A Historical Sketch of
Atheism in America

Christian involvement in politics as Christians is relatively recent development. We perceived no need for Christian involvement per se, because our nation and all its people were Christian in substance from the first colonies in the United States until the World War I Era.

With the advent of Communism in Russia's 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a competing world view emerged. Communism was explicitly atheistic - it recognized no truth, law or power beyond its own. Communism was also by nature "totalitarian," which is defined as "an authoritarian form of government demanding the complete subservience of the individual to the State" (OED). These words, and the concepts they represent, held derogatory meanings for generations of Americans. But recently, "atheist" has lost its descriptive sting for many of our fellow citizens, and "totalitarianism" is now a word seldom spoken or written by the main contributors to our nation's political discourse. This is not because the reality the word represents has faded; rather, the opposite has occurred. The reality of "totalitarianism" has become ubiquitous and the word has therefore lost "denotative reference" in describing governments; in a similar manner that the word "divorcee" is no longer useful in describing a particular woman, because it fails to distinguish her from a multiplicity of others [1].

Communism denies God and preaches atheism. Communism disdains ideas and teaches materialism. Communism diminishes the individual and exalts the collective. Communism abolishes freedom and endorses totalitarianism. Communism is antithetical to every idea and value expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.

Communism was foreign to American soil, and probably would not have taken root here, except for the circa 1890 decision to allow huge numbers of immigrants to enter the United States and become citizens. But native-born Americans soon decided that enough was enough. In 1917, Congress imposed an English literacy test for immigrants, over the veto of Woodrow Wilson. In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed immigration restrictions that assigned to each nationality a quota proportionate to its contribution to the American stock as then constituted [2]. The laws worked; from 1925 to 1950, the total number of immigrants to the United States was less that in the single year 1907. The demographic attack on American Christianity was over, at least, for a while.

Apparently, though, the people's decision came too late. Among the many immigrants already transplanted were significant numbers of non-Christians, atheists, anarchists, communists and communist sympathizers. During this century's first two decades, the time and place of communism's ascendency, Europe was a gigantic incubator for these beliefs. Christian Americans were largely unaware of their harmful presence because such transplants, then small in number, feared the dominant Christian culture and acted secretly.

During the 1920's, certain communist/anarchist activities in the United States were exposed. Revisionists coined the discovery a "Red Scare." But Communism's most significant inroads into American culture then occurred. The most significant of these was the atheist and communist infiltration of academia and media, specifically the publishing and entertainment industries.

By the 1950's, revisionism was no longer necessary. Atheists were writing the "first draft" of history. They described Congressional investigations of Alger Hiss and other Communist spies as "McCarthyism." They decried Congressional investigations of Communist infiltration of Hollywood as the "Blacklist." They have always portrayed the antagonism to Communism, rather than Communism itself, as being shameful.

Because they succeeded in controlling the institutions that influence how people think, there has followed quite naturally a conversion of our nation's culture from Christian to Atheist. As Christ was rejected, Marx, Darwin and Freud were embraced.

By 1956, academia was working towards redefining government and politics in atheistic terms. In Robert Dahl's "A Preface to Democratic Theory," he writes:


"Historically, the case for political equality and popular sovereignty has usually been deduced from beliefs in natural rights... the logic of natural rights seems to require a transcendental view in which the right is "natural" because God directly or indirectly wills it... such an argument inevitably involves a variety of assumptions... at worst impossible to prove to the satisfaction of anyone of positivist or skeptical predispositions." [3]
Actually, natural rights requires a single (not a variety of) assumption, namely, that God exists. The existence of God is not impossible to prove to "positivists" or "skeptics," who may eventually relinquish their reasonable doubts in favor of believing in God. But truly, as a matter of definition, the existence of God and natural rights are impossible to prove to an atheist, for as soon as he accepts them as proven, he ceases to be an atheist. Circa 1956, Dahl preferred to couch this discussion in the contexts of "positivists" and "skeptics" because these labels were more palatable than "atheist," which was, as previously noted, a term carrying a quantum of opprobrium.

Since atheists don't believe in God or natural rights, they disagree with the statement that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This proposition, [4] found in the Declaration of Independence, isn't good enough for Robert A. Dahl and his ilk because Robert A. Dahl and his ilk aren't merely "positivists" or "skeptics," but Atheists. For Dahl's benefit, philosopher John Locke was an empiricist - and Locke stated that all men were deserving of toleration except for one kind - the Atheist. [5]

"Atheism" remains an unpopular belief in the United States of America- most people would consider it someone's "dirty secret." But as far as law, government and public policy is concerned, atheism is now our "established religion." Indeed it would be difficult to distinguish our government and laws from a nation's whose official religion was "atheism." Christian prayer and symbolism has been banished from our nation's schools and public places. Since the government has expanded to control or fund most of our society's institutions, the Christian religion has been expunged from everywhere except the home, and perhaps, a few remaining churches. And since government and law also shape people's attitudes, the substance of atheism is becoming less offensive and more acceptable to the American people. More and more of them are now becoming functional atheists, i.e., not attending church regularly, not celebrating the religious meaning or our holidays; not converting others to the Christian faith, not reading the Bible or praying in their individual lives.

Today, atheism has seized complete control of two of our most important non-governmental institutions - academia and the media. These institutions are designed to shape and control people's minds and attitudes. The "media" may be defined as the six conglomerates controlling the major television channels, film studios, newspapers and news magazine, e.g., Time/Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, plus the New York Times and Washington Post/Newsweek.

For the most part, the media is controlled by non-Christians who are antagonistic to Christianity. [6] As a result, the media portray Christians unfavorably and Christian thought and culture are largely censored from publication.



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Footnotes:
[1] Similarly, "Bribery" and "Usury" are two ugly words that have almost disappeared from usage. Ironically, this is because the political and financial crimes they signify are not extinct but prevalent.
[2] Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, p.260, Little Brown, 1973

[3] Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, University of Chicago Press, p.45 (1956).

[4] According to George Orwell, this proposition is also a prime example of "crimethink". See, "The Principles of Newspeak"


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