Godless (55 page)
Mitch Modisett was a Methodist minister who read more of the liberal theologians than was healthy for his faith. “I realized that I could not go through life explaining to people that I really did not believe all the things that they think I am supposed to believe. I did not want to go through life deceiving people.”
Thomas Vernon was a Baptist minister who lost his faith but tried to stay in the pulpit for a while. “My disenchantment with organized religion was the result more of moral than intellectual difficulties,” he said, in reference to the immorality of the church. He later taught philosophy at the University of Arkansas.
Tom Reed was a Mississippi Roman Catholic priest who realized that the church was hindering civil rights, so he left the ministry for a life of social work. Bob Semes, a former Episcopal priest, left the ministry and started the Jefferson Center in Ashland, Oregon, promoting reason and science over faith and orthodoxy.
Lee Salisbury, a former Pentecostal minister and missionary, now works with Minnesota Atheists as a kind of resident biblical scholar. Paul Heffron is a former Congregationalist-UCC minister, now a nonbeliever, who plays jazz piano in the Minneapolis area (and we love to compare notes, literally!). Richard Pope was ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance and spent 13 years on the staff of the Young Life Campaign. He is now an atheist who says, “I was, for all those years, unknowingly living and preaching a lie.”
Levi Fragell, formerly a fundamentalist minister, is now an outgoing atheist working with the Human-Etisk Forbund, the Norwegian Humanists. Maureen Hart was a Roman Catholic nun but lost her faith while working as a nurse in a mental hospital. She realized there simply cannot be a god who would allow such pointless suffering. Rabbi Sherwin Wine left the faith but not the culture of Judaism, and, as an atheist, started the completely nontheistic Society for Humanistic Judaism.
I recently talked with a former imam of more than 20 years, from an Arabic country now living in the United Kingdom, who asked me not to divulge his name. (He is not afraid for himself, but for his family.) He says it was learning the lies, hypocrisy and fabrication in the translations of the Koran that started him on his path to atheism—to anti-theism, he says, in the case of Islam. We spoke on the phone about the book he is writing. “When I left Islam,” he told me, “I became more human. I used to care what people thought about me, as a religious leader, but now I just want to be an ordinary person, not looking at other people as infidels to save.” He sounded so relieved to be talking friend-to-friend with a former clergyman from another religion that he used to hate. “When you dig a little deeper,” he said, “you learn that Islam is a very fragile religion.” Maybe that’s why it needs to be bolstered with such fanaticism.
I know many more former clergy, representing a cross section of faith from conservative to liberal, from Pentecostals to mainline ministers, but their stories are too numerous to tell here. In 2007, I got a series of e-mails from a Mennonite minister who had lost his faith and told his superiors that he wanted to leave the pulpit. But they asked him if he would stick it out until the end of the year (until they could find a replacement!) This man was torturing himself. He was getting up to preach as an atheist—I know the feeling—and trying not to talk about “God.” Instead, he talked about “love” and “helping others,” as he was counting the weeks until he could be free at last. I also heard from a minister’s wife who has given up her faith, and it seems that her husband may not be too far behind. I told her that I sympathized with their predicament and that it might help them to know that I will not be praying for them.
Of course, the ongoing adventure has been working for more than 20 years with the FFRF. When I first met Foundation founder Anne Gaylor I knew I was in the presence of a gracious genius. I had no idea I would eventually get to work side-by-side with Anne and her daughter, Annie Laurie, trying to keep state and church separate and educating the public about the views of nontheists.
Freethought Today
, published since 1983, is the nation’s only freethought newspaper. We also publish books, including our best-selling
Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible
by Ruth Hurmence Green, Yip Harburg’s
Rhymes For The Irreverent
(illustrated by Seymour Chwast),
One Woman’s Fight
by victorious 1948 Supreme Court litigant Vashti McCollum, my book
Just Pretend: A Freethought Book for Children
, a biography of the illustrious 19-century freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll (
American Infidel,
by Orvin Larson), Anne Gaylor’s
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station
and Annie Laurie’s books
Woe To The Women: the Bible Tells Me So
and
Women Without Superstition: No Gods-No Masters.
, published since 1983, is the nation’s only freethought newspaper. We also publish books, including our best-selling
Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible
by Ruth Hurmence Green, Yip Harburg’s
Rhymes For The Irreverent
(illustrated by Seymour Chwast),
One Woman’s Fight
by victorious 1948 Supreme Court litigant Vashti McCollum, my book
Just Pretend: A Freethought Book for Children
, a biography of the illustrious 19-century freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll (
American Infidel,
by Orvin Larson), Anne Gaylor’s
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station
and Annie Laurie’s books
Woe To The Women: the Bible Tells Me So
and
Women Without Superstition: No Gods-No Masters.
In the past two decades, we’ve had a lot of adventures and worked many long hours to try to counter the din of America’s growing religious right. Some of the most glowing moments have been filing important lawsuits to protect the American principle of the separation between church and state. When we win one of those lawsuits—and we usually do win—that is heaven on earth!
Among recent forays, we started a national Wake Up America campaign in 2006, placing billboards along highways saying “Beware of Dogma” and “Imagine No Religion,” with the goal of having at least one erected in every state (or just about every state, since Hawaii outlaws billboards).
We erect an annual atheistic winter solstice sign at the Wisconsin capitol, protesting religious holiday messages on government property. Anne Gaylor wrote the inscription: “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
We sponsor annual student essay contests with cash awards, one for high school seniors and another for college students. Our Alabama chapter hosts an annual July 4th weekend for southern freethinkers at the Foundation’s southern Freethought Hall on Lake Hypatia (which also boasts the nation’s only Atheists in Foxholes monument, honoring nonbelievers in the military).
We bestow the “Emperor Has No Clothes Award” to public figures who speak plainly on religion. The “Freethinker of the Year Award” is awarded to people who make significant contributions to keep state and church separate. The “Student Activist Award” is self-explanatory. The “Freethought Heroine Award” honors the contributions of women to freethought and state/church separation, and the “Tell It Like It Is Award” goes to brave members of the media who are unafraid to critique religion.
We produce educational products, such as bumper stickers, T-shirts and greeting cards, to publicize freethought views.
The Foundation has also produced a number of freethought music CDs, including
Friendly, Neighborhood Atheist
and
Beware of Dogma
with more than 50 historic and contemporary, irreverent songs. One of my favorite irreverent joys is performing live piano/vocal concerts, singing “You Can’t Win With Original Sin” and “Nothing Fails Like Prayer” in front of an audience of unsanctimonious nonbelievers.
Friendly, Neighborhood Atheist
and
Beware of Dogma
with more than 50 historic and contemporary, irreverent songs. One of my favorite irreverent joys is performing live piano/vocal concerts, singing “You Can’t Win With Original Sin” and “Nothing Fails Like Prayer” in front of an audience of unsanctimonious nonbelievers.
It’s a dad’s place to give advice to his children, and over the years I have repeated two mottos to my kids. The first is “If you stop learning, you stop living.” The second is “Life is to be enjoyed.” I’m glad to brag that I have great kids, and that they have a dad who lives up to the advice he gives them. As an atheist, I have
learned
so much, and I have enjoyed life much more than when I was a believer constrained by orthodoxy. Life is a great adventure!
learned
so much, and I have enjoyed life much more than when I was a believer constrained by orthodoxy. Life is a great adventure!
Chapter Nineteen
Life and Death Matters
It was 5:30 in the morning on Monday, Labor Day 1989, when I heard a thump. I was asleep in bed, or half-asleep, during those early hours when time makes no sense, when you shut off the alarm and close your eyes for just a few more seconds and suddenly an hour has gone by. I might have blinked and wondered, “What was that?” We lived in a four-unit apartment building and often heard muffled noises from the neighbors. I drifted back to sleep.
Annie Laurie was pregnant, early in her eighth month, and we were excited that we were going to have a baby in about seven weeks. She was fretting that the apartment was not ready—no crib or decorations yet in the tiny spare room. We were attending natural birth classes, going through lists of names, not yet knowing if it was a boy or a girl. Her pregnancy was normal. She went to work and lived like always, with some prudent precautions. Two weeks earlier she had “passed” a checkup with her doctor, although she was told her blood pressure was slightly elevated, which was attributed to a rare cup of coffee she had had that day. Two days before she had shown up for another checkup, but her doctor was doing a delivery so Annie Laurie made an appointment for after the three-day Labor Day weekend holiday. On Sunday her fingers and toes seemed slightly swollen and she complained of a headache, so I went to the store to get her some Tylenol. That evening she asked for a back rub, but after that I didn’t realize she was having a restless night or that she had woken up with a bad headache and had gotten out of bed early Monday morning, feeling like something was very wrong.
Then a strange thing happened. As I was falling back asleep after hearing that thump, I noticed that my legs were running down the hallway. I don’t think I was quite awake when I found myself outside the bathroom. I pushed on the door and realized there was a body wedged between it and the wall. Some adrenaline must have kicked in, because time slowed
way
down. Annie Laurie had passed out and fallen back against the wall, her head and neck wedged in the corner with the door. She was unresponsive, convulsing violently, and was not breathing. I sat her up and moved her toward the bathtub where she could lean more upright, and she started gasping for air. I knew I had to call 911 immediately but the closest phone was in the living room, and she kept collapsing and falling back down. I propped her up a second time, then dashed to the phone. It felt like slow motion, but I must have been moving at fast-forward speed. The 911 operator was talking so slowly! I ran back to the bathroom in time to catch Annie Laurie again, still unconscious, shaking, gulping. I remember telling myself, “Think clearly. Don’t goof this up. Do the right thing.” I was so calm that I didn’t have to tell myself not to panic.
way
down. Annie Laurie had passed out and fallen back against the wall, her head and neck wedged in the corner with the door. She was unresponsive, convulsing violently, and was not breathing. I sat her up and moved her toward the bathtub where she could lean more upright, and she started gasping for air. I knew I had to call 911 immediately but the closest phone was in the living room, and she kept collapsing and falling back down. I propped her up a second time, then dashed to the phone. It felt like slow motion, but I must have been moving at fast-forward speed. The 911 operator was talking so slowly! I ran back to the bathroom in time to catch Annie Laurie again, still unconscious, shaking, gulping. I remember telling myself, “Think clearly. Don’t goof this up. Do the right thing.” I was so calm that I didn’t have to tell myself not to panic.
The paramedics got there in a quick four minutes (which seemed like half an hour), pronounced that she was having a seizure and whisked her into the ambulance, telling me not to follow them but to drive to the hospital separately. Even though I thought my wife might be dying, I decided that I would wait to leave until I could methodically collect her purse with her insurance card and identification. I also put some of her belongings in a bag—change of clothes, robe, brush, slippers, the book she had been reading. Then I drove quietly down the nearly deserted, early morning holiday streets of Madison, not knowing what I would find at the hospital.
They didn’t tell me anything, only that she was in the emergency room. I spent an hour making phone calls to relatives and getting her checked in, not knowing how much time she would be spending there. If any. When I reached Annie Laurie’s mother on the phone, she asked me, “She’s not going to die, is she?” I had no idea—she might have already been dead—but I replied, “No, of course not.” Finally, the doctors all came rushing out of emergency with her body on a gurney. Annie Laurie was semiconscious, writhing. They told me she was having an eclamptic seizure. Eclampsia (from the Greek word for “lightning”) is pregnancy-induced hypertension. With most women, there is usually a period of pre-eclampsia during which the condition can be monitored and handled, avoiding full-fledged eclampsia. With Annie Laurie it had come on like, well, lightning. (She had probably been having undiagnosed pre-eclamptic symptoms for about two weeks, but we did not know it.) Without treatment, she would die.
The doctors asked me to follow them to the maternity ward, because the only cure for eclampsia is immediate delivery. Annie Laurie was conscious enough to hear the medical staff say they were taking her to the birthing room, and she tried to get off the gurney, saying, “No! It’s too soon for delivery.” Two young male interns were walking down the halls with us, and one of them blurted out, “Wow. A real pre-eclamptic seizure!” in a tone of amazement. The other intern said, “This is not pre-eclamptic. This is full eclampsia!” Apparently eclampsia is now very rare in our country. Although the interns’ detached comments during our emergency seemed a bit undiplomatic—“Wow, look, she’s actually dying!”—I guess we should be glad that we provided future doctors with a real-life learning experience.
The maternity ward, when we arrived, seemed like a scene in a movie. Eleven people descended out of nowhere with tubes and monitoring gadgets and a gas mask, leaving and entering the room, calmly and efficiently administering their services. There was about an hour’s wait until Annie Laurie became stabilized. Amazingly, even though she was drifting in and out of consciousness, she was cognizant enough to joke that after all, “It
is
Labor Day.” There was nothing I could do but sit off to the side and watch them work as a woman giving birth in the next room was screaming full-throated profanity—well, as Annie Laurie noted,
somebody
should be in labor that day.
is
Labor Day.” There was nothing I could do but sit off to the side and watch them work as a woman giving birth in the next room was screaming full-throated profanity—well, as Annie Laurie noted,
somebody
should be in labor that day.
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