With Atheism More Assertive, Religions Form New Ties
BOSTON. Atheism is hot right now, according to Dan McCarthy, sales clerk at Sheehan’s of Boston, a religious goods store, who sometimes spends his lunch hour checking out what people are buying a few blocks away at Borders, the retail book giant. “You’ve got several best-sellers on atheism out right now,” he notes sadly, referring to books such as “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens. “It’s enough to make me mad, if anger wasn’t one of the Seven Deadly Sins.”
Borders in Boston
But religious leaders say the newly assertive form of atheism is producing an equal and opposite reaction; a growing willingness among the major faiths to drop their ancient enmities and work together to combat godlessness.
Galileo: “Fat lot of good it does me.”
“It really started with Jews for Jesus,” says Father Paul Pelletier of St. Columbkill’s parish in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, referring to the evangelical organization that seeks to convert Jews to Christianity, “but without the Spanish Inquisition” he adds with a chuckle. He has formed a new group–”Catholics for Copernicus”–named after the 16th century Polish astronomer whose conclusion that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe contradicted accepted religious dogma. “In retrospect, we really shouldn’t have thrown Galileo in prison for teaching this stuff, but what can we do, other than say ‘My bad’.”
Filene’s Basement: “I saw it first!”
Just a few blocks away, Prudence Williams, a well-dressed woman in her 40’s, is walking down the steps to Filene’s Basement, the world-famous discount store where shoppers fight for bargains like hockey players. “I’ve never been here before,” she notes as she does her best to conceal her distaste for the disorder that surrounds her. “I usually shop at Talbots,” the upscale women’s store, “but I’ve joined PROPS,” an acronym that stands for “Presbyterians for Off-Price Shopping.” Prudence greets her lower-class shopping partner, Donna Maria Alberghetti, a Catholic from Boston’s Italian North End, who will try to convince Prudence, who lives in a wealthy suburb, that “It’s all right to wear bras and panties that have been pawed over by fifty million other women.”
Talbots shoppers: “So I asked the salesgirl, ‘Haven’t you got something a little more expensive?’”
Jewish leaders, historically wary of efforts by other faiths to proselytize their people, say they welcome efforts to strengthen the Judeo-Christian tradition. “We know for a fact that Jesus was Jewish,” says Rabbi Ari Goldstein of Temple Beth-Shalom in Brookline, Mass. “After all, he lived at home until he was thirty, he went into his father’s business, and his mother thought he was God.”
Holy cow.
It’s not just Western religions that are getting a makeover, says Professor Martin Paulsen of the Duquesne University School of Theology in Pittsburgh. “At a recent international symposium I learned of ‘Buddhists for Beer and Bowling’, a group for members of that faith who seek enlightenment in worldly things,” he says, ”and a new organization called ’Hindus for Hamburger Helper’.”
Copyright 2007, Con Chapman
