This post was originally published on The Unelectables.

An incredible video went up on YouTube yesterday, in which a man named Jacob Kramer asks Representative Joe Walsh, who is running for re-election in Kramer’s district, the following simple question: “How will you represent your atheist voters?”

I watched all five minutes and thirty-eight seconds of this video, which was filmed at a town hall event that Rep. Walsh offered for his constituents, with my jaw firmly planted on the floor – but not for any of the reasons I usually drop my jaw. In this video, there is no yelling. There is no name-calling. There is no whining. There is no condescension. There is no wild-eyed terror. There is no weeping or gnashing of teeth. This video flows with milk and honey and dignity and respect and competence and maturity and reasonable, constructive dialogue.

That’s it. I’m officially converted – I’ve witnessed a bona fide miracle.

Jacob Kramer serves as the Vice President of Outreach for the newly formed National Atheist Party. (This happens to be the exact position that I hold on the board of the equally influential Harvard Secular Society. Coincidence? I think not!) The NAP, founded last March by Troy Boyle, stands for a firm separation of church and state.

And, contrary to what the Pope would have you believe about “radical secularists,” the NAP truly doesn’t want the government to favor any religious viewpoint – including non-religious ones. “We don’t want government to impose a religion,” Boyle explained in an interview, “and we don’t want government to impose no religion.”

Some, like Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist blog, have been skeptical of the NAP’s usefulness. In addition to the unfortunately somnolent acronym, Mehta mentions the NAP’s positions on a whole host of non-theological issues – from gay marriage to gun control – as a downside. Not the positions themselves, that is, but the simple fact that the NAP has taken positions on issues other than the existence of god(s). Although Mehta happens to agree with all of NAP’s declared positions on these issues, he explains, “it’s crazy to imply that all atheists feel the same way. Or that we should feel the same way.” Even support for church-state separation, Mehta suggest, might be an unwarranted extrapolation from the simple belief in a godless universe.

However, Mehta is quick to (rightly) point out that simply showing the atheists of America that they’re not alone is “a big freaking deal,” and he commends the NAP for at least partly uniting an often fragmented group. He also remarks – playfully highlighting a painfully real problem – that perhaps the best thing the NAP can do to create a more atheist-friendly country is to publicly endorse an atheist-unfriendly candidate (Mehta suggests Rick Santorum), thereby ending that unlucky person’s political career by branding them with the unelectable scarlet A.

But I think the NAP can do more than ironically humiliate evangelical politicians and remind people that atheists exist. The video of Jacob Kramer and Joe Walsh demonstrates the power that we can have if we organize. Free Inquiry editor Tom Flynn demanded years ago that atheists “start punching our weight.” But, as this video reveals, our true power lies not in our fists, but in what we can accomplish when we unclench them.

I obviously disagree strongly with the majority of Rep. Walsh’s response to Kramer’s question, but I’m incredibly impressed with the tone of this conversation, on both sides. Rep. Walsh may be a poor constitutional interpreter, but he should be commended for his sincere attempt to honestly and fairly engage all of his constituents in reasonable discussion. And Kramer clearly deserves props for bringing these issues up publicly, and for doing so in a manner that encourages constructive dialogue instead of starting yet another futile shouting match.

These are the types of conversations we need to be having with all our elected officials, because these are the conversations that will actually get us somewhere. If all the NAP did was record and publicize five-minute discussions like this one with every congressperson, they would immediately advance the public discourse on religion and government far more than any other party has in years.

As for the NAP’s actual platform, I’m not sure it’s as much of an extrapolation as Mehta argues. Inasmuch as a whole lot of hot political issues stem from people’s religious beliefs, it’s entirely reasonable to believe that certain positions on such issues could follow from non-religious beliefs as well. Although I agree that the NAP might be straying into unorthodox territory with some of their policies (I’m unclear on what godlessness tells us about the economy, for example), and while I’m well aware that there are always exceptions to the rules (my friend Kelly, who held my Harvard Secular Society board position before me, is pro-life), I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find an atheist who wants the state to apply different marriage rules to different couples based on their gender composition. Of course atheists will differ on whether to provide equal marriage rights or abolish marriage altogether as a government institution and stick with civil unions, but that’s the same kind of diversity you will see within any political party. The take-home message here is that the NAP isn’t necessary overstepping its bounds by taking positions on religiously-influenced political issues.

Finally, I think the NAP possesses significant potential in another realm that has not yet been recognized by either the media or the NAP itself. Although they may be the strangest of bedfellows, the NAP could be the next great ally of the interfaith movement. Of course this is where the ostensibly extraneous parts of their platform could get in the way, but if the NAP is serious about sticking to its core purpose of firmly separating church from state, its goals and methods should significantly overlap with those of interfaith organizations like the Interfaith Youth Core. And the respectful conversation between Kramer and Rep. Walsh is like an interfaith organizer’s wet dream. I’m skeptical that this cooperative potential will be harnessed, but stranger things have happened.

Small parties like the NAP frequently pop up for a few years and then die out, much like the vast majority of organisms in the history of Earth. But I believe the NAP has the potential to truly “evolve our politics,” just as they promise.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She recently founded and currently writes for two other blogs, The Unelectables (following religious minority candidates in the 2012 election) and Blogging Biblically (documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year). She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. Last summer, she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.

About sixteen months ago, the Pew Research Center announced the results of their study of religious literacy in the United States. This study caused such a buzz that the Pew website crashed from all the traffic. Atheists and agnostics  were – perhaps unsurprisingly? – found to be the most religiously literate belief group, and we’ve hardly stopped bragging since. Hemant Mehta wrote a good Friendly Atheist post assembling some choice excerpts from the flurry of atheist commentary attempting to explain the results, including his own very compelling Chicago Tribune piece on the topic (in which he suggests that we’re atheists precisely because we’re so religiously literate).

Before you break out the confetti all over again, I’d like to point out that the study results might not be as impressive as we non-religious apologists have all made it out to be. Yes, we scored the highest, but barely: on the 32-question quiz used in the study, atheists/agnostics answered an average of 20.9 questions correctly, but the Jews and Mormons were breathing down our necks at 20.5 and 20.3, respectively.

But, even more importantly, it’s time to acknowledge that 21 out of 32 is an embarrassingly low score on such an appallingly simple test. Sure, we did better than the rest of America, but I think a more accurate characterization of the results is, “holy shit, everyone else is even more ignorant than we are.”

Seriously, this was not a hard quiz. We are not talking about theological minutiae or obscure sects here. We’re talking about very basic, fundamental ideas in the world’s most prominent belief systems, and major, world-changing events in the history of religion. This Huffington Post article and this Vancouver Sun piece provide some horrifying examples of America’s rampant ignorance. For a taste, here are just a few of the things that over half of Americans don’t know:

- that Judaism is a religion

- that the Qur’an is the sacred text of Muslims

- that Martin Luther was a leader of the Protestant Reformation

Again, this is not complex stuff. Forget about the tenets of Judaism; a majority of people don’t even know what Judaism is.

And it gets worse: not only do people have no idea what everyone else believes, they’re also totally ignorant of the basic ideas that make up their own beliefs.

- Almost half of Catholics don’t know that their church officially teaches that, during communion, the bread and wine literally turn into Jesus. Keep in mind that this exact belief was a huge source of violence and general chaos in the sixteenth century, and is a major reason for the split between Catholicism and Protestantism.

- Speaking of which, more than half of Protestants don’t know that Martin Luther was a major player in that whole debacle.

- Over a third of Jews don’t know that Maimonides – who, as Rachel Zoll notes in the HuffPo piece, was “one of the greatest rabbis and intellectuals in history” – was Jewish.

I think you probably get the idea. The fact that atheists are, on average, very slightly more religiously literate than everybody else isn’t very impressive when you realize just how low the bar is.

So, while 2012 is still young and there is still time to make belated resolutions, I’d like to issue a challenge to my fellow atheists (and everyone else): this year, try to learn a little more and suck a little less.

To this end, my New Year’s resolution is to read the Bible in its entirety before 2013 rolls around. It’s the most influential piece of literature in the Western canon – and, arguably, in history – and I’m embarrassed to have lived 22 years and change in the most Christian country in the world without reading it cover-to-cover. I’m documenting my journey from Genesis to Revelation at Blogging Biblically; each post includes a [snarky and unorthodox] summary of that day’s reading, so if you prefer your scriptures partly digested, I invite you to subscribe and follow along. And I’m very interested in other people’s thoughts on the Bible and reactions to my ideas about it, so please feel free to join in the conversation in the comments. </shameless plug>

Whether or not you give a rat’s ass about my Bible blog, I hope you’ll take seriously my challenge to boost your religious literacy this year. Richard Dawkins’s disgruntled complaints about fairyology aside, there are clear benefits to understanding what other people – billions of them – believe about life, death, morality, fate, and the universe. Indeed, in a country where sharia law and fetal ensoulment are hot political issues, and in a world where centuries-old beliefs inspire bloodshed in theocracies and democracies alike, you can hardly afford not to.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She recently founded and currently writes for two other blogs, The Unelectables (following religious minority candidates in the 2012 election) and Blogging Biblically (documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year). She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. Last summer, she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.

Missed Part One? Read it here.

As an “evangelical atheist” who’s heavily involved in interfaith work, I’m hugely inspired by my friend Greg Damhorst (co-founder of Faith Line Protestants), who faces very similar challenges as an evangelical Christian who’s strongly committed to both interfaith work and sharing the message of his faith. So I asked him for his thoughts on evangelism, interfaith, and Christina’s piece.

In our discussion, Greg made the excellent point that “there’s a difference between fighting to preserve a non-Christian religious tradition and respecting it. As a Christian,” he continued, “I’m interested in the latter (respecting others) and not the former (preserving other traditions) because I believe (a) that all people deserve respect and (b) in the exclusivity of the Bible.”

I think this is perfectly parallel to the way an evangelical atheist like myself ought to approach religion, the religious, and interfaith work. Like Greg, I believe that all people deserve respect; but, like Greg, I also think I’m right about the god question. I think I can easily respect somebody while explaining what I believe and why. If I couldn’t do that, I could never engage in academic discussions in my seminars at school, or converse about politics, or talk to anybody, ever, basically. The way I see it, we must respect people, but we need not respect theories.

So I hope I’ve shown that both of the goals Christina outlines for various constituents of the atheist movement are perfectly compatible with interfaith work. But the issue of respect, brought up by Greg, brings us to the question of tactics.

Christina implies that “confrontationalism” – which she defines as “arguing with believers about religion, or making fun of it, or insulting it” – might hurt the cause of reducing discrimination against atheists, but won’t necessarily hurt the cause of persuading people out of religion. Again, I’m not going to discuss effectiveness in this post; although I’m skeptical that yelling insults at people is likely to change their minds, let’s assume for the moment that it might. What interests me now, for the purposes of this discussion, is what tactics are appropriate for an evangelical atheist in interfaith work.

As a lifelong lover of both Oscar Wilde and The Onion, I desperately want to believe that there is a place for humor and satire in the marketplace of ideas – even when those ideas concern the supernatural. When you’re trying to use those tools without violating the respect principle, the distinction between people and theories becomes key. I think “arguing with believers about religion” is totally fair game, and “making fun of” religion can be fair game too – as long as you don’t cross the line into “making fun of” the religious. Attack theories; respect people. That’s the mantra I try to live by.

Greg suggests other reasons why even the most passionate evangelical might want to avoid “confrontationalism” of the sort Christina advocates. He treats people of different worldviews with respect, “not because I think others’ theological opinions are just as valid as mine,” but because it’s “the Christ-like thing to do.” And, I would add, it’s the kind thing to do. And one way I practice my Humanism is by trying to just be a kind person (while still unashamedly defending my other values and beliefs).

On a related note, Greg remarks that “interfaith dialogue gives me a platform for telling the WHOLE story of my faith, which is not the story that the criticism-yelling, self-righteous folks are telling.” Hear, hear! To me, being an atheist and a Humanist – even an evangelical one – doesn’t just mean telling everyone why I don’t believe in the supernatural and they shouldn’t either; it also means demonstrating Humanist values by putting them into practice in my own life.

Greg is frustrated with Christians who are so concerned with criticizing non-Christians that they forget to act like Christians. I feel the same way about my fellow atheists and Humanists sometimes. If we all spent less time bickering about where to put our next “Good without God” billboard, we might have more time to actually be good people.

So whatever your beliefs, don’t be afraid to share them with the world – but don’t get so caught up in the sharing that you forget to practice them in your own life. Be loud if you want, but try to be good, too.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She recently founded and currently writes for two other blogs, The Unelectables (following religious minority candidates in the 2012 election) and Blogging Biblically (documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year). She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. Last summer, she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.

Greta Christina recently wrote a much-discussed blog post asking (and answering) the question, “What Are the Goals of the Atheist Movement?” In this piece, Christina argues convincingly that much of the internal debate over what kinds of tactics help or hurt “our cause” stems from the fact that “we may not be talking about the same one.” I think this diagnosis is dead on.

The two main “causes” Christina focuses on are “[reducing] anti-atheist bigotry and discrimination, and [working] towards more complete separation of church and state,” and “persuading the world out of religion.” Not only does Christina think the latter is “a hugely worthwhile goal just for its own sake,” but she also thinks it is “the best strategy for achieving our other goals.”

I’m not convinced that ending religious belief would be easier than cooperating with religious believers toward shared goals, but I’d like to set aside the question of achievability for the moment and focus instead on what goals are worth pursuing and what tactics are worth using, assuming all are equally effective.

Chris Stedman has already written eloquently for the Huffington Post about his opposition to the second goal: “If being an atheist activist means ‘persuading more people out of religion and into atheism,’ as Christina wrote, than I am not one.” Chris has been weirdly accused of surrounding himself with a wall of young people (the NonProphet Status panelists) who defend his every move. If the following bombshell doesn’t put an end to that stupid idea, I don’t know what will:

I subscribe to both of Christina’s goals.

This seems like a good time to remind everybody that the opinions expressed in this piece reflect only the views of the author, and not of Chris Stedman, the other NPS panelists, the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, the Interfaith Youth Core, or anybody else.

Now that that’s taken care of, let me reiterate, just so I’m extra super clear.

I wish religion would go away. I think it’s wrong, I think it’s a net negative presence in the world, and if all else were equal, I would prefer a world without religion to one with it. I agree whole-heartedly with Voltaire’s warning that “qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste” (whoever has the power to make you absurd can also make you unjust). I fully support “persuading more people out of religion and into atheism.” I am, you might say, an evangelical atheist.

If you’re surprised by hearing this from somebody who spent the last year heading up her college’s Interfaith Council, organizing interfaith service projects and discussions, working with chaplains and students of many different beliefs, and volunteering at leadership institutes with the Interfaith Youth Core, you’re not alone.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with my friend John Figdor, the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard. John, like many (perhaps most) atheists, is used to distinguishing between “New Atheists” (or “anti-theists” or “confrontationalists”) and “accommodationists.” (He considers himself emphatically the former.) He was absolutely shocked when I, the interfaith kid, told him I thought the world would be better off without religion. Many atheists assume that those of us who engage in interfaith work “believe in belief,” or wish we were religious, or otherwise relegate our atheism to a dark and lonely corner.

But I’m just a pragmatist. I wish religion would conveniently disappear, and if there’s anything (see below for qualifiers) I can do to help make that happen, I will. But I certainly won’t see that in my lifetime, so I might as well try to find the most constructive ways to deal with religion as long as it’s around. Interfaith work – bringing people of all beliefs together to respectfully work toward common goals – seems to me like a great way to do that.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine. She recently founded and currently writes for two other blogs, The Unelectables (following religious minority candidates in the 2012 election) and Blogging Biblically (documenting her attempt to read the Bible in a year). She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council, and a Volunteer Ambassador for the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. This summer she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.

This week, I was shocked to discover that I sort of agreed with PZ Myers about something. I figured that constituted some kind of faitheist existential crisis, so I did what all good atheists do when a thought of some kind enters their heads: I decided to blog about it.

If we need a Nones-Pope, I vote for Randall Munroe.

Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Eric Weiner entitled, “Americans: Undecided About God?” In the piece, Weiner discusses “the nation’s fastest-growing religious demographic,” commonly known as “the Nones, the roughly 12 percent of people who say they have no religious affiliation at all” when they respond to the sort of surveys that ask people about such things. (Having never been asked to respond to one of these fabled surveys, I sometimes question their existence while sitting alone in my room eating ramen and feeling unloved. I rather suspect somebody just makes up the numbers and changes them every now and then to keep people on their toes.)

As you can probably guess, the Nones are not a very homogenous bunch. As PZ Myers correctly pointed out in his response, “none” is the “broad catch-all category” for anybody who doesn’t fit neatly into a different box, so it’s hard to generalize usefully about them as a group. But that doesn’t stop Eric Weiner, the self-appointed spokesperson for Nones everywhere!

According to Weiner, Pope of the Nones, “We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day.” To this claim, PZ and I both responded, “WHY?” More importantly, PZ and I were both immediately reminded of the same xkcd comic, pictured left. Fortunately for my interfaith cred, that’s about where the similarities stop. (I mean, except for that whole thing where PZ and I are both atheists. But that almost seems insignificant compared to all the topics we disagree vehemently about. See, Eric Weiner? The non-religious, even when you narrow it down to atheists, are a pretty diverse bunch.)

Weiner asserts that “a growing number of Americans are running from organized religion, but by no means running from God.” He backs up this claim by pointing to another survey indicating that “just 7 percent of [the Nones] describe themselves as atheists.” The op-ed lacks citations – as op-eds are wont to do – but Weiner attributes this number to “a survey by Trinity College.” A friend of mine usefully tracked down the summary report of what she believes is the study Weiner is referring to: the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008, conducted by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

I haven’t read the whole report, but after skimming it, it seems to tell a pretty different story from Weiner’s. By this survey’s count, the Nones constituted 15.0% of the U.S. population in 2008. But just 0.7% of the population identifies as atheist, and only 0.9% as agnostic. So who are the 13.4% of the population who are Nones but neither atheists nor agnostics? Is more than one in eight Americans an Eric Weiner, drifting from religion to religion, cult to cult, dabbling in Eastern mysticism and Western orthodoxy, waiting for the “Steve Jobs of religion” to come along and end their spiritual ennui?

No. The names people identify with don’t always match up with their actual beliefs in the ways we’d expect. When asked the (sort of) question, “Regarding the existence of God, do you think…?,” 2.3% of those surveyed responded “There is no such thing.” 4.3% said “There is no way to know,” and 5.7% said “I’m not sure.” What that says to me is that 2.3% of Americans are actually atheists, but less than a third of them are willing to identify as such. Similarly, somewhere between 4% and 10% of the U.S. population is agnostic (depending on how strictly you want to define that term), but the majority of those won’t admit it.

It’s not surprising that many people who don’t believe in God are afraid or otherwise unwilling to brand themselves atheists in a country where atheists are routinely vilified, discriminated against, and feared. Weiner should take such issues into account before dismissing the apparently small numbers of self-identified atheists within the Nones. Moreover, Weiner believes that many people “are reluctant to claim a religious affiliation because they don’t want the political one that comes along with it,” but doesn’t consider the possibility that there may be plenty of non-religious Americans who resist the term “atheist” because they don’t want to be lumped in with the New Atheists, for whatever reason.

Moreover, Weiner ignores a vital shortcoming of the Trinity study: it overlooks the fact that people might identify with more than one label. For example, many people believe it is entirely possible to be both Jewish and atheist – Greg Epstein is even ordained as a Humanist Rabbi. I also know at least one person who identifies as a Catholic-Hindu, at least one Buddhist-Episcopalian, at least one Wiccan-Jew, and at least one Omnist who aspires to believe in the truth of all religions; I know a woman who prays to both the Virgin Mary and Isis, and a man who’s about 70% agnostic and 30% Scientologist; and somebody once asked me if it’s possible to be a Christian Humanist.

Belief categories are not solid boxes with firm walls. They are fluid, mixable, mutable, and always deeply personal. Ignoring their fluidity, and discounting the experiences of everyone who has found themselves between categories, is both disrespectful and unrealistic. Being between categories is not necessarily a sign of drifting or waffling. Somebody can be very happily and firmly situated in a hybrid zone. While I sympathize with the Trinity researchers regarding the difficulty of capturing the true complexity of Americans’ beliefs, we must recognize the limitations of our current measurement techniques and adjust our conclusions accordingly.

In sum, Weiner is overly hasty to conclude that 10-15% of Americans are awaiting the “Steve Jobs of religion” to invent “a new way of being religious” so they can feel like they belong. First of all, Weiner breaks the cardinal rule of interfaith: Thou shalt not speak for an entire belief system or demographic, but only from thine own experience. I’m constantly reminding Christians and Hindus and such of this rule in the context of interfaith dialogue, but it’s almost a worse offense in Weiner’s case because he’s claiming to speak for the entire grab-bag of miscellaneous leftovers that is the Nones. Bad form, sir.

Weiner assumes that all the Nones – or at least a majority – are, like him, adrift between unsatisfactory religious labels, waiting for something better to come along. This overlooks the immense diversity of beliefs that a single person can hold. Many Nones might have very strong and very specific beliefs, drawn from a variety of religious and/or non-religious traditions, and might feel that “no religion” better characterizes their unique position than lumping themselves in with one label or another.

Finally, plenty of the Nones are quite comfortably settled on the “No” side of the God Question, and need not “hope” for anything different, thank-you-very-much. I’m already tired of hearing from religious fundamentalists that people who believe in God are better or more complete human beings than those who don’t; the last thing I need is to hear my fellow Nones join in. Et tu, Weiner?

I can’t speak for all the Nones, or even all the comfortably atheist Nones, but I can tell you that I personally don’t want “a Steve Jobs of religion” to invent “a new way of being religious.” What I think we need is a new way of being non-religious. Many Americans believe without belonging, but we need a place to belong without believing. Weiner fantasizes about “a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment.” It sounds like what Weiner really wants is a religious community without the religion; he only envisions a “religious space” because that’s the only kind of space we’ve been taught to think can house the kind of community he wants.

But I’ve been lucky enough to find just such a space, without the religious baggage that Weiner fears: the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. Many Steve Jobses of non-religion – like Greg Epstein, Chris Stedman, James Croft, and Walker Bristol, just to name a few – are already thinking up new ways to be non-religious without being anti-religious. If this is something that excites you, check out the recently launched website of the Humanist Community Project. Weiner might not realize it, but I think this could be exactly what he’s looking for: a place to ask big questions within a supportive community; a place to be thoughtful and philosophical without being religious; a place to be good without God.

Chelsea Link is a senior at Harvard University, studying History and Science with a focus in the history of medicine, and minoring in Mind/Brain/Behavior. She is the Vice President of Outreach of the Harvard Secular Society, and the former President of the Harvard College Interfaith Council. She also writes for the Harvard Brain and volunteers with the Be the Match bone marrow donor registry. She likes to cook while pretending she’s on Top Chef (hasty breakfast? more like Quickfire Challenge!), adores word games of all kinds (and was once the President of the illustrious Harvard College Crossword Society), and tends to kill the mood at parties by unnecessarily reciting Shakespeare. This summer she interned at the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. You can ask her what she’s doing after graduation, but she’ll give you a different answer every time.