civilbrights

• [syndicated|from secularoutpost.blogspot.com]

Secular nationalism might not take a stand on supernatural beliefs, but it restricts the public role of religion. Citizens are expected to have an allegiance to a modern state and its political process, while their specifically religious commitments get relegated to private life. Legitimate coercion, including violence, and the task of imposing public order are monopolized by a secular state. Religions that emphasize cosmic order reflected on Earth, and that legitimize coercion in the context of a divine social order, get marginalized.

To many of us, this is right and proper. We don't have to be nonbelievers; more individualist religious believers can also take a secular political framework for granted. But life can get complicated, especially when our very notion of what binds us as citizens is closely connected to religion.

For example, to many Americans, the United States is a Christian country. This does not mean that government institutions should be linked to particular churches, or that non-Christian minorities should be second class citizens. It does mean, however, that many Americans expect that public life should have a generically Christian moral coloring. Being a good American means accepting the framework of a Protestant civilization—Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims can be welcome, provided they organize themselves similarly to a Protestant denomination and do not challenge the generic civil religion of the country. Secularists, when they push principles like church-state separation too far, threaten the public moral order.

Such informal cultural ties between citizenship and religious identity are common in other countries as well. Being Polish means, to a large degree, being a Catholic by culture and perhaps practice. Being Turkish means being a Muslim—most Turks will not call a member of a religious minority Turkish, even if Turkish is their mother tongue and they have always been a Turkish citizen.

And in many countries, secular nationalism that tries to privatize religion, and religious nationalism that demands explicit acknowledgment of a religious moral order, comes into conflict. In Sri Lanka, Sinhalese Buddhists demand that all citizens, of every religion, be aware of a unifying overall Buddhist culture that defines Sri Lanka. Tamils resist, often violently. In India, movements and political parties upholding hindutva clash with secularists, and with Muslims. In Egypt, the government is never Muslim enough for the Islamists, even though Egyptian culture and politics have been re-Islamized with a vengeance in the last decades. The status of Copts is always a problem. And so on, practically all over the world.

Mark Juergensmeyer's Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda, is a very interesting guide to what he describes as a global rebellion against secular nationalism. A more explicitly religious nationalism is attractive in non-Western countries who want to throw off the cultural aspects of colonialism and establish a more authentic modernity. But it also finds significant constituencies in secular Western countries.

There is a lot in the book that will interest secularists in particular. For example, Juergensmeyer makes the observation that secularism is the prime enemy for religious nationalists, even more so than religious minorities with whom they may also clash. Finding some accommodation with another religious community is not impossible. But,

Could the accommodation approach work with secular minorities? Even in traditional religious cultures there are people who were raised in religious households but who, through travel, education, or association with modern urban culture, have lost interest in religion. Should there not be a safe cultural haven for such people in a religious society, just as the cultures of Copts and other minorities are maintained as islands in seas of religiosity? From most religious nationalists to whom I posed the question, the answer was a resounding no. They could accept the idea that other religious traditions provide valid alternatives to their own religious law but not secular culture: it has, in their eyes, no links with a higher truth. From their point of view, it is simply antireligion. Some religious nationalists found it difficult to accept secularism even in Europe and the United States, where, they felt, Christianity failed to keep its backsliders in line. Still, it seems to me that the logic of the two-level-shari'a admists at least the possibility of islands of different cultures within a religious state. [Page 237.]

I can add my own observations in support of this. Among Turkish Islamists, the idea of treating secularists as a separate "religious" community with its own laws and communal rights has been discussed. It doesn't seem to me to have got far. Secularism is too alien, too much the enemy.

If the political trend today is toward religious rather than secular nationalism, secularists and nonbelievers have to give serious thought to how we might survive in such public environments. This does not mean that the trend is toward some premodern fantasy of being governed by pure religious laws. Religious political movements are often pragmatic and not as violent as their stereotype. Their main demand is that religion take a leading role in public legitimization, and that religion inform the overall moral climate of a society. They are not trying to abolish modern political forms. But nonetheless, the success of religious politics is inevitably a loss for those of us who identify with more secular political aspirations.

I have passed the borders of atheism, too.
Beyond the borders full of the waves of worshiping
I have found people who
they are more comfort without God.
They have nouns
as the same that we choose for our toys,
But neither they kill,
nor they deliver.
They have been born just one time,
neither any God has created,
nor any God kills
our species has created them
and they are stronger than us.
They think like us,
they walk, and act.
It seems that they are the "Peace" itself,
neither they fight,
nor they worship.
My friends
my religious sisters and brothers;
I have passed the borders of worshipping.
I love you
not for the sake of God,
but for the sake of human;
for the sake of yourself,
If you feel yet that a God has created us,
then forget about me.

• [groups|New Hampshire Brights]
• [music|In Rainbows - Radiohead]

Hello NH Brights!

I hope that I'm not writing this just to myself and that soon there will be plenty of New Hampshire-ite Brights on this site. :)
I'll be honest and say that I'm for the most part 'closeted' about my atheism and that finding this safe-haven for NH Brights is a pleasant surprise. Lately I've been feeling like the only atheist in NH, although I know there's plenty of us out there! I was raised Baptist (but 'New England' Baptist, so a lot more boring than Southern Baptist, but just as fundamental) but there was a skeptical streak in me from a very early age. My life as a Christian was defined by my wrestling with skepticism, but ultimately I've come out on the other side of belief as a free thinker. It's a relief and a source of growing pride for me, but still a pride I cannot share with my family. I may have lost my fear of Hell, but I know if they knew about my non-belief that they wouldn't be able to look at me without picturing hell fires. That wouldn't be because they hate me but because they would see an eternity of torment ahead of me... which would kill them to think about. Also, the goal of Xian* parents is to raise godly children so having an atheist for a daughter would be a damnable failure ("raise [kids] up in the way they should go and the will never leave the path"... forgot where that comes from in the bible). Of course, maybe if I was out it might stir some skepticism inside them and they too may be able to "break the spell".

If anyone has any advice or experience with 'coming out' to staunch Xian friends/family please get in touch with me. :)

But enough about me... what about us? People have said that organizing atheists (and other people that can qualify as Brights) is like herding cats, but I feel that the term Bright coupled with the recent outburst in pro-atheist thought in popular culture might lead to an Pride movement. Of course, websites like civilbrights is a testament to that, so what I'm saying is nothing new. Therefore, returning to the original question, what do we want this group to be and what (if anything) should we do?

Also, what do you think of the term "Bright"? It's still fairly new to me so I'm still working out my opinions on it, but I'm wondering if anyone out there has mulled it over and come to any conclusions. For example, if you call yourself a Bright, what (if anything) did you call yourself before? How did you make the switch or decide to layer Bright onto your self?

These are a good handful of questions so I'll stop here, but I hope this is just the beginning of a conversation and perhaps a community.

Cheers,
Erin

* xian, it's like x-mas. I use it a lot.

• [groups|San Diego North County]
• [music|"A Ghost is Born" by Wilco]

Some time ago, a friend of mine suggested The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins to me. I read it and found the Brights mentioned, so I looked it up, and here I am. I'm glad someone is finally taking a stand for people who have been subjugated by religion and the ideas of the religious. I grew up in a small town, so I know how easily it is to be harassed for being an atheist.

Hi All,

Can anyone tell me if there is an exisiting (or planned) Brisbane Brights Group?

I look forward to hearing I'm not alone!

The plural of DISGLAIR is DISGLAIR. It's invariable.

So it follows that;-

* "The Brights" would be "Y Disglair"
* "The Brights' Movement" : "Mudiad y Disglair"
* "The Brights of Wales" : "Disglair Cymru"
* "Brights in Wales" : "Y Disglair yn Nghymru"
and so on.

Rhys.

We’re Brights and we want to find simple effective methods to change the world for the better. Because we’re spread out from Santa Monica to Alta Loma we held the first meeting of our nascent L.A. Bright group in a centrally located restaurant. We decided to start a letter writing campaign. We will notify each other when we see Super-influenced editorials, and write individual letters to the newspapers that publish them. We hope that the papers will sense a larger constituency of non-Super readers and print some of our comments.

Would you like to help? Please join us. We are eager to find new methods to influence our society in Bright ways. We want to meet regularly for fun and to brainstorm new ways to spread the Bright word. It is truly wonderful to be able to relax and talk with a group of Brights, knowing that there are no Supers in the group who will be offended by Bright conversation. Put yourself in the group. Reply via email to this message. Let us know when and where you’d like to get together.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Gandhi

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Confucius

Take that step.

Hi, I'm a newbie Bright from Poland, and am looking for other polish people to talk, and maybe even create a polish BLC?
If you are, drop a mail at gene@o2.pl
Of course, everyone is invited to write to me :)