Ellen Johnson has been an activist for American Atheists (AA) since
1978. In addition to having served on the AA Board of Directors,
she was also the New Jersey representative for ten years. Currently,
she is the President of AA. She considers herself “one of
the fortunate few who grew up in an Atheist home.” She is
raising her two children in an Atheist environment.
American
Atheists is an organization dedicated to securing the civil liberties
of Atheists and the complete separation of Church and State. It
grew out of the historic MURRAY v. CURLETT (1963) U.S. Supreme
Court case filed by an Atheist, Madalyn Murray, which removed
coercive, unison prayer and Bible verse recitation from the public
schools.
I have long hoped to interview Ellen Johnson, given her commitment
to Atheism, her eloquence, and leadership in American Atheists.
My interest intensified when Dan Kennedy’s “Are You
With the Atheists?” appeared in the UU World (Jan./Feb.,
2003). In confessional tones, Kennedy recounted his experience
attending an American Atheists’ convention, and gave the
convention and a speech by Ellen Johnson mixed reviews. Kennedy
said, regarding the conference that, as a UU, he had empathy for
the “unorthodoxy” of Atheism and Atheists. However,
he also admitted his discomfort with, what he termed, the “fundamentalist”
Atheism endorsed by American Atheists. Of Ellen Johnson, Kennedy
wrote:
Ellen Johnson is a carefully groomed, soft-spoken, self-described
“soccer mom”
from New Jersey who comes across more as a lobbyist than a rabble-rouser.
She
is also a second generation atheist and successor to the late
Madalyn Murray O’Hair …
Despite Johnson’s persona as the antithesis of her colorful
predecessor, her rhetoric
was unsparing. Standing in front of a banner that read “American
Atheists: Leading
The Way for Atheists’ Civil Rights,” Johnson seethed
as she denounced such post-9/11
idiocies as the reintroduction of the Ten Commandments Defense
Act in the House of
Representatives …
I
wondered how Johnson would respond to Kennedy’s assessment
of the AA conference and to his critique of her “good grooming,”
even as he castigated her for the “unsparing” rhetoric
that she “seethed.”
On
August 30th, 2004, after e-mails with Johnson, I interviewed her
by telephone, at her home office. First, I read Kennedy’s
comments to her, and asked if she felt stereotyped by his descriptions.
Johnson
didn’t hesitate in answering. “Sometimes male reporters
are more concerned with how we [women] look. I remember the conference
[Kennedy attended]. I was wearing a pink suit.” She stopped
to sigh. “Madalyn Murray O’Hair always had comments
on her appearance. Why is my appearance more important than what
I have to say?”
She
also noted that she was not the successor to Madalyn Murray O’Hair,
as Kennedy claimed, but rather she succeeded Jon Murray, who was
president of AA until 1995, when he, his mother Madalyn and her
grand daughter Robin were kidnapped and subsequently murdered.
Matters
like appearance, Johnson said, often were used to deflect discussion
from real issues and the problems that confront non-believers.
Furthermore, she found it troubling that she would be characterized
as “seething” when, in her opinion, she was speaking
passionately about matters of concern to Atheists. It was typical,
she commented, to run into the same problem over and over, when
dealing with religious people upset by Atheism. “I am attacked
for defending Atheism when they can’t defend their religious
points of view.” They would rather attack Atheism than defend
their religion.
“Seethed,”
she repeated, returning to Kennedy’s verb of choice. “What
does that mean?” She talked for several minutes about how
Atheists were marginalized after 9/ll by the overwhelming religious
response to the attacks, as means of coping and mourning. Atheists,
she reminded me, were even blamed for the attacks. That was the
point she was trying to make at the conference Kennedy attended.
Her speech was meant to confront political prejudice: when the
evangelical President of the United States says, “If you’re
not one of us, you’re against us,” an Atheist becomes
an enemy of the State.
I
agreed that she had a right to her anger and her concern. Why
do politicians get away with targeting Atheists as enemies?
“I
think people are still hung up on Madalyn Murray O’Hair,”
Johnson said.
A
woman of strong opinion, personality, and will power, O’Hair
is an American legend. The founder of American Atheists, it was
she who originated the battle against forced school prayer, and
in doing so became to many of the religious faithful “the
most hated woman in America.” In a preamble to the legal
case, O’Hair offered her own definition of an atheist: “An
Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist
knows that heaven is something for which we should work now --
here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy...”
Johnson
mentioned O’Hair occasionally during the interview—graceful
references. Prior to the interview, I had examined the AA web
site (http://www.atheists.org/) and found in the archives statements
and articles about O’Hair, one written by Johnson, which
offered the following caveat:
I would ask that when you write about Madalyn O’Hair,
you try, as best as you
can, to convey all sides of this complex person and the story
of her life. If you
call her ‘the most hated woman in America,’ also
try to remember that she was
passionately engaged in the issues of her time, as an Atheist,
as a social activist,
and as a woman. It wasn’t easy fighting the legal battles
she fought for nearly
four decades.
“What
have you inherited from O’Hair?” I asked Johnson.
“Are you still fighting the same battles she did, as a woman
and a leader of American Atheists?”
“There’s
no baggage being a woman,” Johnson quickly replied, “there’s
just baggage being an atheist.” Though atheists have made
progress since O’Hair’s activist heydays in the 1950’s
and 60’s, and are now more likely to identify themselves
as non-believers, they still encounter hatred. “The hatred
may take a generation to die off,” Johnson reflected. Many
of our “gray panthers,” she noted, are still more
comfortable and feel safer identifying themselves as Humanists
instead of as Atheists, because Atheism was anathema when they
were kids.
Johnson
was hopeful about today’s young people, who seemed more
willing to go through the intellectual exercise of accepting Atheism
on its own terms. “We need to get rid of the baggage of
old ideas.”
Despite her hopes, Johnson is somewhat exasperated by the lack
of commitment by Atheists to causes and organizations supporting
Atheism. Atheists, she commented, are truly individualists—and
that’s good. But it’s terrible when you try to organize
people for political action. “The majority of Atheists are
not joiners,” Johnson said.
As a perfect example of Atheist resistance to joining beneficial
organizations, Johnson pointed to the aftermath of the Godless
March on Washington, D.C., which was organized by AA. The march
took place in November, 2002; the attendance was estimated between
2000 and 2500 people. Dozens of speakers appeared, including Michael
Newdow, Ed Buckner (Council for Secular Humanism), Chris Harper
(Landover Baptist Church), and Tasmila Nasrin (political activist,
under a death sentence in her native Bangladesh). At the march,
Johnson gave a stirring speech, with a call to action: “Ladies
and Gentlemen, I see a sleeping giant that is waking up and ready
to assert its political and cultural influence!”
“AA
foot the bill for that event,” Johnson said. The organization
brought everyone together on its own dime. What was the outcome?
Not a single member increase.
Johnson worries that it will take a catastrophe before Atheists
realize that they have to join forces and assert their agenda.
“Maybe we have to be jailed for not praying?” she
quips. There’s a fear, she thinks, lurking in the hearts
of Atheists: unbelievers are afraid of becoming too religious
about Atheism. The most common excuse Johnson hears from people
unwilling to join AA is, “I just got out of a religious
organization, so why would I want to join another organization?”
Atheists have to feel the effects of prejudice personally, before
they get involved—or at least that’s Johnson’s
experience. “I don’t have any other answer. It’s
amazing how other groups—religious groups—can motivate
members, but we can’t. Religious people get out and fight,
and we have to do what they do.” Quoting her AA predecessor,
Jon Murray, Johnson says, “Atheists have to learn the value
of being a pain in the ass.”
While
listening to Johnson, I wondered about my own future as an Atheist
within Unitarian Universalism. I remembered reading sermons by
UU ministers that seemed to mock non-believers with the standard
trope, “Tell me what god you don’t believe in. I’ll
bet I don’t believe in that god, either.” I recalled
that former UUA President John Buerhens wrote in A Chosen Faith
(a book used as an introduction to UUism) that “zealous
atheism” is a “demonic pseudo-religion.”
What
does Johnson think about Buerhens’ remark? “He’s
a cleric. He’s not on the side of Atheists. Why do Atheists
attend Unitarian churches?” she asks me. “Is it a
safe alternative? Is it the only game in town? It seems to me
that these clerics find it too hard to accept Atheism on its own
terms, and so have to bring Atheists back into the fold.”
What’s her reaction to Dan Kennedy’s claim, in the
UU World article, that the AA conference he attended had a “forced,
brittle quality?” There was, Kennedy wrote, “a whiff
of fundamentalism in the air, if by fundamentalism, you mean absolute
certainty coupled with a defensiveness suggesting that, beneath
the surface, maybe the certainty isn’t so absolute after
all.”
“I
don’t recall any defensiveness,” Johnson answers.
“We [AA] are quite sure about what we stand for and what
we are doing.”
I
remind Johnson that Kennedy suggested that he sympathized with
Atheists, and seemed on the side of not professing any belief
in a god.
“Kennedy
has an attitude typical of the most apathetic Atheists,”
Johnson says. “It seems to me that UU’s have created
their own problems, by trying to please everybody.”
Are
the American Atheists “fundamentalists,” as Kennedy
claimed? Are they dogmatic? “No. We like to look at facts.
Are facts ‘dogmatic?’ Atheists are concerned with
reality.”
Johnson
points out a brutal fact confronting Atheists: the current Republican
administration wants 65 billion dollars for faith-based initiatives.
What are Atheists supposed to do about this breach of Church and
State?
“We
have to fight,” Johnson insists, “and yet Atheists
have left the fight to very few of us.” An increase in AA’s
membership would aid the battle against radical fundamentalism.
“ I know American Atheists isn’t for everyone, but
we are clear and consistent about what we are and what we stand
for.”
The AA web site lists what Atheism teaches. Considering Johnson’s
concerns, I found this teaching most significant: “There
is no chance after death to ‘do our bit.’ We must
do it now or never.”
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