Recently Rodney Kennedy, pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church in Schenectady, New York, stated that atheists, along with skeptics, secularists, agnostics, and unbelievers, are gaslighting our entire culture; that atheists are to blame for the increasing level of unbelief in the United States.
Many of the skeptics, agnostics, secularists, atheists, and non-believers have gaslit our entire culture. As reward for this act of delusion, they have produced the age of unbelief.
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How have atheists managed to gaslight so many Americans? There are many reasons why, but the ones we are qualified to make sense of are rhetorical: How did a group of nonbelievers establish such an epistemic power over such a large number of Americans? How did they establish credibility/authority? How have they swayed so many people to leave the church? There are various identifying marks that scholars have given to these departing groups: The NONE’s and the DONE’s.
Some of this persuasion comes in the form of personal testimony. Steven Weinberg ends his a lovely essay, “Without God,” explaining why he cannot believe in God with the confession, “Living without God isn’t easy. But its very difficulty offers one other consolation — that there is a certain honor, or perhaps just a grim satisfaction, in facing up to our condition without despair and without wishful thinking — with good humor, but without God.” The offer on the table that people are taking up is that life without God provides honor, dignity, a grim satisfaction. This seems a Esau-like bargain — a giving up of faith for the swill of atheist soup. This “grin and bear it” with a stiff upper lip seems a far distance from the hope that lives in the hearts of Christian believers.
Many atheists have managed to self-produce an aura of intelligence. The so-called “New Atheists” actually refer to themselves as the “Brights.” Smart people, in other words, no longer believe in God. This may be a reaction to the numbing anti-intellectualism of one form of Christian faith known as evangelicalism. In any event, smart people are presented as those with enough sense not to believe in God.
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The atheists have an amazing self-confidence to insist that the secular creed has at last been proven: that a belief in a loving God is no longer possible. One of the ironies of the recent spate of books defending atheism is the confidence the “New Atheists” seem to have in knowing which God it is they are sure does not exist. The best-sellers in this genre of unbelief have been Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; Sam Harris, The End of Faith; Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. One gets the impression that this type of atheist is so sure of victory that their only remaining task is to watch the ship of faith crash into the rocks and sink into the dark and stormy sea.
A claim of superior intelligence, self-confidence bordering on arrogance, and an easy dismissal of more than 2,000 years of Christian belief provide the flares of the gaslighting project of the atheists. In previous moments of a wave of atheism, Christian theologians have weathered the storms. Now, the invention of “gaslighting” — emotional proof and manipulation — seem to give an advantage to the atheists. A generation not interested in reality, facts, or truth can be easily led to follow politicians, preachers, or atheists.
Kennedy takes a cheap shot at atheists, wrongly lumping all unbelievers together. Kennedy’s words sound Evangelical, yet when I checked out his church’s website, I found that the church is an LGBTQ-affirming liberal church; the product of a merger between an American Baptist church and a United Church of Christ congregation. So what gives with his cheap, ill-informed swipe at atheists? Does he not know any atheists? Does he really think we are to blame for the rising unbelief in the United States?
Kennedy wrongly assumes that “New Atheists” — are they even a thing anymore? — speak for all atheists. They don’t, and they never have. Imagine Kennedy’s objection if I said Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Al Mohler, and Tom Ascol represented all Christians. Kennedy would be outraged and rightly chastise me for being ignorant about the depth and breadth of Christianity. This is exactly what he is doing when he says the Four Horsemen: Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens are the defacto representatives for atheism; as if there is even an “atheism” to represent.
Kennedy sees the alarming rise of the NONES and DONES and looks for reasons why this is happening. He concludes that atheists are to blame; that atheists are gaslighting our culture. (This leads me to think that Kenndy doesn’t understand what gaslighting really is.) According to Kennedy, the atheist worldview is swill — the slop given to hogs by farmers. Again, it seems that underneath Kennedy’s outward liberal persona lies Evangelicalism.
Kennedy doesn’t like that atheists offer a worldview rooted in reality, stripped of fanciful claims about salvation and Heaven. Why does this bother Kennedy so much? If Christianity is a superior worldview, why are people rejecting it, especially younger adults? Are atheists using myths, coercion, and fanciful claims to win over people to their cause? Of course not. We see life as it is. We don’t make promises we cannot keep or promises that have no basis in fact. Kennedy promises his flock bliss in the sweet by and by if they will but believe (and obey) in this life. Yet, people are no longer buying what Kennedy and other so-called men of God are selling. Why is that?
I suspect the main reason is that Christianity has failed to deliver on its promises. People are no longer willing to “trust” that the man in the pulpit is telling them the truth. Further, thanks to the Internet, people are learning that preachers don’t practice what they preach; that scores of ministers are arrested every year for sex crimes; that pastors say one thing from the pulpit and do another thing in the privacy of their homes. If Kennedy is looking for someone to blame for increasing unbelief, I suggest he look in the mirror. While atheism is increasing, most NONES and DONES are not atheists. They are people who look at organized Christianity and say “no thanks.”
The Internet has played a big part in the overturning of the tables in the Temple. For centuries preachers were gatekeepers of “truth.” People had nowhere else to turn. And then came the Internet. Christians could now fact-check their pastors or verify the veracity of their church experiences. What they found on the Internet didn’t line up with what they heard from the pulpit or saw in the lives of people who allegedly are followers of Jesus. Some of them found blogs authored by former Christians. I am one such ex-Evangelical. I have been blogging for fifteen years, telling my story to millions of people.
Why are people attracted to my writing? Am I serving up “swill” as Kenndy alleges? Am I pulling the wool over readers’ eyes? That’s for you to decide. I am just one man with a story to tell. I have no desire to make converts to atheism. I am content to tell my story and leave it at that. Sure, my critiques of Evangelicalism can be sharp, but there’s nothing subversive about them. I am content to write and leave it to readers to decide whether my words ring true.
Why did Kennedy write what he did? Did he think his words would effectively reach the NONES and DONES? If so, he might want to rethink that approach. Was his goal to goad atheists? Or maybe he’s a cleric trying to find ways to keep asses in the pews and dollars in the plates. Regardless of his motivation, he might want to consider how atheists could be his ally. Both Kennedy and atheists think Evangelicalism is causing material harm to our culture. Why not join together around a common cause? Further, Kennedy might want to actually talk with atheists about what they believe and why; about how they view religion and the world; what their wants, needs, and desires really are. As things stand, the only atheist Kennedy knows is a strawman.
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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Christians can’t accept it when people stop believing. Instead of looking at what is wrong, Christians always blame the unbeliever.
I grew up Catholic. I later became an Evangelical. The last church I attended, when I was trying to hold onto what remained of my belief, was “progressive” and “LGBT-affirmiing.”
This post reminds me of why even that last, relatively liberal church I attended could do no more to convince me that I should continue to believe: People can be “accepting” or “affirming” of LGBTQ people or have progressive ideas about society and economics, but be just as rigid, judgmental and defensive about their beliefs–and as hostile to those who don’t believe as they do–as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists can be.
My mother was very distressed about my deconversion from Catholicism/Christianity, though we never talked about it directly. She was an extremely anxious person, and would come up with unlikely scenarios in which God would reject her based on some sin that she hadn’t fully realized, and therefore couldn’t confess properly. Fully an atheist at that point (late 30s), I would try to share the understanding of God that my Catholic school upbringing had taught me, a God of love and forgiveness who would overlook mistakes on her part. I didn’t want to deconvert her, I wanted to reassure her. I made it worse, since she never bought into the liberal version of Catholicism that my school nuns believed. She liked rules, regulations, and black-and-white thinking, and embraced an asshole version of God. A God of grace was far less reassuring to her than a God of rules.
The idea that a position (like unbelief in any deity) could be held provisionally, in the absence of contrary data but understanding that such data might someday appear, was beyond her ken. If I’d ever tried to explain that this sort of scientific mentality was a valid approach to life shared by many, it would’ve been rejected out of hand.
My father died without articulating his faith in my lifetime. Raised Lutheran, supported and encouraged my Catholic mother and me, uninterested in a church community. Very much valued the concept of loving his neighbor, and was greatly appreciated by almost everyone who knew him, because of his kindness and generosity. My mother would help someone and then go on about all the things they did that made them deserving of assistance. My father would simply help, and if he ever did a mental accounting of justification, he never shared it. On the rare occasions that my mother objected to my father helping someone because of [gossip reason], he would simply not engage with her, and continue to haul wood or compost or whatever for that person, who was too old or unskilled or without the pickup truck to acquire those things themselves. (Infidelity was never an issue at any time, Dad wasn’t helping desperate widows or some such. My mother was simply raised to be judgmental, and if the gossip mill said something bad about someone, she believed it. Gods below, spare us from people with imaginations, telephones, and too much time on their hands.)
My father never showed any inclination to object to my lack of religion, including the last year and a half of his life when he lived with my husband and me. He never attended church as an adult, except for rare occasions when he went to Catholic Mass to support my mother or my minor self. He was my cheerleader, although he checked in regularly to be sure that I was living our values. For all the rest, he would assure me that things would work out. He was sharing his faith in me.
So. Values. The rest is details.
Christianity tells people that they inherited a nature so evil that their destiny requires eternal torture – unless, of course, they debase themselves even further (how???) and acquiesce to being the beneficiaries of a fucking human sacrifice.
And non-believers are the ones doing the gaslighting? Já, riiiight…
It is interesting to see Christians struggle to reconcile “so evil that their destiny requires eternal torture” and their need for high self-esteem. Many have tried to do this. To me, these views are simply incompatible. See https://mindsetfree.blog/the-bible-and-self-esteem/ .
Whenever someone with a belief based on ideology, as opposed to reason, finds themselves challenged in a way they are struggling to deal with, they look for ways to justify themselves. The strategy this guy uses is fairly typical. Rather than try and dismantle the arguments put forward by atheists (I detest the handle ‘new’ applied to atheists, which is nothing more than a subtle form of disparagement dreamt up by apologists), he moves the goalposts, trying to pretend that there’s a special version of God, which somehow survives attacks by reason, and that atheists don’t address this particular type of God. Really? He misses the point that atheists don’t distinguish between gods, and that atheism is nothing more complicated than not believing in any gods, his included.
It’s ironic that his attack on atheists, in which he accuses them of gaslighting, is itself an excellent example of gaslighting, in attempting to make atheists doubt themselves without providing sound reasoning.
Yes, he gaslights and accuses others of gaslighting. Anyone who takes the time to read what atheists write will see that there is a vast literature out there that is based on solid reasoning, not emotional gaslighting.
I remember feeling extremely defensive when challenged on the veracity of religious stories and beliefs. I knew that there are no talking snakes, no people doing miracles such as restoring sight to the blind, no one walking on water, no one rising from the dead. I knew all these claims were not to be found in the natural world. But I knew – or rather, was indoctrinated to accept – that my eternal well-being was contingent on belief in these things and more. Hence the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. I wished people would just believe and stop bringing it all up.
These days, it’s easier for people to access information (in many parts of the world) so that people can make their own determination on the veracity of religious claims. Around the world, we see people rejecting religious claims. Yes, there is a rise of religion in areas of great poverty, lack of educational resources, and information, but in other countries, religion is dying.
Look at how fundamentalists are responding by trying to force their beliefs on others. Here in the US we are virtually at war with religious extremists. In Iran, there is an active revolution against a fundamentalist Islamic regime. Brazil bounced Bolsonaro, a Christian nationalist. Victor Orban of Hungary is a Christian nationalist who has squeezed rights away from Hungarians who don’t fit the mold of “real Hungarian”, and look how US conservatives look to Orban’s methods as blueprint for success? Look at Putin’s alliance with the Russian Orthodox church? Look at Netanyahu’s alliance with hard-right Orthodox Jews? Look at Modi’s Hindu nationalist India. Look around and tell me why I would want more religion in my life?
It took me years to reason my way out of religious belief and only after that did I allow myself to read books by atheist authors. I had already reached my conclusions but these books served to elucidate these conclusions and give me a sense of peace that I was not alone in my unbelief. Religion is rightly threatened by writers like Hitchens, Harris and Gerencser. If I had had access to these writings during my process of deconversion it would not have taken me so many years.
Rodney is a typical christian, terrified that atheists don’t need his cult, or him, which seems to be the real problem they have with atheists. He finds himself not as special as he needs to pretend.