thinkers such as Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Russell, Sartre and countless others are long past. Few were preoccupied with the church-state question, yet nearly all were interested in religion and often quite knowledgeable about its contents. Might there be a correlation between secularism’s current disinterest in religion and the dearth of prominent non-believing intellectuals?

In the words of the historian Wilfred McClay, contemporary secularism lacks “an energizing vision.” No such vision will emerge if non-believers fail to question a dogma that assumes their mission consists solely of combating the “Religious Right.” Nor will it emerge without the development of a diverse and self-critical intelligentsia. Non-belief will only re-energize itself when it makes the move from being an inconsequential political interest group to restoring itself as the formidable cultural movement that it once was.

MO/RB END RNS

(Jacques Berlinerblau is a visiting professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington. He is also the author of the recently released “The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously.”)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Jacques Berlinerblau, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.