Village Atheist

For years, I’ve said that my father told my brother and me, “Sons, don’t be a Village Atheist.” I don’t know that he said this when we were actually children. Perhaps he should have.

I was a Village Atheist, and it went way, way back. Family lore tells of a trip to visit (paternal) Grandmother Dorothy, a devout Methodist in deep, southern Georgia. I was under 10, and when Grandmother asked Dad to say the blessing, cute, little Adam proudly said, ”Some people believe there’s a god in the world, but we don’t, do we Dad?”

As far back as I can remember, I thought that people who believed in God were idiots. And I’m fairly sure I made no secret of it. Kids knew at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, and I learned pretty young that this wasn’t particularly smart, either.

One day in fourth grade, I was walking a few blocks from my house, and four older kids stopped me. One said, “Are you an atheist?” In my memory, he said “atheist” the way a Nazi might have said “Jew.” The kids were surrounding me, and I thought they were going to beat me up. Then the same kid asked, “So, what is an atheist, anyway?”

Yeah, that’s funny in a John-Hughes-movie sort of way. Pathetic childhood cruelty. And I don’t think the humor was lost on me at the time. Oh great, I thought. I’m going to get beat up for being an atheist, and my assailants don’t even know what it means. But then a really odd thing happened.

The shortest kid, a kid whose name I didn’t know but of whom I was afraid because of his associations, turned to the kid who asked the question and said, “Look, it’s just a kind of Christian. So leave him alone.” And with that, I was allowed to move along.

Having a Philosophy Prof father is, well, different from having other kinds of fathers. Some dads toss the baseball. Mine wrote “Truth and Value in Nietzsche.” The question of God’s existence, the Problem of Evil… these were things that came up at dinners in my house. And don’t get me started on Mom, who later described herself as a “death-of-god Christian heretic.”

Most kids didn’t know what it meant when I would say my father was a philosopher. And see, the weird thing about the short kid was that he clearly knew what an atheist was, and made a very quick decision to deceive his friends in order to spare me. Hmmm… I thought about it a lot. I saw the kid around a few more times, but then never again.

In High School and College, I became less of a Village Atheist. It wasn’t a particularly good way to make friends and influence people. Moreover, the A-word just lit people up with their own sets of associations. I knew what I meant by it—that I didn’t believe in a sentient, supremely powerful being that lived outside of space and time—but I had no control over any hearer’s definition. So I became circumspect when answering to strangers about my belief, or lack thereof.

When I was in college, I met the short kid again, believe it or not. He wasn’t so short anymore. Turns out he’d moved to Brighton, NY (Rochester suburb) as a young teen, and knew my college buddy (also from Brighton) from musical associations. We crossed paths when I spent a summer in Brighton, then again later when he came to summer parties at my house in Brockport. But we didn’t get to know each other then, and I don’t think I connected him to the Kid with a Code back in my home town.

His name is John, and the next time we met was when he came to work in the IT department of the company I worked for in my mid-twenties. We started jamming, made the Binghamton connection, and I think that’s when I realized he was That Kid. Maybe.

John was schlepping equipment around, but he took complete advantage of the opportunity he had at that company, learning whenever he could (he’s wicked sharp), and taking on Oracle when the company did a big installation. He became an Oracle guru, and never looked back. He eventually moved to Austin, TX, where the music scene is rich and he’s been able to make a fine living as a consultant.

We’ve been close friends ever since, and he introduced me to Josh, another Brighton guy who has become one of my closest friends, as well as a longtime band- and work-mate. What is it about me and Brighton guys? I don’t know. But John and I have jammed together, in formal and informal situations, in backyards, in clubs, and at parties, on and off for twenty-plus years now. And I’ve never brought up the Atheist Incident.

Meanwhile, another friend with whom I’ve had a dot-dash-dot relationship is a minister in a nearby town. We’d lost touch since college until 15 years ago, when I did an internet search for him. I reached out, and we’ve been having lunches ever since. On one of the first, I was talking about my attraction to Christian ethics, and he said something like, “What would happen if you decided you believed, Adam? I get the impression you think you’d explode or something.” We both laughed. But it stuck to me.

I used to tell people what my Mom called herself as a way of saying, “My Mom was really wacky.” But over the years, I’d come to think it wasn’t so wacky after all. I started dallying with the idea that maybe—just maybe—I might be a Christian Atheist, too. It started to feel sensible. I read Tom Altizer’s “Gospel of Christian Atheism,” and though it was wild, it resonated.

I was attending a church where being Christian was decidedly uncool. But the more I knew about the central ethics of various religions, the more I came to think that Jesus was, as the song goes, Way Cool. Because in the end, I can’t get around the idea that Love IS All We Need, and that, my friends, is the Christian message. Theism feels optional. It just does.

So, I started telling people I was a Christian Atheist. But I was kind of a Village Christian Atheist. It was fun to say in part because—I imagined—it would piss off EVERYONE. I got a Beevis-and-Butthead thrill out of saying it. But that feeling didn’t last, and oddly, when I’d bring it up, almost nobody seemed pissed off at all. Mostly, and more and more often, people would say something to the effect of, “Yeah, that makes sense, actually.”

John flew to Rochester last September to play with me and Josh (and our Virgo drummer buddy) at our big birthday gig. It was a blast. What a guy, huh? And we had some great talks about life, the universe, and everything before he flew back. I almost brought up the Atheist Incident.

But you know, looking back, was that not an amazingly Christian thing he did that day? Pacifist, caring for a stranger, Love writ large, I think. And isn’t it funny that the specific lie he told, that my Atheism was a kind of Christianity, turned out to be true in the long view? I sure as heck don’t buy into any form of providence as part of my theology, but c’mon… that’s Way Cool.