I’m a member of several secular mailing lists, for activists or
organizers – in-house and intra-mural conversations, mostly. Shop talk. Well,
this morning a message came through on a mailing list for humanist organizers.
This is what the submitter sent in:
Saw an interesting post from David Smalley of Dogma Debate about whether the regressive left is killing the atheist movement. What do you think? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dogmadebate/2017/06/reasonably-controversial-regressive-left-killing-atheist-movement/
This question, and the article it links to, got under my skin
for some reason. Maybe for a bunch of reasons. By way of response, I replied
with what turned into an op-ed column calling out the secular community at
large for their (our!) lack of demands when it comes to our leadership. Here’s
what I wrote. Your comments are welcome.
Of the several dozen factors I would list as inhibiting or
impeding the progress of secular activism, I would NOT include leftist
repression among them.
Over the past few months (since Trump's election boosted my
motivation, actually), I've been checking in with a network of professional
organizational consultants with relative regularity -- folks that work with
international nonprofits, campaigns, corporations, and so on. I'm very
fortunate in not having to pay their usual billable rate, which is somewhere
between painful and audacious. Good for them, I suppose.
What we talk about is the structure and activity of the secular
movement -- its personalities, its assets, its organizations, its opportunities
and its failings. Take this with a grain of salt, but the overall view that
I've taken away from these consultations is that "our" greatest
hindrance is our lack of focused, outcome-oriented leadership. We are largely
headed up by non-professionals, whether that term refers to their employment
history and expertise or to their temperament.
We have (in potentia) the money, resources, human capital, and
skills to achieve gains. We have gains TO achieve -- socially laudable,
economically relevant, politically needful activism to pursue, and noble (if I
may use that word without seeming like overly pious) goals to fight for. We
have work to do and the means to do it. But if the review I've been doing of
our activity over the past two decades has shown anything, it is that our work
is time and again disrupted and destroyed by organizational infighting;
operational incompetence; and personality-driven failure.
If you asked me why the "atheist movement" (loaded
term) is "failing" (leading term), I'd tell you it has a lot more to
do with the self-serving, short-sighted, self-aggrandizing and frankly
destructive personalities that our complex community has not yet figured out
how to neutralize, than it does with leftist repression.
(The continued failure of secular leadership in the US to take
responsibility for the terrible demographics of the movement, in all its
manifestations -- talking heads, org officers, media representation, conference
attendance, and so on -- is I think concomitant to larger leadership problem.
The demographic problem and the leadership problem are to each other both cause
and result.)
If secularism were half as rational as we like to think we are,
then a lot of the folks in charge would be shown the door in quick fashion,
making room for folks who are ready and equipped to deliver in terms of
revenue, media activism, legislative influence, membership growth, local
chapter stability, etc, etc.
If I may say so without seeming merely to be "stirring up
shit" -- some of those people who should be shown the door are on this
mailing list.
More than once, a person I look up to in the secular social
movement has drawn a comparison between secularism and waves of
enfranchisement. You had women's rights; civil rights; equal rights; and now,
perhaps, we could see ourselves as part of a fourth wave. There are a few
problems with this comparison, but in spirit, it's an exciting metaphor. The
reason I can't embrace it is because I'm embarrassed, on my own behalf and on
the behalf of anyone who has any role in organized secularism over the past
quarter century, at how badly we've failed at identifying and empowering the
kind of astute and honorable leadership that those previous movements depended
on.
I don't mean that our lack of heroically perfect leadership is
what's holding us back. I mean that we're entirely too tolerant of entirely too
much imperfection. We can do better, as secularists and rationalists and
humanists, and we should, and we need to. The US needs every one of its
component communities to get their act together; all hands are needed to
create, strengthen and defend institutions, memes and attitudes which are
up to the task of neutralizing chaotic nationalism, xenophobia of all sorts, nativism
and corporatism.
I write this reply, without wishing to seem to devalue the work
and contributions of secular leaders who ARE doing a bang-up job.
I fear I've replied to your question with a bit of
grandstanding. I've deliberately not said much about Smalley's article, or
about his other statements along these lines in social media. I find it a
shallow and unpersuasive position, and with that, enough said.
All best,
Zachary Bos
Boston
