Here's an excerpt from last year's Report on International Religious Freedom, published annually by the State Department. The topic is Afghanistan:
According to international sources, Baha’is and Christians continued to live in constant fear of exposure and were reluctant to reveal their religious identities to anyone. Christian groups reported public sentiment, as expressed in social media and elsewhere, remained hostile towards converts and to Christian proselytization. They said individuals who converted to or were studying Christianity reported receiving threats, including death threats, from family members. Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims reported they continued to worship only privately and in small groups, at home or in nondescript places of worship, to avoid discrimination and persecution.
Christians and other religious minorities were targets of relentless persecution under the Taliban. But there's one religious minority that never even gets mentioned: nonbelievers.
Recognizing this, the State Department began a program in 2021 that funded a couple of small grants¹ to groups that promote religious freedom "inclusive of atheist, humanist, non-practicing and non-affiliated individuals." But National Review reports that even this minuscule recognition that nonbelievers also face problems is too much for the modern Republican Party:
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Mike McCaul is reviving a GOP investigation into a 2021 State Department grant to atheist and humanist groups in the Middle East and North Africa, after Foggy Bottom stonewalled existing probes into the matter.
....Representative Jim Banks had previously sent two letters to the State Department requesting further information about the program....In a statement to National Review, Banks thanked McCaul for taking up the investigation “after months of stonewalling from the Biden administration.”
“The House Republican majority will not tolerate the unconstitutional and harmful funding of atheism abroad,” he continued. “Americans believe in free exercise of religion, not state-supported atheism, and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for this anti-American program.”
Republicans presumably think it's OK for the State Department to fund an endless array of programs that, in practice, promote every conceivable version of Christianity in existence. But if they include even the tiniest recognition of atheists—well, that's a step too far. I guess we nonbelievers will just have to remain happy at being the fastest growing religious following in America.
¹Specifically, "1-2 grants" of $500,000 each.
Jeeze. It's like you're in prison and you have to join a gang, White Power, Muslim Brotherhood, whatever. Non-affiliated is not an option. Neither is all-inclusive 😉
Unbelievers have been persecuted by both Christians and Muslims for many centuries. Christians have mostly become more civilized about it of recent decades; they no longer stone atheists to death. However, unbelievers are slippery targets because they do not feel themselves obliged to publicly proclaim their (lack of) religion. The result has always been that where unbelievers are persecuted, there have been very few unbelievers to be found.
Let’s just cut to the chase and call the Republican Party the American Taliban.
The funny thing is that Christians ARE atheists, they do not believe in Jibbers.
https://youtu.be/ZZ_BtZ-5O60
Peanuts. Much more important is attacks on indirect forms of state promotion of atheism, which are social services, funding of secular NGOs and so on. Those don't push atheism as such. But they make that religion is no longer the sole or even the dominant vehicle for charity.
And that's on top of religion no longer being allowed to dictate politics, it becoming largely irrelevant for social status and social mixing, its laws not being enforceable, and so on. All very distressing for those who see it as a road to power.
Too bad we have a right wing reactionary SCOTUS or we could take this to court and get the separation.of church and state enforced.
The way to know if a person is a believer or non-believer is to measure brain activity. They're a believer if there's brain activity and otherwise a non-believer.
We all believe something. The only question is whether what we believe is helpful or harmful.
The way to know if a person is a Christian or Muslim is if they look at an enemy and see a neighbor. People that look at a neighbor and see an enemy, and then say "I'm a [Christian or Muslim]" (hello MTG!) are CHRINOs (Christians in name only) or MUSINOs (Muslims in name only).
Think I'm out to lunch? Check it out yourself: Luke 10:25-37 and Qur’an verse 49:13.
We don't assume that the people that practice medicine are the same as the people that commit medical malpractice. Why make an exception for religion?
Enjoy your lunch.
So Mike McCaul supports the persecution of nonbelievers. Not exactly what JC would do. McCaul needs to consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. A Jew passed the beaten stranger by while a Samaritan (considered a nonbeliever by the Jews) stopped to help him. Jesus message is that you can be a believer and still be an asshole. McCaul is a prime example of this.
No one has ever run their first race for Congress as an avowed atheist and won.
Pete Stark disclosed his atheism after many years in Congress. That's it: No SCOTUS, no senators, no presidents.
It's an embarrassment that this persists.
The problem is that the bulk of the population seems to have bought into the idea that you can't be a moral, good person without a religious ideology backing you up. This idea is all wrong for dozens of reasons, but it persists.
You can point, for example, to the lower rates of crime in countries with lower rates of religious belief (like those in Northern Europe), but you will never convince most people to give up an idea they have had implanted since early childhood.
Yet a whole raft of closet atheist have run for congress or the presidency and won. They might even be in the majority, although they will never admit it.
When the State Department refuses to respond to Congressional inquiries from the minority party it can reasonably expect an investigation backed up by subpoenas when the minority becomes the majority.