Originally, I was going to write that the apparent surge in atheism is a response to the perceived tyranny of religious authority and its unholy marriage to American political power, perverting our politics, skewing our social organization and increasingly pervading our private space. Atheism, I was going to say, is little more than the Separation Clause on steroids. Afterall, if we could just get rid of religion, period, there would be no unassailable authority to fear getting entangled in our politics.

Then it dawned on me. The nexus between religion and politics today pales in comparison with the situation in America's formative years, when there were few, if any, alternatives to a religious/Christian world view as the basis for American identity formation. Nancy Cott, for example, in Public Vows, catalogues the imposition of "Christian marriage" on the entire nation to the detriment of all other forms. And, recognizing the broader implications of this chapter in our history, Samuel P. Huntington insists in Who Are We? that "We" are "Anglo-Protestants."

Yet, formative America did not respond with the kind of anti-theism (to be distinguished from the simple a-theism found, e.g., in Buddhism or Taoism) that we are witnessing today.

Indeed, not only was the influence of religion in the past far greater than it is today, so was the abuse of religion! It was religion that legitimated not simply the enslavement of the Africans (which was not a sui generis institution at the time) but the actual TREATMENT of blacks (which was sui generis) alongside a consciously instituted system of white supremacy, complete with images of a Jesus who far more resembled the slave-masters than he did his Middle Eastern mother, brother or countrymen, whose descendents we now love to loathe.

Yet, even American blacks did not respond to this abuse of religion with anti-theistic atheism. On the contrary, they went on to become one of the most religious populations America has known.

Today, American atheists speak of science and reason as the preferred alternatives to religion. But neither science nor reason can be the real basis of any "vision" of society, of what we hold to be morally right, meaningful or 'sacred'. In fact, THE insight of post-modernism (though it was pointed out centuries ago by the likes of al-Ghazali) is precisely that, in the world of morality, reason can only operate in the interest of values already present. As such, in most of our conversations about right and wrong, the "reason" we invoke is rarely (if ever) the pure, unadulterated power of the human faculties. It is, rather, history, lived, internalized, normalized and then forgotten as history.

This brings me to my first point. American blacks did not respond to the abuses of religion with rationalistic atheism because they understood, instinctively, that the most liveable world for them would be one in which there was always an authority above and beyond the dominant group to whom they could appeal. "Reason," in this context, they understood to be little more than a thin veneer for control. For clearly, their "reason" would never be taken to be as worthy, as sophisticated or as persuasive as that of their abusers. Why should they trade a benign, transcendent master for a cruel, immanent one?

American rationalistic atheism often speaks with an altruistic voice of concern for Americans and their addiction to silly little mental associations that have no basis in reality. At first blush, one is inclined to think that such energy might be better aimed at the advertising industry. But advertisers don't make claims to ultimate, unassailable truth. And this brings me to my second point.

Ultimately, it seems to me that contemporary American atheism is an attempt to supplant the UNASSAILABLE authority of religion with the UNASSAILABLE authority of reason. What is missing in the discussion, however, is that those who cannot reason (or cannot reason quickly or chicly enough (and we should note that THE stereotype of the American Negro is that s/he is intellectually inferior) or whose "internalized, normalized" history is not recognized may be no better served and no less subjugated by a regime of reason than those who cannot or do not believe are by a regime of belief.

And this brings me to my final point. All of us are a combination of beliefs and rationalizations. What we need, however, is a better set of "Rules of Engagement," via which the limitations of both faith and reason can be duly recognized and through which we can arrive at a better accommodation of both in the public space. This, I think, is THE issue on which the religious and the non-religious must remain in conversation. And in this, I think, we have no choice.

And God knows best.