Atheist inclusion in official memorials: some issues

Ophelia Benson relays a request from Dave Muscato of American Atheists concerning the exclusion of atheists and humanists from public memorials. This is an extremely important issue to me, and I think it’s great that it’s being taken on. This will be a positive-critical post. I have some criticisms of Muscato’s procedure, and I have some praise for this broader effort which, unavoidably in this case, takes the form of criticism of the Harvard Humanist Chaplai, uh, Community Project.

Muscato’s request seems clearly to be meant for the leaders and representatives of established organizations. They’re asked to submit statements, including information about the group they represent, some of which might be given by Greg Epstein to “public officials” (we’re not told who) in a private meeting. They’re then encouraged, almost as an afterthought, to solicit remarks from others, some of which might also be passed along.

This seems a strangely and unnecessarily layered process, when much more direct means of seeking the contributions of the members of the community are readily at hand. (Even if some of these organizations didn’t have a sorry recent history of failing to engage, consult with, or respond to the criticisms of their supporters and people in the community generally, this would seem less than ideal.) A less hierarchical, more direct and open approach might also help to alert the community that there’s movement on the issue and get them active. Even if a private meeting with government officials is involved, that certainly doesn’t mean that grassroots public efforts and actions shouldn’t surround it. It can be about educating public officials while also being about educating everyone else, and there’s no reason the latter can’t supplement and accelerate the former.

That said, I’m pleased as punch that this is being raised as a key issue. As Muscato says:

Atheists are hurting from this news as much as anyone else, and part of the grieving process for atheists affected includes things such as representation at the official memorial service and in the community response. When memorial services include exclusively religious language, and especially when public officials use terms such as “godless” as a slur to describe these attacks, atheists who are affected are excluded and shut out from the community.

More than that, it casts grief and mourning as a religious, and not a fundamentally human, experience. For me, it’s not so much a matter of inclusion as it is of this aspect of monopolization. I think what we should have are secular community memorials in which religious groups can participate.

Which brings me to my criticism of the Harvard Humanists. Epstein’s response to the exclusion from the Boston memorial was consistent with the organization’s position in the past:

“The point of today was inclusion,” Epstein lamented. “All they had to do was say one word, or allow one official guest, and they didn’t. I can’t speak to their motivation. I hope it was a matter of ignorance.”

The HH have consistently attempted to identify and join with the “interfaith” community, and I’ve considered that approach unsound for a number of reasons. Epstein is plainly wrong here: the point of an interfaith event is by definition not inclusion. It’s inclusive only of faith (and, let’s be clear, not of all faiths by a long shot). The point is exclusion, both of people and organizations and more seriously of challenges to their monopolization of human experience and public rituals. That shouldn’t be brushed aside or minimized.

Epstein appears to be quietly asking for a seat at the faith table. I don’t think atheists should be included in official interfaith memorials. I don’t think there should be official, or officially endorsed, interfaith memorials. I don’t want us to have standing alongside faiths; I don’t want faiths to have that standing in the first place. There’s no more reason for us to accept religious public memorials than there is for us to accept religious public celebrations or religious public education.

(This is another problem with the procedure here: People might be unsure of whether to contribute statements or express support for this meeting since we don’t know how Epstein will be presenting the atheist position, and some of us have reason to suspect that it might not be in a manner we would support. I wouldn’t expect him to pass along my sentiments, but then this process doesn’t provide a meaningful space for me to air them.)

You could of course argue that this is a step in the right direction - that inclusion will lead to education and understanding and eventually to more or fully secular events. But I won’t accept, even tactically, an inclusion that requires styling atheism or humanism as some form of faith or respecting the conflation of religion and human experience.