On Oct. 30, my colleague at The Sun, Bill McMorris ’08, wrote the column “For God and Country No More,” in which he accuses atheists of using judicial activism to undermine religion in America. According to McMorris, “What is shocking about these events is the way in which the government is giving into the demands of these attention hungry heathens.” In response, The Sun has published two letters attacking his position. There are also five comments online slamming McMorris. Surely, McMorris’ hyperbolic language has something to do with the acrid response from the Cornell community to his article (though I suppose, because they do not believe in God, atheists are technically “heathens”). Nevertheless, it is also clear that the Cornell community feels very strongly about the issue of “church versus state” and, in this context, “atheists versus religion.” Thus, the purpose of this article is to address both McMorris’ column and the response to it.

Nasty remarks about “heathens” aside, I believe that McMorris’ column raises an interesting question: do atheists have either the legal right or pressing need to attack all forms of state-sponsored displays of religion? As both McMorris and his detractors recognize, the main issue is how the courts should treat the religious clause of the First Amendment, which reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Focusing on the first part of the statement (known as the Establishment Clause; the second part is called the Free Exercise Clause), if read literally, atheists would always have the right to sue if the Federal government enacted a law which gave preferential treatment to religion. In defense of the atheists who would make use of the Establishment Clause to protect their rights, Rory Moag ’11, in his Letter to the Editor, satirically comments, “Who knew it was so terrifying to be held to the standards of one’s own laws?” In the same vein, Lauren Matlock ’09 seems to believe that McMorris’ opinion would offend anyone who “gives a damn about the Constitution.” Moag and Matlock think that this issue is cut and dry, with little room for debate. This legal document called the Constitution is certainly straightforward!

McMorris names two cases in which the religious establishment is unfairly under assault. However, based upon Sun website comments concerning these two instances, it seems that they are problematic and, apparently, rife with inaccuracy. So, I decided to locate a source free from objectivity and was able to do so at Atheists.org, which prominently displays a plethora of court cases under the aptly named “Lawsuits” section. In the case of Lon Bevill v. City Of Stark, Florida (2007), a court ruled on behalf of an atheist and ordered that a cross be taken down from a water tower. In his decision, the judge said that this “was a clear case of ‘excessive governmental entanglement’ with religion,” though it was, he acknowledged, only a “minor encroachment.” According to an article published on the matter in the Gainesville Paper, “the city acknowledged that it had paid for the mounting and lighting of the cross.”

Wait. Something seems wrong here. The city government was funding the cross, not the federal … so why was the cross an example of excessive governmental entanglement under the First Amendment? Apparently, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947), it was decided that the Establishment Clause could apply to state governments despite the presence of the word “Congress,” which would seem to limit the Clause to the Federal Government. The laws of the land can change without any alteration in language?!?!? Now, I’m no big city lawyer, but the Constitution and the “right to sue” do not seem so straightforward after all.

Regardless of the “right,” was it desirable for atheists to sue in the Bevill case and cases similar to it? Matlock argues that the Constitution serves to protect the interests of the minority. This seems to have been Bevill’s reason for suing. He told the Gainsville Paper that he routinely drives by the town and “feels alienated and demeaned by a sense that in the eyes of the community, his absence of religious belief renders him a second-class citizen.” I wonder which affected the community’s opinion of Bevill more: his atheism before or after his lawsuit drew attention to it.

There is a large difference between what is oppressive and what someone finds offensive. Oppressive is a religious requirement to get a job or a university quota based upon religious affiliation. Offensive is, well, just that, offensive. Offensive happens everyday. Yet, for some reason, something that is religiously offensive, even when only a “minor encroachment,” has taken on an oppressive connotation. Shall we also remove the Washington Monument because it resembles an Egyptian obelisk and hence is a symbol of pagan religion? I think not.

Surely, atheists and, indeed, a great many other Americans, have an interest in fighting for certain issues they deem oppressive. However, to go on a witch-hunt attacking minor (some would say harmless) connections between church and state is, in this writer’s opinion, not only wrong, but will inevitably create a religious backlash which will be harmful to the larger goals of secularists in the future. Is removing one cross from a water tower really going to improve the lives of non-Christians? Victories like these, which require long, drawn-out court battles and divide communities along religious lines, will inevitably prove to be pyrrhic ones.

On atheism, one comment on the Sun website reads, “A baby when it is born has an absence of belief in God; it is an implicit atheist.” Actually, this is incorrect because atheism requires the knowledge of the possibility of the existence of God (or gods) and the active rejection of the divine on metaphysical grounds. Babies are born agnostic because they have not yet had the opportunity to consider the existence of God. The greatest irony is that atheists are guilty of becoming the very thing they have rejected: a metaphysical pseudo-religion imposing its own values and beliefs (beliefs, not non-beliefs) upon the traditionally “religious.” Atheism … a religion? Metaphysics? Preposterous! Don’t take my word for it, take the Supreme Court’s, which has ruled that pacifists who are also atheists can avoid military service under the Religious Free Exercise Clause (Gillette v. United States, 1971). So far, atheists have successfully used the Free Exercise Clause to their advantage while avoiding being considered an established religion by the courts, even though one might say they act like one. However, if atheists are not careful, they may also one day find themselves constrained by the very Clause that they use to attack other religions.

Gregory Wolfe is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at gwolfe@cornellsun.com. It Matters Not, But... appears alternate Fridays.