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July 2009 
Atheism in Politics and Religion
Posted on Apr 14th, 2008
by 
Chris
Chris
[This essay originally appeared as part of an e-zine produced by Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, MI - see http://campaign-archive.com/archive.phtml?cid=EyW0BvCw1A]
Why America Isn't Ready to Consider a Non-Christian President
By Christian Grostic
We’ve seen viable socialist candidates for president and viable libertarian candidates for president. We’ve now seen a viable black candidate for president and a viable woman candidate for president. Never, though, have we seen an atheist come anywhere near the presidency (or anyone outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, for that matter). Why isn’t America ready to consider a non-Christian president?
There are some obvious factors, of course – from prejudice to simple camaraderie – but let me suggest another consideration:
It’s atheism’s fault. Which is to say, it’s our fault.
To explain, let me set a foundation that, I hope, we can agree on. Many of us have an intuition of the spiritual, defined broadly – an intuition of something bigger than ourselves, of something that gives meaning, of God by any name. Historically, we’ve expressed this intuition via various means, culminating in the beautiful expressions of the great mythological traditions. Their myths animated life with meaning and salvation, and they welcomed different peoples into their fold, so long as they were believers.
By the time of the Western Enlightenment, however, the limitations of the great mythological traditions – mythological Christianity in particular – had become clear. We started to develop reason and science; our myths, instead of beautifully expressing our world, started to look inconsistent with our world. We started to develop broader notions of equality and humanity; our myths, instead of uniting us, began to divide us with their exclusivity. And so, in many areas of our lives, we began to add to our mythological past. We began to investigate our world with the tools of science, and we began to organize our communities with the tools of democracy and secular laws.
In the spiritual realm, though, we have not as effectively added to our mythological past. Instead, some of us equated the spiritual with the mythological and declared all spirituality false. Spirituality was replaced with a new mythology – scientific materialism, the belief (which can never be proven) that only the material is real. This materialist atheism added a new option to our choice of mythologies, but added no choice beyond mythology.
No wonder, then, that America won’t consider for president an atheist, or a Muslim, or any other non-Christian. Voting for an atheist president still means voting for an “other,” voting for an outsider. In the political realm, we are equal under the law; in the scientific realm, we are equal investigators of our world; in the spiritual realm, though, we are not one people. We remain fractured along the mythological divisions of our past.
I do not believe, though, that the world must be this way. Atheism need not be simply a materialist mythology alongside the others. The atheist impulse is a call to question our pre-formed beliefs, to apply the tools of our minds to the spiritual realm in order to enrich our spiritual lives. A rational spirituality has found expression before – in the belief of God-in-the-machine of Newton, in the rational God of Kant – and a “spiritual atheism” will always have a place in the constellation of spiritual growth.
Indeed, I see this “spiritual atheism” as part and parcel of our progressive Christianity. As those among us, especially our young people, begin to question our mythologies, we can offer them a place to express their intuition of the spiritual through reason and science. We can help them to add to our mythologies, or even outright replace them, and know that as a step in their spiritual growth. We can cherish our mythology while celebrating others, bound together in our own tradition but recognizing unity in the diversity of traditions and non-traditions alike.
And when a rational spirituality has a place in our country, adding to our mythologies and not just competing with them, we might just pick an atheist for president. After all, they’d simply be one of us.
Why America Isn't Ready to Consider a Non-Christian President
By Christian Grostic
We’ve seen viable socialist candidates for president and viable libertarian candidates for president. We’ve now seen a viable black candidate for president and a viable woman candidate for president. Never, though, have we seen an atheist come anywhere near the presidency (or anyone outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, for that matter). Why isn’t America ready to consider a non-Christian president?
There are some obvious factors, of course – from prejudice to simple camaraderie – but let me suggest another consideration:
It’s atheism’s fault. Which is to say, it’s our fault.
To explain, let me set a foundation that, I hope, we can agree on. Many of us have an intuition of the spiritual, defined broadly – an intuition of something bigger than ourselves, of something that gives meaning, of God by any name. Historically, we’ve expressed this intuition via various means, culminating in the beautiful expressions of the great mythological traditions. Their myths animated life with meaning and salvation, and they welcomed different peoples into their fold, so long as they were believers.
By the time of the Western Enlightenment, however, the limitations of the great mythological traditions – mythological Christianity in particular – had become clear. We started to develop reason and science; our myths, instead of beautifully expressing our world, started to look inconsistent with our world. We started to develop broader notions of equality and humanity; our myths, instead of uniting us, began to divide us with their exclusivity. And so, in many areas of our lives, we began to add to our mythological past. We began to investigate our world with the tools of science, and we began to organize our communities with the tools of democracy and secular laws.
In the spiritual realm, though, we have not as effectively added to our mythological past. Instead, some of us equated the spiritual with the mythological and declared all spirituality false. Spirituality was replaced with a new mythology – scientific materialism, the belief (which can never be proven) that only the material is real. This materialist atheism added a new option to our choice of mythologies, but added no choice beyond mythology.
No wonder, then, that America won’t consider for president an atheist, or a Muslim, or any other non-Christian. Voting for an atheist president still means voting for an “other,” voting for an outsider. In the political realm, we are equal under the law; in the scientific realm, we are equal investigators of our world; in the spiritual realm, though, we are not one people. We remain fractured along the mythological divisions of our past.
I do not believe, though, that the world must be this way. Atheism need not be simply a materialist mythology alongside the others. The atheist impulse is a call to question our pre-formed beliefs, to apply the tools of our minds to the spiritual realm in order to enrich our spiritual lives. A rational spirituality has found expression before – in the belief of God-in-the-machine of Newton, in the rational God of Kant – and a “spiritual atheism” will always have a place in the constellation of spiritual growth.
Indeed, I see this “spiritual atheism” as part and parcel of our progressive Christianity. As those among us, especially our young people, begin to question our mythologies, we can offer them a place to express their intuition of the spiritual through reason and science. We can help them to add to our mythologies, or even outright replace them, and know that as a step in their spiritual growth. We can cherish our mythology while celebrating others, bound together in our own tradition but recognizing unity in the diversity of traditions and non-traditions alike.
And when a rational spirituality has a place in our country, adding to our mythologies and not just competing with them, we might just pick an atheist for president. After all, they’d simply be one of us.
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