Government by the people and for the people

The story about my spiritual beliefs, the North Carolina Constitution and one man’s threat to unseat me has gone viral, both in print and on the Web. I’m fielding e-mails from dozens of people around the country—so far all supportive—and the writers include Christians as well as atheists and Quakers and Muslims and pagans and more.

I’ve read some of the thousands of comments posted on blogs and the vast majority of folks support the separation of church and state that has figured so prominently in the history of this country. It is reassuring to me that there is such a broad understanding that freedom OF religion necessarily includes freedom FROM religion, else such a guarantee has no real meaning. Our country was founded by people who had suffered first-hand the demagoguery of state-religion and religious persecution, and we see today the dangers inherent in such systems where they persist.

While many ideologues continue to advance the idea that our Founders’ language concerning rights “endowed by our creator” is the core tenet of this country, and that finding favor with God is the root of our success, I’m more inclined to think that it is the legacy of adherence to science that is the most important contribution of Jefferson, Franklin, Washington and their peers.

Science. not God, is the real source of America’s power—science unencumbered by dogma and empowered by vast resource wealth. Other societies have surely included as high a percentage of the religious faithful as ours, but the difference here was the institutionalized effort to liberate experimental results from the grip of received wisdom. Whether or not we remain the freest society on earth today can be debated, but we were unarguably the first to fully embrace the enlightenment and to institutionalize equality before the law (however imperfectly it has been enforced).

Among my many new correspondents, I’ve found atheist critics who suggest that my stated positions are too temperate and that I’m being less than forthright by labeling myself as “post-theist” rather than atheist. For example one blogger said, “he offers some language that avoids full ownership of the position at times.”

By way of explanation I offer this: It seems to me that theism emerged in human thinking over thousands of years during which we had scant explanation for many of the phenomena in our world. We didn’t understand our origins, whether in utero or in the ancient past. We didn’t understand disease or the vagaries of weather that brought so much suffering to our lives. We didn’t know what the lights in the night sky were or what forces controlled them. And so we handed all the unknowns over to a deity or deities and looked for their favor since they seemed to run the show.

Atheism, a rejection of theism, was an obvious outgrowth of the Enlightenment as science began to provide explanations for ancient mysteries. As a word it perfectly expresses what it means—not theist. Unfortunately, atheism has been draped with a strong sense of the negative, principally by its opponents, in the same way that the word “liberal” was poisoned by conservative pundits over the past few decades. I’m not averse to being called what I am, but I don’t accept the baggage that others attach to their use of that word.

I view my own position has having been shaped in an era during which virtually all of the day-to-day phenomena we experience are explainable by science. While it’s true that there remain unknowns and even unknown unknowns, those blank spaces have been pushed to the margins. Even the well known evangelist Billy Graham, subject of my 2007 biography, has pushed his interpretation of the creation story back 5 billion years. Theism has become marginal. We are living in a post-theist era.

When it is combined with government, theism remains dangerous. The current wars in the mid-east were first cast as a “crusade” by George Bush and continue to have a strong religious component, with the evangelical-led Blackwater a poster-child for all that can go wrong. To the extent that we delude ourselves into believing that “God is on our side,” we leave ourselves open to despotism. We ignore what the Bush administration disparaged as “the reality-based community” at our peril.

Blind belief in the righteousness of our current wars is bankrupting this country while our economy has gone into a tailspin. And while our leaders often cloak their actions with prayer and religious posturing, it is the oil companies and defense contractors who reap profits while our young women and men sacrifice their lives.

And, in regard to death, it is my conclusion that those of us who believe that this is our one and only life are much more likely to value and protect the lives of our brave soldiers and our citizens than those who believe that they will live again in heaven.

A few days later … You have the power. You made a difference.

(This is the message I sent to our volunteers after the election – I’ve been asked to post it on the campaign Web site.)

Asheville heard you loud and clear!
You are amazing. Over 750 strong, you just participated in the largest grassroots campaign in Asheville City Council history.

Because of your work knocking on doors, printing signs, making phone calls, donating and raising money, preparing food, creating and donating art work or services, telling your friends and finally standing at the polls, we have changed Asheville’s government in important ways. The primary election finishers ranked from 1-5 were in descending order from liberal to conservative.

The order shifted somewhat in the general election following a smear campaign that cost at least thousands and quite probably more than $10,000. The strength and resilience of our grassroots effort withstood the kind of attack that stopped progressive/liberal candidates in 2007.

On an election day which saw slippage of Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, we maintained the grassroots, populist energy that delivered North Carolina for Obama in 2008, and together we can continue to effect real change. It won’t be as intense as the campaign, but I hope I can count on you to stay active. When important issues come before Council, the best we can do is stick together, make phone calls, write letters and e-mails and let other Council members know that our campaign is alive and well and engaged. It is about us, not about me.

I am sincere about public financing of local elections and am already in touch with activists in Chapel Hill to learn how their new system worked this year. While I am enormously grateful for the 550+ donors who made this campaign work, I would much prefer to eliminate fundraising, to eliminate the influence of big money, and to return to the kind of populist, participatory democracy that existed before the Supreme Court decided that money was a form of speech.

Last of all, you are invited to the swearing-in ceremony on December 8, at 5 p.m. at City Hall.

Thank you, and thank each other. It took all of us working together to make this campaign a success and I am enormously grateful to you for your participation.

As Chris Smither, composer of my early campaign theme “Can’t do it alone” sang in another of his great songs, “I could take the credit, but it’s thanks to you.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and you too.

Join the team to help me keep Asheville real

1. Let’s Keep Asheville real when it comes to development and strengthen the accountability of City Council concerning development.

2. Let’s Keep Asheville real in our approach to the environment. The region needs a Plan B to prepare for a new energy future that may include higher utility and fuel costs and reduced tourism. Green jobs are local jobs that can’t be exported.

3. Let’s Keep Asheville real by demanding that county and state elected officials rework the water rules to be fair to Asheville’s rate- and tax-payers.

4. Let’s Keep Asheville real by reinstating the Minimum Housing Code (which was eliminated in 2002). We need to protect our housing stock, particularly so in this time of financial upheaval and rapidly shifting ownership of rental properties.

5. Let’s Keep Asheville real by establishing a meaningful Living Wage for all city employees, including contract labor.

6. Let’s Keep Asheville real by enacting a three-strikes law concerning contracts and purchases. Other cities have decided to not patronize businesses that have been convicted three times of tax fraud, civil rights violations, wage/hour lawbreaking or environmental violations. There’s no reason for your tax money to go to repeat offenders.

7. Let’s Keep Asheville real by enacting meaningful campaign finance reform.