Why We Let an Atheist Join Our Church

(Editor's Note: For background on this essay, read "Why I Am A Christian (Sort Of)," by Robert Jensen.)

After years of advocacy for progressive causes, I am used to angry mail -- often from fellow Christians -- when I take a political or theological position that challenges conservative or fundamentalist views.

So I wasn't surprised when many were unhappy about the decision of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, where I am the pastor, to let a self-professed atheist become a member. But the intensity and tone of the condemnations were surprising; this wave of mail feels different, more desperate, like people have been backed against a wall.

Ironically, the new member, a longtime leftist political activist and professor in Austin, has been getting mail from fellow atheists skeptical of his decision.

"How can you do this?" both sides are asking.

To me they ask, "How can you let someone join the church who cannot affirm the divinity of Christ? Does nothing matter to you liberals?" To Robert Jensen they ask, "How, as an atheist, can you surrender your mind to a superstitious institution that birthed the Inquisition and the Crusades?"

Neither the church nor Jensen views his membership as surrendering anything, but instead as an attempt to build connections. Such efforts are crucial in a world where there seems not to be a lot of wood to build the bridges we need. And the shame is, while we fight among ourselves, the world is burning.

In my ministry, I have had to live in two worlds. I have spiritual friends who are trying to celebrate the mystery of life and activist friends who are trying to change the world. Somehow these two enterprises have been separated, but I don't believe either option represents a complete life. Apolitical spirituality runs the danger of giving charity instead of justice, while atheistic humanism runs the danger of offering facts instead of meaning. This divide between spirituality and activism is a betrayal of the deeper roots of both.

The Book of James argues that merely believing in the existence of God means nothing; he jokes that even the demons believe that. Some of the meanest people I have ever met believed in God. The Nazis marched across Europe with belts reading "God is with us," singing some of the same hymns and reciting some of the same creeds the church uses today. With a few notable exceptions, the German church hid in liturgy and theology while their brothers and sisters burned.

It's been interesting to see that atheists can be just as narrow-minded as believers. Some of Jensen's critics expressed an infallible belief that religious people like me are idiots by definition. Inflexible beliefs on matters where one has no experience is superstition whether one is a believer or in an atheist.

Atheism can become self-parody when it forms a rigid belief system about religion. There is a difference between true atheism and anti-theism. Atheism can be the naked pursuit of truth, but anti-theism is more often the adolescent joy of upsetting and mocking religious people.

I can understand the urge to make fun of religious people; many of the voices that speak for religion make me want to crawl under the table. But we also must remember that Stalinists -- claiming to be atheistic materialists -- were as savage and superstitious as the inquisitors.

Without religion we would eliminate some of the worst chapters in human history brought on by the religious inquisitors and religious terrorists. But we would also eliminate some of history's best chapters. Imagine a world with no Gandhi, no Martin Luther King, and no Dorothy Day.

Some people argue that evolution disproves religion. I would say that evolution helps us understand why religion is inevitable in human beings. Our upper brain functions are built on top of a marshy swamp of animal instincts, and we are rational only in spurts. Much of our most important processes are irrational, even more are unconscious altogether. To say we will be purely scientific and objective is an act of imaginary dissociation from the liquid core of our own being. In Sartre's words it is "bad faith."