reaching out to harry AND sally (2 of 3)
by Dale McGowan
[A continuation of the cover story in the current issue of Secular Nation. Back to part 1.]
The public response
It’s always dicey to draw conclusions from the more obvious public responses to our efforts. The disgruntled are much more likely than the gruntled to make their opinions known. A journalist I know estimates that an angry reader is eight times more likely to go to the trouble of making her views known than a happy one. If the mail she receives after an article runs 8-to-1 negative, she figures public opinion was evenly split. If on the other hand the negatives are only 3-to-1, she reads it as an overwhelmingly positive response.
When we measure the success of an atheist outreach effort, it’s crucial to shrug off a certain amount of noise. It’s a given that some wingnut will take it upon him or herself to throw the occasional Holy Hand Grenade. So it’s not surprising that highway signs for Atheists United have been vandalized, nor that the Tree of Knowledge display was repeatedly damaged. Reacting calmly to such nonsense can win even more hearts and minds.
Now consider the fact that all three efforts report a considerable number of positive comments and positive press coverage and you begin to realize just how effective it can be to promote our worldview in a major key.
The third step
The third step in the courtship is the real challenge. Once freethought has made itself noticed and won hearts with our lovely smile, it’s time to deliver the goods. Though there’s movement in the right direction, I’m still concerned about our readiness for prime time. There’s a long way to go before we can call ourselves fully enlightened on the subject of what people are looking for—but at least we’re fumbling mightily for the light switch.
Until very recently, I didn’t even see too much of that. I’d hear the occasional grumble at freethought meetings about why the numbers remained so low, the median age so high, and the modal gender so male. And then, in a dismissive grunt, I’d hear the same conclusion, over and over: They’re all just brainwashed.
This is our very own God Delusion.
The persistent delusion I hear from freethinkers is that people go to church for God. If we could just break through their belief in God, goes the argument, they’ll walk away from church. It isn’t true, and we need to grasp this, once and for all, if we are ever to capitalize on these brilliant outreach efforts, bringing people in the door and keeping them there. If we don’t have what they are looking for—and by and large, we don’t yet—they will walk right out again. And by and large, they do.
I mentioned this disconnect to a gentleman in a freethought meeting last year and he scoffed. “Sorry,” he said. “If eternal life and pretty fables are what they need, we’re fresh out.” He didn’t seem inclined to question his assumption. In fact, I’m convinced the revolving door on freethought meetings isn’t about the absence of God but the absence of something much more human.
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In a recent Gallup poll, only 27 percent of respondents directly mentioned God when giving their primary reason for attending church. They go to be a part of a loving community, for a sense of belonging, to be inspired and supported, to be involved in social justice and good works. One friend told me she goes so she can be surrounded by friendly people once a week. Simple as that. Yet we harp and harp on theology and epistemology.
Suppose our outreach efforts are successful. A young woman—let’s call her Sally—sees the Tree of Knowledge or one of the freeway signs. It’s that last little nudge she needed. One Sunday morning she decides to check out a freethought meeting instead of pewsitting. She finds a local group and goes to a meeting.
Sally walks in the door of the meeting with a nervous smile. A few men are setting things up. No one acknowledges her. Ten minutes after milling about awkwardly, reading scattered pamphlets and counting ceiling tiles, she crosses paths with one of the men.
“Visitor?” he asks.
“Yes, I am, hello!” she replies.
“Hello, good to meet you,” he says. “Help yourself to coffee and nametags over there.” And off he goes to set up the chairs.
Sally has just met Harry.
I heart Harry…but does Harry heart Sally?
Imagine for a moment a future theocracy in the U.S. (Go ahead, make your jokes about the word “future” being unnecessary. I’ll wait.) Freethinkers have been implicated in a series of thought crimes, and the police have been ordered to pull over every driver who fits the standard American freethought profile. So who are they looking for? Young Hispanic women who garden? Hippies with large vinyl record collections? Families of four in minivans?
No. There are surely freethinkers who fit those descriptions, but that’s not how profiling works. We’re looking for the typical freethinker. Fortunately, one of our operatives intercepted a profile advisory from the state police. Here it is:
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PROFILE: FREETHINKER
Scientifically-oriented, well-read and well-educated white male in his early seventies. Grey-to-white hair and beard. Driving mid-sized vehicle with multiple incendiary bumperstickers. Officers are cautioned to expect an argument. Suspect may be armed with syllogisms.
Aside from the car, they’re essentially looking for Socrates.
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The guy they are looking for—let’s call him Harry—is the backbone of organized freethought. The majority of our membership fits a good three-fourths of that profile, regardless of gender, race or age. Harry was there when Madeleine Murray O’Hair first stated the obvious, and he’s still here, staffing the tables, giving the talks, bringing the cookies, and just showing up, even when the rest of us have turned into the nonreligious equivalents of Christmas and Easter Christians.
I love Harry. Without the dedication and courage of Harry and those like him, the freethought movement would never have made it this far.
But what do we need to do to move farther? For one thing, we need to serve the needs of people who are quite different from Harry.
it’s in the mail
I’ve heard it said that no woman would ever have a second child if she really remembered what it was like to give birth to the first one.
Without in the LEAST implying that it’s as bad as birthing a baby, lemme say the same is true of writing a book: If I remembered from one to the next how hard it was, I’d never do it again.
Raising Freethinkers consists of 106 activities, 108 common questions from nonreligious parents with extended answers, and 224 recommended books, films, and websites. And it’s the details that get ya — the permissions, the citations, the 138 footnotes and two appendices. It’s trying to remember if you forgot to remember to include something. Or if you included it twice. Or accidentally included Satan in the Acknowledgements. Or accidentally left him out.
It’s the editing and proofing. I mailed it 45 minutes ago and just found two more errors. Shit.
It’s the wondering if you said something juuuust the right way — especially in a book like this.
It was completely fabulous working with Amanda Metskas of Camp Quest, Jan Devor of First Unitarian Minneapolis, and Molleen Matsumura of Sweet Reason and NCSE. To hear all my whining, you’d think I did it all myself. In fact, most of whatever real brilliance is in the thing is theirs.
At any rate, my life just got a heck of a lot easier. I just sat down at the piano, as if I had nothing better to do, and played the first ten bars of “Because” by the Beatles — ten of the most incredible measures in all of music, incredible for reasons I would only bore a music theory class with. Then I played a computer game. Now I’m blogging.
I think that brings you up to date.
[Update: I’ve now updated Northing at Midlife and Ten Wonderfull Things and will once again spend daily time in the discussion forum. Please join me there. I have also begun a complete overhaul of the Resources page to include books and videos featured in Raising Freethinkers.]
the gregory walsh interview
I’m sitting in the Albuquerque airport Easter morning after a really lovely visit with folks from the Humanist Society of New Mexico. Spoke to the chapter meeting, sold some books, gave the seminar, had a great dinner in the gorgeous home of the chapter president with a painfully beautiful view of the Sandia Mountains.
As nice as the trip has been, I’m awfully glad I won’t be winding through another airport security line for five weeks.
Several trips back, after speaking at the Center for Inquiry in DC, I sat down for an interview with Gregory Walsh, a filmmaker working on a documentary about religious disbelief in America. Greg did quite a nice job editing me into coherence:
the hurrier i go
My harried spin through early spring continues, and now I see the blog’s been idling curbside for a full week. Can’t be good for global warming.
Just returned from a terrific trip to DC, where I (along with Nothing author Nica Lalli) spoke to a large and attentive crowd at the Center for Inquiry there. They’re hoping to get a secular parenting program jumpstarted there, and I’m always happy to help such a thing.
February 17 is the first topical webinar — Secular Family, Religious World — and I’m busily finishing the PowerPoint and notes for that one while prepping for the Seminar Tour, which launches in Minneapolis on March 1 before continuing to Raleigh on the 15th and Albuquerque on the 22nd. And the first draft of the second book is due on February 29th.
Not whining. Just freaking out. Not the same.
At any rate, the last thing I can fit in is an intelligent discursion on Leviticus and Deuteronomy for the Meming of Life, so I’m forced to shuffle the order a bit. Later today I’ll post a guest column by the fabulous Timothy Mills on Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. It’s extremely well done, so do check that out.
123 meme
I’ve been tagged by Tim Mills at The Friendly Humanist with the 1-2-3 blogmeme. Because memetics is one of the founding concepts and namesake of this blog (and because it’s quick), I’ll dood it!
The rules are these:
1. Pick up the book nearest you with at least 123 pages. (No cheating!)
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Count the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other bloggers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the nearest book at the moment is none other than the NIV Study Bible, 10th Anniversary Edition.
*flip flip flip*
Page 123 is in the heart of Exodus. Moses has received the Ten Commandments (and then some); now the question is where to put them. God gives very precise instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, the table for the bread of the Presence, and the tabernacle (“Make loops of blue material along the edge of the end curtain in one set, and do the same with the end curtain in the other set”). The three sentences I am supposed to quote relate to the building of the table:
Overlay it with pure gold and make a gold molding around it. Also make around it a rim a handbreadth wide and put a gold molding on the rim. Make four gold rings for the table and fasten them to the four corners, where the four legs are.
Words to live by.
(I’ll tag others in a few days.)
who ARE you people?
I started this blog last March by saying what most bloggers say in their opening post: that blogging — a mostly one-way conversation in which you know there are ears pressed against the wall in the next room, but you don’t know how many, or who is attached to them, or why they are listening — is simply strange.
Though it’s no less strange after ten months, I’m more accustomed to the strangeness now. The blog has been helpful in sorting and semi-polishing rough ideas. A few published columns have already sprung from its loins. One blog entry will be the basis of the Preface for the second PBB, now in the works, and several others will be scattered through the text of that book. I’ve also develop a seminar series that will launch in February — more on that later — and again, the blog has given me a way to wrestle with its content semi-publicly.
The site’s averaging 18,000 visitors a month, but aside from my loyal and much-appreciated regular commenters, I’ve not had the foggiest hint who you fine people are. The curiosity was killing me.
Enter gVisit, a web service that gives me a list of the cities from which y’all are visiting, and includes my favorite software feature — freeness. In just the last 24 hours, The Meming of Life has had visitors from 33 U.S. states, five Canadian provinces, and eight countries.
Upcoming posts include:
- A father-son double review of THE GOLDEN COMPASS
Progressive holiday gift ideas
A father-daughter appreciation of Dr. Seuss
Bloggin’ through the Bible: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John
The cure for arrogance in secular preteens
Why I’m obstinate about abstinence
National Geographic’s cool GENOGRAPHIC Project
Five things Christians do (much) better than we do
A shout-out to the UUs
“I want to be one of the smarties”
Music I want in my funeral…or I’ll HAUNT you, honey
The PBB seminars
I plejaleejins
So I’ll keep talking, and I’d be delighted if more of you would talk back. No need to be profound — I clearly don’t bother to be — just knock three times on the wall so I know you’re out there.
we’re back
Our web host, One World Hosting, just went through a “migration,” for which they scheduled 14 hours of downtime (Friday night through Saturday noon). Instead, it took 84 hours, which is, if nothing else, an even multiple of the predicted time. Though I’m sure OWH will lose an enormous number of clients over it, we are now, apparently, back.
So scroll down to see Pete Wernick’s guest column, watch for the fourth installment of Northing at Midlife, and stay tuned for spicy excerpts from the letters received by L’Actualité after my feature interview. (Hint: SACRE BLEU!)
resurrection day — and once again, Life has Meming!
We had a server crash Sunday afternoon. For three days and three nights,1 the Meming of Life lay in the heart of the earth. Now, on Tuesday morning, we have risen indeed! Check the cyberholes in my cyberhands if you doubt.
1Using New Testament math, here explained.
serializing my baby
On the Coast to Coast Walk near Patterdale, Cumbria, UK
There’s much good news: PBB hit #588 overall on Amazon Canada last night. My son’s team won a well-played game of Godball on Monday, and, after some struggles and fits, the boy aced his midterm exams and is poised for something close to straight As on his midterm report card. Delaney wants to win “that medal the man got for helping cool the earth down” (Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize). Erin was elected student council representative for her class (the new kid — I’m so proud!). Freelancing work is steady, the weather is brilliant, the trees are changing. We rafted the Chattahoochee River on Sunday. Becca is happy and well, and so am I.
So of course I’m here to whine.
After considering the manuscript of my book Northing at Midlife for a solid year, a publisher I admire and would have loved to work with has decided against acquiring it. They love it, it’s brilliant, the voice is unique and blah blah, the blah is blah blah blah, but “we couldn’t get it the attention it deserves in this crowded market.”
Damn!
While my agent continues to put his shoulder to the wheel for the book, I’ve decided to do my part by both reworking the manuscript and serializing it on this website. In the upper left corner of this page you’ll see a link — currently Northing at Midlife (1 of 88 50) — which will change roughly once a week as I move through the book. I justify it on this site because it includes a distinctly secular take on the midlife contemplation of mortality. If all goes well, someone out there will be the catalyst for getting it noticed by the publishing world before I so much as finish Chapter 2. Might that someone be…you?
since you asked
A quick reply to a few recent emails and comments:
I read your August 15 blog entry and really enjoyed it, because you always have interesting and well thought-through things to say. I love soaking in your posts. But when I reloaded the page a few days later (to see if you’d posted anything new), I saw that your post had been modified. And I know this isn’t the first time (even excepting the forced deletions). So I would like to say, “No Fair!!” Now I will need to read through the post again and try to figure out which tasty morsels are new and which were already there.
I would like to encourage you to post your entries when you’ve decided they’re done enough for public consumption, then LEAVE THEM ALONE! If you want to say something else, put it in a new post so that all of your faithful readers will be sure to notice and to read it. I really really don’t want to miss anything that you have to say.
Except for the undeserved implication that my posts are interesting, I SO deserve that one. I do indeed make changes after posting, which is a blog felony — but here’s the deal. One of the only ways I can justify spending time on the blog is by using it to fulfill other needs. A writer needs to write every day and to practice revision every day. I never undertook this important discipline until beginning this blog, which now serves as an ongoing writer’s workshop for me. I write an entry, then edit, then post when I think it’s good enough. But I’ll return to an entry over and over to practice the tinkering arts.
I do not make substantive changes — I just replace a word or phrase here and there, or clarify, or tighten up, for the purpose of practicing the craft. I just changed the title of the previous post, for example, from “clever boy!” to “outfoxing the buddha.” Sometimes I make tiny changes in posts that are weeks old. If I waited until a post was really “done,” I’d never post.
Let us know when you’re going to be giving a talk, ’cause a lot of us would like to hear you speak. When I was first checking out your pages I came across one saying that you’ll be in DC on Sept 22 [sic], but I recently looked for that info again and couldn’t find it. At least make it easy for us, huh?
I promise to do better with this. After a burst in early summer, I actually haven’t done any speaking for awhile. It heats up again in the fall, though most dates are still up in the air. CONFIRMED AT THE MOMENT: Secular Parenting Discussion Panel at the convention of Atheist Alliance International in Washington DC this Saturday Sept 29 (which is sold out) and a talk at UUC Atlanta, one of the largest UUs in the country, on November 4 at 2 pm. Still nailing down Austin, Albany, Amherst, Raleigh-Durham, and San Francisco.
One reader says:
FYI I always enjoy the blogs with the kids experiences in them.
And another reader says:
I especially appreciate the posts that dig deeply and thoughtfully into a given topic.
As long as neither minds the other type too much, we should be fine. I’m trying to keep a good mix. I do notice that the posts involving my kids get the most comments.
More frequent posting is good!
I’m almost up to daily posts at the moment, though every other day is more likely in the long run. There may be a lull at the end of this week while I’m in DC — or I may be typing like mad in my hotel room. Who knows.
At any rate, thanks for reading, and for commenting.
