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In Cal­i­for­nia, the debate about legal­iz­ing same-sex mar­riage is com­ing to a head with a vote in the Novem­ber elec­tion. An argu­ment to keep mar­riage between one man and one woman is made in David Blankenhorn’s Op-Ed in the LA Times:

Mar­riage as a human insti­tu­tion is con­stantly evolv­ing, and many of its fea­tures vary across groups and cul­tures. But there is one con­stant. In all soci­eties, mar­riage shapes the rights and oblig­a­tions of par­ent­hood. Among us humans, the schol­ars report, mar­riage is not pri­mar­ily a license to have sex. Nor is it pri­mar­ily a license to receive ben­e­fits or social recog­ni­tion. It is pri­mar­ily a license to have children.

In this sense, mar­riage is a gift that soci­ety bestows on its next gen­er­a­tion. Mar­riage (and only mar­riage) unites the three core dimen­sions of par­ent­hood — bio­log­i­cal, social and legal — into one pro-child form: the mar­ried cou­ple. Mar­riage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sex­ual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Mar­riage says to soci­ety as a whole: For every child born, there is a rec­og­nized mother and a father, account­able to the child and to each other.

There is lots to say about this, but Blankenhorn’s piece is refresh­ingly cogent for such an emo­tion­ally charged issue.

“Belief in God sym­bol­i­cally evap­o­rated when more than a hun­dred athe­ists were ‘de-baptized’ with a blow dryer yes­ter­day,” writes the Colum­bus Dis­patch. The arti­cle quotes the cer­e­mo­nial for­mula intoned by Frank Zindler:

“Do you agree that the mag­i­cal potency of today’s cer­e­mony is exactly equal to the mag­i­cal effi­cacy of cer­e­mo­nial bap­tism with dihy­dro­gen oxide, and do you agree that the power of all mag­i­cal cer­e­monies is nonexistent?”

If this didn’t make me so sad, I would find this rather funny.

A cou­ple notes: First, this cer­e­mony, albeit funny, shows that athe­ists con­tinue to define them­selves by what they are against. Sar­cas­tic humor unites by tear­ing down a foe, but sar­casm is hardly cre­ative. Nor does it cre­ate community.

Sec­ondly, the de-baptismal for­mula quoted is utterly devoid of any sort of moral demand. Bap­tism in the Bible is about both faith and repen­tance from sin. At it’s barest mean­ing (i.e. devoid of “magic”), bap­tism is a state­ment and com­mit­ment to humil­ity, growth and change. The de-baptism for­mula above is sim­ply about declar­ing “unfaith,” which I find insipid and unin­spir­ing. As such, and quite iron­i­cally, Chris­t­ian bap­tism is more human­is­tic than this athe­is­tic de-baptism.

Another recent trend: men pam­per­ing their bod­ies. Randy Stin­son cri­tiques the trend, call­ing it the fem­i­niza­tion of the Amer­i­can male. This line cri­tiquing Tony Glenville’s Top to Toe made me chuckle:

For instance, Glenville advises, “A spe­cial occa­sion calls for spe­cial treat­ment, and tak­ing the time to visit your hair­dresser, go for a mas­sage, and have a facial scrub will all add to your con­fi­dence.” In another sec­tion, he tells us, “At sport­ing events, whether cheer­ing your team on or par­tic­i­pat­ing your­self, the wrong footwear can com­pletely skew an out­fit.” I won­der if Chip­per Jones knows this?

Stinson’s point is that pam­per­ing one­self encour­ages the sin of self-absorption. “We do not need pret­tier boys. We do not need softer men. What we need is a church cul­ture that will call boys and men to lives of self sac­ri­fice as exam­pled by the pic­ture of Christ in Eph­esians 5 who loved the church and gave him­self for her to his own neglect and sac­ri­fice.” [Read the arti­cle]

Do athe­ists want to go to church too? NY Mag­a­zine writes about an 850 per­son meet­ing of the Soci­ety for Eth­i­cal Cul­ture. There’s a grow­ing con­ver­sa­tion about orga­niz­ing their “reli­gion.” Instead of athe­ists being just polit­i­cal activi­tists fight­ing for sep­a­ra­tion of church and state…

…some athe­ists are tak­ing seri­ously the idea that athe­ism needs to stand for things, like evo­lu­tion and ethics, not just against things, like God. The most suc­cess­ful move­ments in his­tory, after all — Chris­tian­ity, Islam, Hin­duism, etc. — all have creeds, cathe­drals, schools, hier­ar­chies, rit­u­als, money, cler­ics, and some ver­sion of a heav­enly after­life. Churches fill needs, goes the argu­ment — they incul­cate ethics, give mean­ing, build com­mu­ni­ties. “Sci­ence and rea­son are impor­tant,” says Greg Epstein, the human­ist chap­lain of Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. “But sci­ence and rea­son won’t visit you in the hospital.”

Essen­tially, some athe­ists want to throw out the baby and keep the bath­wa­ter. The social­iz­ing func­tions of church are desir­able, but the crux of the church — God and the Gospel — are to be laid to rest.

The move­ment to “churchify” athe­ism is in a very early stage. There is dis­agree­ment even on what to call it. To define a move­ment sim­ply by what one is against (i.e. “athe­ist” or “Anti-Theist”) is strik­ingly uncre­ative and unin­spir­ing for a move­ment that cel­e­brates human­ism and achieve­ment. More impor­tantly, to define and “can­on­ize” what a move­ment believes (as opposed to what one sim­ply stands against) will be a chal­lenge that I don’t see athe­ists over­com­ing any time soon.

To be pas­sion­ately anti-Something eas­ily gal­va­nizes move­ments. Stones thrown from any angle can all hit the tar­get. But to be pas­sion­ately for-Something takes sub­mis­sion to an author­ity greater than the com­mu­nity itself. That author­ity, in turn, shapes the com­mu­nity. Chris­tians look to the Bible. Mus­lims look to the Qur’an. The U.S. looks to the Con­sti­tu­tion. Since some of the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of athe­ism is skep­ti­cism of author­ity and even the pos­si­bil­ity of know­ing any­thing for sure, I’m very inter­ested in see­ing how the move­ment tries to define itself.

I must say, as a leader in an orga­nized reli­gious move­ment, it’s hard enough keep­ing peo­ple together when God is on our side. Good luck without.