MSNBC Columnist Claims American Women Are Being ‘Held Hostage’ by Christians, Says Answer to Cultural Problems Is ‘Energetic Atheism’ By Tré Goins-Phillips for Faith Wire
Americans — and women, in particular — are being “held hostage” by Christian ideals, according to one MSNBC columnist who believes the answer to that perceived problem is a new “energetic atheism.”
Zeeshan Aleem warned in his article, “Why America needs a new atheism right now,” that the U.S. is enduring a “crisis” caused by “an excess of religion,” arguing “Christian theocracy” is “an emerging reality in America.”
The crux of the writer’s argument is the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 decision on Roe v. Wade, which granted nationwide legal cover for abortion:
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Fueled by a radically reactionary Supreme Court that is two-thirds Catholic, Thomas Jefferson’s already-dilapidated and graffitied “wall of separation” between church and state is crumbling. The overturning of Roe v. Wade means the lives of women across the country are being held hostage by a conservative Christian conception of life. Kennedy v. Bremerton permits school officials to publicly pray and make students feel pressured to join in. Carson v. Makin allows taxpayer dollars to be used to fund religious education.
Aleem, who was born into a Muslim family but now identifies as a “proud” and “devout” atheist, went on to argue the best response to this perceived problem in his eyes is an “energetic, organized atheist movement — which I propose calling ‘communitarian atheism.’” Such a movement, he wrote, “would provide an effective way to guard against the twin crises of intensifying religious extremism on one end, and the atomizing social consequences of a plunge in conventional religiosity on the other.”
“An organized atheist community can help agitate for and finance a secularist equivalent of the Federalist Society — the right-wing legal movement that helped populate the federal courts with hard right jurists and helped get us into this mess — to act as a bulwark against theocracy,” he continued.
