Many of my fellow atheists and agnostics have a hard time understanding why, exactly, people are religious. In particular, many godless people are befuddled by Evangelicals. How can anyone believe the Bible is inspired and inerrant; believe the earth was created in six twenty-four-hour days; believe the universe is 6,027 years old; believe Adam and Eve were the first human beings; believe the story of Noah and Ark really happened; believe that millions of Israelites wandered in desert for forty years, and believe a Jewish man named Jesus was a God-man who worked miracles, was executed on a Roman cross, and resurrected from the dead three days later. I could add numerous other mythical, fanciful, incredulous Bible stories to this list; all of which sound nonsensical to skeptical, rational people. Here we are living in 2024 — an age driven by technology and science — yet millions of Evangelicals and other conservative Christians flock to Kentucky to tour Ken Ham’s monuments to ignorance: the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. These same people helped to elect Donald Trump, the vilest, most unqualified man to ever sit in the Oval Office. Why is it that Evangelicals continue to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
From a rational perspective, none of this makes any sense. Most Evangelicals have at least a high school education, and some of them have college degrees. Many of them are successful business owners, with more than a few of them amassing wealth most unbelievers covet. Many atheists and agnostics wrongly believe that the typical Evangelical is a poorly educated white hillbilly from Kentucky or Mississippi. Pan the crowds gathered at countless American Evangelical megachurches and you will find all the markings of well-off, educated people. Why, then, do Evangelicals believe the nonsense mentioned previously?
The best way to understand Evangelicalism is to view it from an economic cost-benefit perspective. Think of Evangelicalism as a club. To join the club, certain things are required. Every prospective club member must agree with the club’s stated principles and beliefs and pay annual dues to their local club. Once a prospective member publicly affirms the club’s stated principles and beliefs, undergoes a rite of initiation (baptism), and pays his annual dues, the prospect is granted entrance to the club. Membership in the club comes with several benefits:
- Weekly instruction in the club’s principles and beliefs
- Answers to life’s pressing questions
- Classes for every age group, from infants to senior citizens
- Opportunities for entertainment, often called fun, food, and fellowship
- Access to counseling services
- Wedding and funeral services
- Support for conservative Christian social and political views
- Bumper stickers, shirts, and other swag that advertise your membership in the club
- Promises of forgiveness, happiness, and life after death
As long as these benefits outweigh the costs, people will continue to embrace Evangelical beliefs. Rationalists think that truth is all that should matter, and when it comes to truth, atheists/agnostics/humanists/skeptics/freethinkers have it, and Evangelicals don’t. True, but what do we offer besides truth? I’m waiting . . . Therein lies our problem. Yes, truth is on our side, but we lack appealing social structures (clubs), and, to many questioning/doubting Evangelicals, the cost of saying, “I am an atheist/agnostic” far outweighs the benefits. (Please see Count the Cost Before You Say I am an Atheist.) If we want to attract people to truth, to our cause, we must find ways to change the cost-benefit dynamic. “Dammit, Bruce, truth should be enough!” Yep, and I agree with you. Unfortunately, you and I are not like most people. “What’s in it for me?” many people ask. “What are the benefits of joining your club?” Fuss and fume all you want about this, but the fact remains that most people want to belong to things that benefit them; that give them something tangible.
As a pastor, I learned that people look for perceived value. Our church would sponsor a free concert with a contemporary Christian artist and fifty people would show up. Charge $5 admission for the same concert and hundreds of people would attend. Same artist, just a different perceived value. As long as Evangelicals think that the benefits of club membership outweigh the costs, they will continue to be members. Our goal should be to make rationalism and progressive politics appealing. We must develop social structures that advance the humanist ideal. And then, we must become the public face of our club, a face that says, “you are welcome here!” Constantly fighting with Evangelicals on social media does what exactly? Sure, it feels good to drown Evangelicals in seas of truth, but what have we gained? Engaging in shit-throwing contests on Twitter with Evangelical trolls might make for good entertainment and provide a brief dopamine rush, but what is really accomplished by doing so? In 2012, tens of thousands of atheists, agnostics, humanists, and freethinkers gathered on the National Mall for the Reason Rally. What an awesome moment, a coming-out party, of sorts. Twelve years have passed since this rally. What progress have we made towards coalescing into a credible, appealing club for likeminded people? If we truly want to give Evangelicalism the eternal death it so richly deserves, we must offer people a better way. We must offer them benefits that outweigh the costs of publicly saying “I’m an unbeliever” in a country that is still dominated and controlled by Christianity. We may laud recent upticks in polls for our kind, but this growth pales when compared to the sheer numbers of religious people. Yes, as a block, we now outnumber Evangelicals, but make no mistake about it, they still hold political and cultural power.
After the 2012 Reason Rally, I told readers that it was time for rationalists, skeptics, and freethinkers to move beyond skirmishes with Evangelicals. I still believe that today. That doesn’t mean we stop exposing Evangelical beliefs and practices for the nonsense they are. But we must find ways to build social connections; ways to build clubs that are appealing to, particularly, younger Americans. Trying to reach Evangelical Baby Boomers and the Great Generation is unlikely to succeed. It is with young people that the future of, not only the United States, but the world, rests. We oldsters have a lot of wisdom to offer, but as long as we sit silently in our homes, that wisdom goes to waste. Imagine how different our country might be if every county had a local humanist/skeptics club; a place where young and old alike meet to plan ways to Make America Rational Again; a place where atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers can gather and feel at home. Until we figure this out, people are going to continue to gather at local Evangelical clubs to worship the dead Jesus.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Being rational, logical, and reasonable will never take you to any form of religious belief, never mind fundamental and/or evangelical. Yet people who are bound in these beliefs don’t see it that way. It can be entertaining to engage in conversation with such people, but in reality it becomes a game. I used, long ago, to enjoy watching Matt Dillahunty play with callers to his phone in show, but then he always let his frustration come to the fore, and he would swear and curse at them, something that was seldom edifying. The problem is that people would ring in with the absolute certainty that their worldview was both reasonable and defendable, only to be completely demolished by Dillahunty: unfortunately the caller had no idea they’d been logically undermined, and the net result was very unsatisfactory to viewers. I found the same with online discussions (arguments) with religious believers back in the days of Patheos non religious. I let conversations drag on far too long, determined to try and win my point, rather than just to make it.
Now I seldom comment anywhere. I’m not on Facebook or any other formal social media. Yet I take your point about the community aspect of religious organisations. The trouble is that there are many more organisations and communities that aren’t religious than are, but because they don’t market themselves as non religious they aren’t recognised as such, and perhaps that’s the point. ‘Atheist’ stamp collectors of Ohio doesn’t have a great ring to it! Same for train spotters and knitting clubs. It’s why rather than ‘atheist’ clubs, perhaps ‘humanist’ would be better. Trouble is there are loads of humanist groups (certainly here in the UK) but they don’t actually do anything other than meet for philosophical chats and host presentations by people like Richard Dawkins. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies.
Thank you for mentioning Reason Rally. I attended the 2012 event in DC and it was a pivotal moment in my life. I owe it all to my daughter who was 15 at the time – she needed me to drive her and some friends into the city because they wanted to go and none of them had a license yet. I was already in the process of deconverting but standing in the chilly mist while listening to so many like-minded people really cemented my path from that day forward. Four years later I volunteered to work at the second Reason Rally.
I agree with you about the club/community/fellowship aspect of religion. Even looking at Facebook, I am connected with ladies who were my former Sunday school teachers. There’s a big group of them who have been friends for over 40 years. These several couples get together frequently outside church to celebrate holidays, birthdays, go on vacations together, etc. Their connection is church – they wouldn’t have necessarily known each other without that common bond. The church also offers them a place to celebrate and affirm life rituals, like births, weddings, funerals, coming of age celebrations, etc. As secular people, we don’t have those already-prescribed rituals -we have to make them ourselves.
I see my Gen Z kids having to create their own communities. My daughter is pretty good at it – she has a diverse group of friends – people who stayed in Nashville after college and their growing networks overlapping and coming together. And I’ve noticed Gen Z girls getting into (in my opinion stupid) crystals/seance/astrology spirituality. There are stores where they pick up trinkets, books that show ceremonies and mantras, and an urging to get together and do whatever rituals. It’s no different from rituals in any religion (except they don’t seem to be using it as a way to oppress people like a lot of religions do).
Community, marking life events, providing support systems, chants/songs/trinkets, caring, meaning, purpose, emotion. These are all part of it. Suspending rational thought to receive these emotional comforts is often worth it for people. My 24-year-old daughter is one of the most intelligent people I know, educated at a top university, and she’s doing astrology/crystal BS with her friends. She “knows” it’s BS but enjoys it anyway. At least she has enough sense to call us for advice on real life issues fortunately…..
But my point is, there is a real need for the connections and rituals that religion provides. We secular folks have done a shitty job so far of creating viable alternatives. Maybe as our numbers grow, we’ll do better. There are a lot of lonely secular people living in the midst of Fundamentalist religion, afraid to voice their true selves.
Agreed about inherent human need for connections. Couldn’t disagree more about need for ritual. I’d submit that ritual is a created need and it’s the doing of it creates the need. One gets accustomed to what’s coming, knowing what to do, and it becomes something like muscle memory. Like landing in a crosswind. It requires counterintuitive movement of the controls but after a thousand crosswind landings, it’s automatic. Even my cat’s know when it’s time to eat and when I should get up in the morning. It’s a security thing. Ritual is like the cigarette one wants, never needed, but learned to crave. Just my take on it as one who did a lot of genuflecting, crossing, and chest thumping before I got over it.
Unfortunately true. Which is why the family and social price is far too high for me to come out as an ex-evangelical. As I’ve said, call me Naaman, for I am a coward (at least in this respect).
Inherent human need for affiliation. Knitting circle, Teamsters, Rotary, Baptist. Beer drinkers of America, MAGA. Heck yes. Where do I sign up? I need to hang with and feel supported by my peeps. It’s a void we (almost) all have that wants filling and somewhere in human history someone discovered it’s a way take advantage and an industry evolved with ever more sophisticated ways to get into people’s heads. If vacant churches are any indication, the opening of people’s minds with education is diluting organized religion’s power. What if anything takes it’s place is an open question. An imposing old church across from the old Bryan High school is a craft brewery last I heard. Dare I suggest?
I remained in the last church I attended for as long as I did for social reasons, even as I was losing my belief. In some places, and for some people, it’s difficult to find other venues for meeting anyone at all. I worked for a time in a secular college where all of the upper-level administrators met in a church.
One reason, I believe, we atheists/agnostics/non-believers don’t have the similar kinds of organizations is that too many of us face ostracism or worse for “coming out,” if you will. Also, it seems to me that churches–especially Evangelical and Charismatic ones–attract extroverts or plain-and-simple loudmouths and enable those traits through the mandate to “spread the word.”
MJ I recall an old G/F, a proselytizing atheist divorcee who never missed a chance to convert the benighted. She had been married to a man she met in church. She had attended church because it was a place to meet decent people in the lonely city of Phoenix. She met the guy under the false pretense of being Christian like him, but in reality a committed atheist. Doomed from the outset, the relationship failed. Yeah, an organization for us was needed. A very informal atheist group would get together at each other’s homes, kind of an Atheist underground. As a way to meet people of similar beliefs it was not useful. We needed an Atheist church we could all attend. Flip Wilson did a skit about “The Church Of What’s Happenin’ Now”. I like that name. “Church” is not copyrighted by the Christians so why not call our thing church. An anti-pastor could officiate our services. Maybe a new career for Bruce?.
I think the Unitarian-Universalist church is worth exploring. Their members run the gamut from Christian to Buddhist to agnostic to atheist. They also do a lot of good in the world. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of UU congregations. Kurt Vonnegut was a UU guy, as was Frank Lloyd Wright, among many others.