* Perilous Times
Atheists go on the political offensive in God-fearing US*
By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:44pm BST 05/05/2007
By day, Joe Zamecki works as a landscaper and valet in Austin, capital
of George W Bush's home state of Texas, which is regarded by many
natives as God's own country.
In his spare time, however, he is quietly working to undermine the
dominance of America's God-fearing majority. He is one among a growing
band of "out" atheists, and wants a US that is "one nation under no god".
Atheists observing a Day of Reason, atheists go on the political
offensive in God-fearing US
Atheists in Idaho observe a National Day of Reason on America’s National
Prayer Day
On Thursday, while Christian Americans were celebrating National Prayer
Day, Mr Zamecki, the state director of American Atheists, was leading a
demonstration against the public display of the words "In God We Trust"
in the state legislature.
Atheist groups from Los Angeles to Little Rock observed a National Day
of Reason instead.
Groups including Atheists for Human Rights and Atheist Alliance
International - "Call 1-866-HERETIC" - are setting up summer camps and
an internet recruiting campaign.
Mr Zamecki told The Sunday Telegraph: "We are seeing support for atheist
groups grow. Those with no religious affiliation are the fastest-growing
group in America, more even than Muslims."
Official figures show the ranks of the non-religious have doubled to 13
per cent, or 30 million people, since 1990.
Now a hard core of five million atheists is seeking the political clout
that has made Christian conservatives and the Jewish lobby powerhouses
in Washington politics.
They got a boost with the admission in March by the Californian Democrat
congressman, Pete Stark, that he "does not believe in a supreme being",
127 years after Charles Bradlaugh became Britain's first openly atheist MP.
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America's first atheist congressman was flushed out by the Secular
Coalition for America, the first godless group with a full-time
Washington lobbyist.
The US constitution outlaws religious discrimination, but polls show
only 45 per cent of Americans would be willing to vote for an atheist
candidate for president, even if he or she was the best-qualified.
Yet a succession of books extolling atheism has proved very popular, led
by Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.
The Oxford University evolutionary biologist's work has been on the
best-seller list for several months.
Sam Harris has sold 250,000 copies of The End of Faith: Religion,
Terror, and the Future of Reason and has a new book out, Letter to a
Christian Nation.
The shelves of American bookshops groan under titles like Atheism on the
March, The Atheist Manifesto, and The Quotable Atheist.
Mr Dawkins said last week: "On my book tour of America I was agreeably
surprised by the positive reception it got. There is a huge undercurrent
of non-believing feeling in America which has felt repressed,
suppressed, almost persecuted.
"Many people said, 'Thank you for saying what I have always wanted to
say but didn't feel I could'."
Mr Dawkins is an advocate of increasing atheist militancy. "The secular,
non-religious vote, if properly mobilised, is nine times as numerous as
the Jewish vote," he said.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation, which boasts 10,000 members, has
launched a case in the Supreme Court, calling for a ban on President
Bush's federal support of faith-based groups as a breach of the
constitutional division of church and state.
The group's president, Dan Barker, once an evangelist preacher, said:
"There can be a tipping point in any society where people say enough is
enough. If enough atheists and agnostics speak out, it can cause quite a
sensation."
Joe Zamecki thinks the rise of atheism is in part a response to the
overtly religious Mr Bush, whose father once declared: "I don't know
that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be
considered patriots."
Mr Zamecki said: "The war in Iraq, which was partly justified as a
religious war, has turned a lot of people off religion. The internet has
helped our movement. There is a whole generation of young Americans that
is exposed to free and open debate."
Blogger Hemant Mehta, 24, who writes under the pen name
"friendlyatheist", regularly debates with Christian fundamentalists
online. He wrote: "We are not the bogeymen we have been made out to be
for so long."
The atheists still have a mountain to climb. In a Republican
presidential debate last week, candidates mentioned their faith 16
times, and three said that they did not believe in evolution.
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