The right to be religious

Family gatherings suck because someone always mentions God.

The food is mediocre, the family overbearing, and the relatives argumentative. There is an abundance of cheek-pinches, sloppy kisses and hugs I don’t want. I grin and bear it, though, because these people are my family, and they want the best for me.

Except for when it comes to the yearly “God-Is-Dead” argument. My cousin assumes the role of Nietzsche and announces that God (or religion) is dead. She announces that theists, myself included, are intellectual sellouts. I have nothing to offer to any familial discussion because I believe in God. My values must be skewed. I must be living in a different century. I must not have a brain.

“So, Leora,” she begins, “didn’t you get the memo that God isn’t real?”

In the beginning, I used to cry. My face would turn red. I would get flustered. I would turn to my neighboring family members and send a silent plea for help, but they generally left me to fend for myself. They are all from the former Soviet Union, and although they weren’t wholly antagonistic to my theism, they couldn’t wholeheartedly support it.

And every year, at least once, my cousin would ask the same question, and I gave her the same response. She would rail on the religious community for its abuse of human rights, its anachronistic values, and its proselytization. She renounced her Judaism, and claimed to be better for it. I would generally say how religion helped so many to find purpose and meaning — but, mainly I would cry. Religion was, and is, an integral part of my life, and to see her reject it in my name, as well as in hers, was heartbreaking.

As I got older, I would leave. She would start berating my God, and I would get up from the table. But once, I decided to show her the hypocrisy of her claims against my faith in religion.

“Berating people for their religion is a progressive value?” I asked.

She didn’t understand.

“Trying to convert people out of religion isn’t a form of proselytization?”

She began to speak.

“Intolerance isn’t a relic of a bygone era?”

Her love of atheism and her opposition to religion didn’t make her a good person, just as religion doesn’t necessarily guarantee a person is a good one. The exchange between my cousin and me highlights a common dialogue in society today, in which the anti-Theists oppose the Theists on the grounds that religion is, simply put, bad. But it’s not so simple. After all, religion fundamentally drove only ten percent of the 1800 major wars in history.

That is not to contend that the ten percent has not been problematic. Take a look at history; take a look at the news. However, religion is hardly the sole cause for problems in society — lust for power, political ideology, and corruption have also fed the flames. Religion certainly has, within itself, plenty of issues, including many that my cousin mentioned. But if atheists judge theists for their lack of progressivism, chide them for their intolerance, and seek to convert their God to no God, aren’t they just as bad?

While I understand the merits of atheism, I choose to benefit from the merits of religion, and I ask that my atheist peers accept that. Most of them do. But with the rise of “militant atheism” (an atheism whose adherents force their beliefs on others), which can be found in academic and in popular literature, I find myself having the same discussion that I have at family gatherings.

America is, undoubtedly, becoming more secular. In 2014, 22.8 percent of Americans identified as religiously unaffiliated, up from 16.4 percent in 2007, but that doesn’t mean that most Americans are right or wrong. It just means that we have different beliefs that should be respected equally. If we pride ourselves on our inclusiveness and diversity, shouldn’t that extend beyond race and color, to a mutual respect of religion or lack thereof?

Personally, my religion has 613 commandments, and I keep as many as I can. But I’ve thought about what my cousin told me, and I do not proselytize, demean, or abuse anyone in the name of my God. I ask my atheist friends to do the same in the name of no God.

Leora Eisenberg is a freshman from Eagan, MN. She can be reached atleorae@princeton.edu.