Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

include the non-religious folk without distorting their messages or their philosophies.

I will attempt to do this without distorting Dr. King’s message or philosophy. After the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting state-supported prayer in public schools, Dr. King said it was “sound and good, reaffirming something basic in the Nation’s life: separation of church and state.” I’m using that quote as my defense for thinking about Dr. King’s speech from a secular point of view.

That March on Washington had no shortage of religious speakers talking religion. There were a lot of Christian ministers in the civil rights movement. There were also plenty of Muslims and Jews and, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, Martin Luther King’s inner circle was maggoty with atheists. Many of the ministers were very open in mentioning god and religion and the singers sang bunches of gospel music. Many of the individuals holding the lectern before MLK wore their religion on their sleeves and I’m fine with that. I’m also glad their speeches are less remembered. Bill Russell was at that speech. Next time Karen brings her dad backstage, that’s something else we can talk about that he knows way more than I do.

Bob Dylan isn’t just remembered for his juggling. He was at the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, and Dylan sang “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” spreading the guilt from the active racists to our whole culture. He brought Joan Baez out to sing “When the Ship Comes In,” about how the bad guys will go down, and we’re all still waiting for all that to come true. I love that Bob brought Joan out after he started singing. Didn’t they plan this? There weren’t any jugglers or magicians asked to perform on that historic day. I guess I don’t know that for sure, but I’m guessing that if any were asked, they would have shown up. We don’t get asked to work historic days very often; we work children’s birthday parties.

I pulled up the “I Have a Dream” speech on my computer and did some searching. I typed in “Jesus.” “‘Jesus’ is not found.” Well, that’s the joyous story of my life.

I typed in “Religion.”

“‘Religion’ is not found.” Yup.

“‘Churches’ is not found.” Probably should be “are not found,” but I’m looking forward to that day when we don’t need churches.

“Pray” is found once in the speech. It’s in a list of things people should be able to do together. I’m okay with that, as long as it isn’t a list of things we have to do together. The list includes being able to work together and stand up for freedom together. I’m all for those. It also includes struggling together and going to jail together. A lot of people did those things together to get us to where we are now.

“Faith” is found five times. Once, it’s faith that “unearned suffering is redemptive.” I’m not sure if this is afterlife redemption, redemption in this life, or both. I’m betting King meant in the afterlife, but I can spin that to this life and be content. The other mentions of “faith” are faith in himself and his dream and, finally, faith in the people of the United States of America, and indeed in the world, to share that dream. I’m way more than just okay with all that.

“Lord” is mentioned once in the context of the “Glory of the Lord” being revealed.

“God” is found four times—three times under “all God’s children,” and once, at the end, quoting the spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank god almighty, we are free at last!”

Dr. King doesn’t avoid the Bible in this speech. He uses biblical images, including quotes from Psalms, Amos, and Isaiah. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use many images from the Bible, so why isn’t there a day named after me? Just kidding. King is just using poetic imagery from the Bible, using the Bible for its images and rhythms, not justification for any action. He holds the truths to be self-evident. He doesn’t go to a higher power. Bible imagery is part of our culture, like Shakespeare, which Dr. King alludes to in the exact same way with his reference to “this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn.”

I must mention the fact that the Bible condones slavery and tribalism, but I won’t dwell on it. Martin Luther King’s speech has more wisdom, bravery, humanity, compassion and love than the whole Bible and that is damning it with faint praise. Gilbert Gottfried’s act also contains more wisdom, bravery, humanity, compassion and love than the Bible, and Gilbert is doing dick jokes. The Bible sets a low bar for compassion.

I’m not trying to paint Martin Luther King as an atheist. I do not doubt his religious faith in any way. I’m showing that when he made the most important speech of his life, one of the most important speeches in American and world history, he backs off the god shit. He chooses to include instead of exclude.

The word most conspicuous in its absence in that speech to our twenty-first-century ears is “Christian.” “‘Christian’ is not found.”

The word “Christian” has become a magic word in my lifetime. It means something different now than when I was born. It used to be a throwaway word. People didn’t used to use it much. Martin Luther King was a Baptist— Progressive National Baptist Convention—but not even the word “Baptist” appears in the speech. People just started self-labeling or getting labeled “Christian” in the last part of the twentieth century. A little before my time, in the nineteenth century, people weren’t even using the general term “Protestant” very much. They were Baptists or Southern Baptists or Dave’s Specific Southern Mississippi Snakes, but no Poison Pentecostal Church of our Unique Christ. Every religious cult was afraid of every other religious cult. The bugnutty Pentecostals didn’t want the bugnutty Methodists to have too much power. There was no “Christian Nation”—the Christians were all afraid of each other. America was founded on Christians not trusting each other. Robert Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic,” was also an atheist and was courted by many politicians. He spoke on atheism (three of the top speakers of that time were atheists speaking about atheism: Ingersoll, Mark Twain, and Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, who used the weasel word “agnostic” but he doesn’t fool me). Contemporary candidates wanted Ingersoll on board to show they were open to free thought. It was a rhetorical trick to show that they weren’t going to use their political position to give their own specific flavor of Baptist too much power. Ingersoll on board showed they’d let the other cults flourish. I’m no Ingersoll, but I’m an atheist who speaks on atheism and no politicians ever courted me.

Even in my lifetime, when I was a child, John F. Kennedy could have never talked much about his religion, except to alibi it. He was Catholic, and that scared all the Protestants. He just ducked and covered. If he could have used the word “Christian,” he would have and been able to go hog wild on the Jesus stuff. As it was, he spoke of the separation of church and state and made Rick Santorum vomit.

Freethinkers, a great book by Susan Jacoby, explained that the modern use of the word “Christian” was pushed to fight Roe v. Wade, and that was almost a full decade after Dr. King inspired his country talking real inclusion. The anti-choice people wanted a big tent word for the religious objection to abortion, they had to bring all the Protestants and Catholics together, and “Christian” did that. It was their magic word.

Jimmy Carter was “born again” and that phrase and the magic word started to be used more and more. I heard on NPR (Yup, I’m an atheist who reads the Bible every day and a libertarian who reads The New York Times and listens to NPR every day) that if religion is measured as references to god and appearing in churches, our most religious president was Bill Clinton. Slick Willy really rammed home the idea of “Christian” as a church slut, not caring what church he appeared in, as long as he was seen at a church.

I’ve had friends argue that Clinton was not our most religious president, but he sucked up to churches because he was our least religious president and wanted to stay president. That argument is a bit cynical for my tastes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Now we have TV political talking heads who are disgusted by Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich, and the TV announcers use that magic word that gives those whackjobs their power. They don’t say “Southern Baptist”; they say “Christian.” I’ve sat around with my atheist friends and tried to be as blasphemous as possible. I’ve used pornographic images, obscenity and poetry to try to make even the most doubtful blush, but I’ve never touched Michele Bachmann’s insult to the gentle honest faithful by saying the suffering and casualties of natural disasters are her god’s message to wayward politicians. It’s hard to imagine Martin Luther King even thinking that. What she said was disgusting, and not general “Christian” belief at all, but her blasphemous religious message was delivered on the news clips as a message from a Christian. Imagine if that had been positioned as a message from Michele Bachmann of the Salem Lutheran Church, a specific cult that had stated that the pope is the antichrist. Michele denied they believe that, but all the same, how are the non–Salem Lutherans (and that group includes all the Catholics, most of the Protestants, Martin Luther King, Mitt Romney and me) going to react to that bugnutty stuff coming from a Salem Lutheran? Even in the broad, broad definition of Lutheran, you have only about 13.5 million and that’s not enough to be president. Now Michele has moved to the Eagle Brook Evangelical Church, but without the alibi term “Christian,” that gives her only 26.3 percent of the American people. With that percentage, you need