Tibetan Buddhists in Exile

Posted on June 11, 1999 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, Part Two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.” How can the Tibetan refugees preserve the prayer wheels and mandalas of their culture and pass on those traditions to a new generation increasingly influenced by the West? And can the Tibetan Buddhists in exile really expect someday to go home? Our correspondent is Lucky Severson.

LUCKY SEVERSON: A Tibetan monk calling the faithful to an evening session of prayer and meditation under the gaze of the majestic Himalayas. But this is not Tibet. It’s a remote corner of neighboring India where the Tibetan people, headed by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, are putting down roots, albeit shallow roots, in the hope of one day returning to their homeland.

The tranquility of these re-created sacred spaces is in sharp contrast to the noise and jumble of Tibetan commerce on the other side of town, a dusty hillside village called Dharamsala.

Dharamsala is more than just a refuge for all the Tibetans who make the dangerous journey across the Himalayas to escape Chinese oppression. It’s a place where dreams and memories come together. There is a sense of urgency and purpose here, to hang on tight to the past, get ready for the future, wherever that might be.

Jeremy Russell is a writer who has lived in Dharamsala for 20 years.

Mr. JEREMY RUSSELL (Writer): It’s easy to forget that when they came out of Tibet, they had nothing. They just had what they carried out with them.

SEVERSON: It was 1959. After nine years of brutal Chinese occupation, the 14th Dalai Lama, fearing for his life, escaped to India, where he was given refuge in a backwater dead end in the foothills of the Himalayas, the wrong side of the Himalayas, but nonetheless a home.

Tibetan refugees still arrive almost every day, desperate to get away from the starkly beautiful land they love, but a land now unbearable to them under Chinese rule. Jamyang Norbu is a Tibetan writer and scholar.

Mr. JAMYANG NORBU (Tibetan Scholar and Writer): People there with binoculars and telescopes, watching everyone passing up and down. So it is really, really tightly controlled as far as security is concerned.

SEVERSON: Over a million Tibetans killed by the Chinese, 6,000 monasteries destroyed, secret police everywhere. But in recent years, the methods are less brutal, more sophisticated. The Chinese are diluting the culture, flooding Tibet with 7.5 million Chinese compared to 6 million Tibetans.

Mr. NORBU: They’ve created a totally materialistic culture. You have discotheques; you have karaoke bars.

SEVERSON: Even the Dalai Lama, who has always treated China with what his followers call a kind heart, says whether it is deliberate or not, the Chinese are destroying the Tibetan culture.

DALAI LAMA: Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.

SEVERSON: Dharamsala has become the cultural heart and political nerve center of the Tibetan people. The government in exile has established many ministries and a parliament.

Mr. RUSSELL: Their identity’s under threat. They’re — the people who are here in exile are very aware that if they don’t preserve the traditions that have been handed down to them, then they’re going to be lost.

SEVERSON: Here at the Norbulingka Institute, young artists are learning old art forms no longer taught in Tibet. When this statue of the Tibetan Buddhist deity Kalachakra is completed, it will appear at a Tibetan center in New York. Preserving the past is one thing; living in the past is another.

Mr. NORBU: I totally disagree with the whole Tibetan establishment of preserving culture. I don’t want it to be preserved so that, you know, like, in the future, anthropologists and western visitors come here and see us in our reservation doing our rain dance. I want Tibetan culture to continue into the past but, at the same time, being able to be — to operate in the 21st century.

SEVERSON: The monasteries and nunneries here do teach ancient traditions like creating sand mandalas, but the nuns can also pursue a higher education to achieve status equal to a monk, something impossible in Tibet.

In Tibet, schoolchildren learn Chinese and Chinese history, but here they receive a traditional Tibetan Buddhist education. The children learn not only their history, but skills for their future.

NIMA: The way I came from Tibet place is a very small village, and it doesn’t know about the Chinese and Dalai Lama and the history of Tibet, since they are really uneducated people. And so I wanted to educate them if I can.

SEVERSON: Like many of the 2,500 kids at the Tibetan Children’s Center, Nima’s family is still back in Tibet. For these kids, going home is an obsession. They are part of a new activist generation determined to make their voices heard.

(Reading) “We are writing this petition to you. The present situation in Tibet is such that we can’t go back to our place of birth, our home.”

They are running out of patience. Young people are also growing up in a western culture, out of the isolation of Tibet. They wear jeans, hang out at the five cybercafes in Dharamsala, and mingle with westerners. Is it possible that the West is corrupting a culture already under attack?

When the Dalai Lama came here, he built less ornate monasteries and vowed to make the rituals more personal and private, but that’s been difficult, partly because of the intense western interest and influence.

Mr. NORBU: Sometimes our teachers seem to be aiming their discourse to the West and to the West in a sense of, let’s say — let me stereotype it — to, let’s say, California.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I mean, it doesn’t feel like India at all. It feels like a completely different country. But it’s nice. It feels like Berkeley, actually.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yes.

SEVERSON: Feels like what?

WOMAN #1: Like Berkeley.

SEVERSON: The older Tibetans still practice their religion in private and sometimes in the street. The younger ones seem more interested in more temporal things, for now, anyway.

Mr. NORBU: The real problem is right now, because of the demands made by western Buddhists on our society, Tibetan lamas have lit — very little time to preach to their own people. Younger children, especially teenagers, are not getting religious instruction.

SEVERSON: So on one hand, the Tibetans here are spinning their prayer wheels and dreaming of home. The old Tibet exists only in memories. The new Tibet is Chinese. What happens when and if the Tibetans in exile get a chance to go home? So much has changed on this and the other side of the Himalayas in the last 40 years.

ABERNETHY: Lucky, it was a wonderful report. Talking to the Dalai Lama, I know he tells you that he’s going back to Tibet in his lifetime. Could you believe him?

SEVERSON: I’d have a difficult time not believing anything he said, but I don’t understand how it can happen in his lifetime. There’s simply no incentive for the Chinese to give up Tibet.

ABERNETHY: Even if they did go back, what would that mean for Tibetan Buddhism?

SEVERSON: I think that it’s in question, because Tibetan Buddhism, particularly from within Tibet, has changed so much under Chinese rule. I just don’t see how it — if it happens, it’s not going to be easy; it’s going to be very, very difficult.

ABERNETHY: Lucky, many thanks.

SEVERSON: Thank you.

The Dalai Lama

Posted on June 4, 1999 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world’s foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those who are destroying his country? What does he think about when he meditates for five hours every morning?

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly was invited to interview the Dalai Lama at his exile home in Dharamsala, India. Our correspondent Lucky Severson brought back this exclusive report on His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Carved out of a mountainside in the hazy foothills of the Himalayas, this is Dharamsala, India. Most of the faces you see in Dharamsala are Tibetan, and they are here because this is the home of their exiled spiritual and political leader — some say he is a god-king — the 14th Dalai Lama.

If I stop you or interrupt you to ask you a question, will you get angry with me?

DALAI LAMA: Oh, perhaps.

SEVERSON: Oh, no.

DALAI LAMA: Beat it.

SEVERSON: Then I won’t interrupt.

For a man with the weight of his oppressed people resting squarely on his shoulders, his eyes sparkle, his curiosity consumes, and he laughs easily, a huge, contagious laugh impossible to resist.

(to Dalai Lama): People who meet you are always amazed that you enjoy life so much. You savor every moment like a fine wine. How do you do that?

DALAI LAMA: My mental state, I think, and hopefully at a comparatively more peaceful, I think. Inside, you see, different situation, some sad sort of frustrations. But it never remain long. This is something like the ocean. On the surface, the wave comes and go, comes and go, but underneath always remains calm.

SEVERSON: A fitting description of a man whose name, Dalai Lama, translated, means “ocean of wisdom,” a man millions of Buddhists believe to be the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, who died in 1933. After his death, the monks of Tibet began a long search for the 14th Dalai Lama. Following heavenly signs along the way, they found a two-year-old Tibetan boy who instantly grabbed the string of prayer beads owned by the Dalai Lama number 13. The boy was Lhamo Thondup, and he passed a critical test when he selected from a large group of objects only those that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama.

I’ve been told that you are the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. You are the 14th. If you’re the Dalai Lama now, how can you top that in the next life?

DALAI LAMA: This question — I don’t know how to answer. From the Buddhist view, your questions are not very smart.

SEVERSON: From the Buddhist view, the answer is the 14th Dalai Lama will be reincarnated as the 15th Dalai Lama.

Mr. JAMYANG NORBU (Tibetan Scholar and Writer): The institution of the Dalai Lama is also a creation of the Tibetan people’s genius, their religious genius.

SEVERSON: Jamyang Norbu is a Tibetan scholar and a writer whose family has served the Dalai Lama for generations.

Mr. NORBU: So it’s not like he has a choice in a lot of matters here. So sometimes I think he finds it very frustrating, maybe even limiting in a sense.

SEVERSON: Do you ever get lonely?

DALAI LAMA: No.

SEVERSON: Never?

DALAI LAMA: No. When, of course, when I was young.

SEVERSON: When he was a little boy with no time to grow up and no friends, traveling with an entourage of hundreds, a prisoner of the status.

DALAI LAMA: Sometimes feeling, “Oh, the Dalai Lama’s way of life is boring.” As a grown-up, I realize my own responsibility or rule.

SEVERSON: When he was 15, while the West looked the other way, Chinese Communists invaded the world’s only theocracy, ultimately destroying 6,000 monasteries and slaughtering as many as a million Tibetans. Finally in 1959, his life in great danger, the Dalai Lama escaped to India. Forty years later, his life is not what it would have been. His followers, in addition to the six million Tibetans, now include millions of people around the world. His influence is larger than life.

Some people have described you as a god-king. Forgive me, but what are you?

DALAI LAMA: I’m just a human being, a Buddhist monk, just a human being. I think a happy human being, perhaps.

SEVERSON: Just a human being, perhaps, but look in the eyes of those who have come here to get a glimpse of the man. He always seems a bit embarrassed by the attention, as if to say, “Hey, I’m just one of you.” But he is most comfortable when he is doing what he does hours every day, usually alone, chanting and meditating.

What do you do when you get up at 3:30?

DALAI LAMA: I sleep. (Laughter) Meditation.

SEVERSON: Meditation.

DALAI LAMA: Meditation. Sometimes meditation with a little sleep. Otherwise, from 3:30 and around 8:30 or 9.

SEVERSON: Five hours?

DALAI LAMA: Including my breakfast. Otherwise, this is some prayer; mainly, it’s the analytic — analytical meditation as I mentioned earlier, analyze, think, think, think.

SEVERSON: The Buddhists call it analytical meditation.

DALAI LAMA: Analyze what thought or emotion is beneficial, what is harmful. Analyze clearly, then find out the contradictions among these different kinds of emotions or thoughts. Then once we realize now this emotion, such as hatred, is very bad, very harmful, very harmful for health, very harmful for mental peace and also is harmful to the society. Then find out what is opposite or thought: love, love and kindness, compassion.

SEVERSON: It is a spiritual philosophy that has beckoned to millions of Americans and westerners.

Are you looking for converts in the West and America?

DALAI LAMA: No, never. That’s a mistake. I have firm belief the people like westerners, like Americans, you have Judeo-Christian traditions. So generally, you, your people, should keep your own traditions, should not change your faith.

SEVERSON: Is it possible for me to be a good Christian and still be a good Buddhist?

DALAI LAMA: Now already I’ve found to some of my Christian brothers, sisters, you see, very good Christian, very faithful to the concept of creator, but at the same time, taking some Buddhist methods or Buddhist technique either to increase the spiritual forgiveness or the tolerance and compassion.

SEVERSON: Even though casual Buddhism can complement Christianity, His Holiness says at the core, there is a fundamental difference.

DALAI LAMA: If you reach some higher spiritual experience, spiritual state, then I think it is difficult. The Buddhist concept — everything comes and happen due to law of causality: cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. This indicates there’s no central, absolute cause or creator. So since Buddhism do not have a concept of creator, some scholars say Buddhism is not a religion, but science of mind. So Buddhism also kind of atheism.

You see, you unify or mixed both, then difficult. Sooner or later, clash.

SEVERSON: For the people who come here — and they arrive by the hundreds — the Dalai Lama himself is reason enough to keep the faith. Many are Tibetans who have made the treacherous journey across the Himalayas to escape Chinese oppression. It is a painful reminder of his burden to free his people and get his country back.

He is a king without a country, the holy man locked away from most of his people. Here in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama has heard the firsthand reports of oppression, imprisonment, and the cultural genocide of his people. But throughout it all, he has steadfastly preached compassion and nonviolence.

Instead of fighting with the Chinese, he has spent most of his life negotiating, compromising, telling his people to be patient; their time will come. But it is a message that is wearing thin.

Mr. NORBU: The Chinese — they don’t have to listen to him at all. And these are people who are playing hardball. And in that sense, I feel sometimes that His Holiness is out of his depth there.

DALAI LAMA: My middle approach is strict nonviolent principles, although immediate result or effect on the Chinese government level so far is no result, no effect.

Mr. NORBU: I think a person who is at the moment — who by his own admission is tremendously confused, who is tremendously frustrated by the lack of any kind of response from the Chinese to his overtures, and a person who, in a sense, who feels he has failed.

SEVERSON: These are pictures of a man who burned himself to death last year to protest the Chinese occupation, and the man has become a martyr and a symbol that young Tibetans in particular are growing impatient.

The Tibetan Youth Congress, calling itself the loyal opposition, is drawing a line. Doma Chopel, a spokesperson for the Tibetan Youth Congress.

Ms. DOMA CHOPEL (Tibetan Youth Congress Spokesperson): Do you know, whatever we have done, we tried and we did in a nonviolent path. But we don’t know what the people demands, like if a time demands then maybe Tibetan people’s ready to sacrifice, they die for their own fatherland.

SEVERSON: But the way His Holiness has analyzed the situation, violence would only bring violence, even a bloodbath. Violence and hatred, he says, are what is wrong with nations and families in this modern world.

DALAI LAMA: I see many tragic situations which we are facing today at an international level or a national level, family level. I feel that we are in generally, among humanity, in modern time, we are lacking peace of mind. We need human values. Unhappy person, if utilized these inner value, can be happy person. The troubled family can be peaceful family. Not through money, not through other means.

SEVERSON: The 63-year-old Dalai Lama is convinced that he will return to the Potala Palace in Tibet in this lifetime. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Dharamsala, India.

Tensions in Chinese/U.S. Relations

Posted on June 4, 1999 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY: This week marked the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Chinese army broke up the student-led democracy protests with tanks and gunfire. The anniversary comes amid new tensions between China and the U.S. Correspondent Kim Lawton has our report on how human rights, including religious liberty, may be affected.

KIM LAWTON: The images from a decade ago still haunt: the euphoric demonstration for freedom and democracy and the brutal crackdown that killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of unarmed people. The world was outraged.

Today, U.S.-Sino relations are again at a low point, sparked by the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and charges that China stole nuclear secrets. Some activists are concerned the tense political situation will pose increased difficulties for advocacy and human rights, such as religious freedom.

Rabbi ARTHUR SCHNEIER (Appeal of Conscience Foundation): Nothing happens without the overall political climate.

LAWTON: In China, millions of believers are allowed to worship in government-approved settings, as long as they submit to regulations. Catholics, for example, cannot give allegiance to the pope. But millions of others are not willing to submit. They worship in the underground, risking arrest, imprisonment, and torture.

Ms. NINA SHEA (Freedom House): The persecution is intense; it’s gotten worse in the last year. There’s been a crackdown, as even the U.S. State Department has acknowledged over the past year. But it’s been intense all along for religious believers.

LAWTON: Nina Shea advises the State Department on religious freedom.

Ms. SHEA: There’s also a reluctance, I think, on the part of the U.S. government officials, and there has been, to offend the Chinese. They don’t want to bring up unpleasant things like human rights. And I’m concerned that human rights is gonna be swept away in any negotiations.

LAWTON: Rabbi Arthur Schneier has long advocated better relations as the best way to achieve more religious freedom. He says despite new political tensions, that must continue.

Rabbi SCHNEIER: We have to walk through this particular time and hope that we can really move forward in every aspect of our relationship.

LAWTON: But some worry that in the push to enhance business and strategic relations, human rights may be left behind.

Mr. SHEA: We just have to give them fair criticism and also represent our point of view. We should not, you know, check our values at the — at the port of call in China.

LAWTON: Ten years after Tiananmen Square, human rights, including religious rights, remains a potentially explosive problem for China’s Communist leaders and, for the nation’s religious believers, a still dangerous vocation. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

Christian Rock Music

Posted on September 11, 1998 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The clear theme of this program about President Clinton, about Henry Lyons, is forgiveness for doing wrong. Here’s one more example: the world of Christian rock music, where performers are under vigilant scrutiny from their fans over what they write, where they perform, and how they live their lives, and woe betide the Christian rock star who falls. Our correspondent Lucky Severson has been listening to Christian rock’s words and music.

SEVERSON: She can sing to high heaven.

Sandi Patty is one of the reasons Christian music is growing faster than any other kind of music in America.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: And the Dove Award for group of the year goes to: Jars of Clay!

SEVERSON: You may not know this group, but millions of Americans do. Jars of Clay is another reason Christian music, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, is now more popular than jazz or classical.

Amy Grant has sold over 20 million records. Without her, Christian music might not have grown into a $500 million-a-year industry. But it’s an industry at a crossroads, caught between the devil and a hard place, between commercial success and fundamental Christian values, and between very high expectations and real-life temptations. An expert on Christian music and publisher of CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC magazine, John Styll.

Mr. JOHN STYLL (Publisher, CCM Magazine): There’s always tensions that are going to exist when Christianity and commerce mix. Anytime you’re doing something for money and it contains the gospel, it has the potential to smell funny.

SEVERSON: Some Christian music today would have been locked out only a few years ago. This is high-decibel rock ‘n’ roll. The group is called DC Talk, and their music is reaching out to kids who normally wouldn’t be there, and it’s making money.

It worked for Amy Grant. Her career hit a plateau until she branched into pop music. Suddenly her record sales blossomed, and so did her conservative critics.

Mr. STYLL: I don’t think there’s hardly anybody out there that doesn’t know that she’s a Christian, what she stands for, and yet people see a direct correlation, or they think they see a direct correlation, between her taking Jesus out of her music and selling more records, and therefore, she has somehow sold out.

SEVERSON: Another group accused of selling out, Jars of Clay, one of Christian music’s top rock bands. Their song “Flood” was number one on MTV and secular radio stations throughout the country. They still travel with their pastor, but their lyrics include fewer heavenly phrases. They sing more about social and personal issues.

Mr. DAN HASELTINE (Jars of Clay): We write music, and our songs are hopefully written in a way that it doesn’t alienate people who aren’t Christians. The issues that we deal with are issues that everybody deals with.

SEVERSON: For many old-time and hard-line fans, Jars of Clay has gone too far. But even some of the pioneers in this business who have not ventured into the mainstream, like Sandi Patty, think there’s plenty of room and even a need for groups like Jars of Clay.

Ms. SANDI PATTY: These kids don’t face the same issues that I did when I was growing up. I mean, they’re having to make choices a lot earlier in their lives about sexuality, about drugs, about alcohol, and I am thrilled that there are some groups out there that the kids relate to.

Mr. STYLL: Most Christians are generally supportive of the idea of any Christian group getting their message out there where people can hear it. Now, they do get a little uncomfortable when a band decides they want to play in bars and lounges where people are drinking and who knows what is going on, and Jars of Clay has had their share of criticism for going into, you know, that venue.

UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER OF JARS OF CLAY: There have been times when someone has said, “I saw someone drinking a beer at your concert,” or “I smelled pot in the back of the club.” We’re not playing for those kind of people, as well as the people who grew up in churches, and like our music, then why — what’s, you know — what are we doing?

Mr. STYLL: I think, though, that’s exactly where Jesus would be if he were here today. He’d be in bars trying to minister to people, and I think he would be criticized.

SEVERSON: It’s a tough balancing act for these groups and performers, staying true to their values and at the same time branching out or reaching out. Christian music standards are high, some would argue too high. Even the very best among them have a difficult time walking the straight and narrow line. Few would argue that one of the best in the business is Sandi Patty.

She won 35 Dove Awards — gospel music’s most prestigious honors, five Grammys, sold 11 million records. A few short years ago, when she was at the top of the Christian charts, she fell, all the way to the bottom, when she announced that she had had an affair and then got a divorce.

Mr. STYLL: It’s a safe statement to say that her career virtually stopped at that point. She had an album that was about to come out from a Christian record label, a Christmas album; they put it on the shelf, they waited a year before they put it out. She was forced off, but she voluntarily took herself away to sort of rebuild her life, and she’s slowly starting to come back.

Ms. PATTY: I have made huge mistakes in my life. I don’t mean that as a copout or an excuse or anything, but I guess that’s been a helpful revelation to me to go, “You know what, I — I cannot foster this life-is-perfect-I’ve-got-it-all-together image,” because the higher you try to do that, the farther you fall. I know that better than anybody.

Mr. STYLL: This kind of scandal just doesn’t fade away very easily in the Christian community, because they expect the artist to live the values that they sing about. And even though forgiveness for sin and grace is part of that, it’s a little harder for people to apply that, it seems.

SEVERSON: Sandi Patty is now on the comeback trail. She performed at the Fourth of July celebration in the nation’s capital. She has a new husband, a new adopted son, Sam, and she has a new perspective and an album about grace and forgiveness.

Ms. PATTY: I think anything good can come out of any situation, and there have been some very positive things. If that’s what it’s taken for me to become who I am today, much more confident in my relationship with God, much more confident in who — who I am and much more realistic about my weaknesses and strengths, you know what, I would do it all again if that was the only way.

SEVERSON: She sings about God’s forgiveness, but forgiveness from people who were once her fans may take a little longer. I’m Lucky Severson for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY.

American Atheists

Posted on July 24, 1998 by Michael Bailey

LYNN NEARY: Now, our Cover Story on the estimated 4 percent of Americans who, according to the Princeton Religious Research Center, call themselves atheist, or nonbelievers in God or a universal spirit. We know what they do not believe in, but what does inform their beliefs, and how do their communities regard them? Betty Rollin of NBC News recently visited a gathering of atheists on the 4th of July.

BETTY ROLLIN: Talladega, Alabama, the heart of the Bible belt. Looks like a church picnic, but it doesn’t sound like one.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Come on, you atheists, let’s see what you can do.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2 (Singing): I don’t need Jesus to give me a smile.

Professor DELOS MCKOWN: You have the descent into hell, and you have the Resurrection, and you have the Ascension, and you have the Second Coming. These people think they’re talking about something. They really, really do.

ROLLIN: It’s the annual gathering of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a national organization with about 4,000 members, hosted by its local chapter, the Alabama Free Thought Association. Of the 200 gathered here, many say they were good Christians once. Dan Barker used to preach the gospel until his second conversion took hold.

DAN BARKER (Former Christian Minister): But in my early 30s, I discovered this hunger to know what I was preaching about. So I studied. I read the scholars — the Christian scholars. And as I learned more, I realized that a lot of the basis that I was preaching had no base at all. So I migrated across, to fundamentalist to more of a loving evangelical Christian to more of a moderate Christian, eventually, after a few years, to become a liberal Christian [of the kind] that I used to preach against. And finally, I dumped out all the bathwater, and I found there’s no baby there, and there’s no basis for what I was preaching. And I had to be honest and ask myself, do I want God, or do I want the truth? And I went with the truth, and I became an atheist.

ROLLIN: Although most remain invisible, more than a million Americans call themselves atheists. Some of them even come in families. Meet the Warners, from Valley Park, Missouri. Bill is an engineer; Ann, a schoolteacher.

BILL WARNER (Atheist): I don’t believe in a supernatural power because I don’t see any evidence for it. I look upon it as our current mythology.

ANN WARNER (Atheist): I believe that you don’t have to go to church to be a good person. And that’s the way we’re raising our children.

CHRISTINE WARNER (Atheist): My one best friend in my school, she already knows I’m an atheist, and she doesn’t really care that much.

ANTHONY WARNER (Atheist): Ryan, he always says if you don’t believe in God, you’ll go to the devil.

ROLLIN (To A. Warner): Somebody said that to you?

A. WARNER: Ryan did.

ROLLIN (To A. Warner): And what did you say? What do you think about that?

A. WARNER: I said, who’s the devil?

ROLLIN: But for some families, being criticized for atheism is no joke.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: People are very violent about it in the rural areas.

ROLLIN: So violent that this man says he doesn’t dare show his face. His wife once admitted they were nonbelievers to a neighbor.

MAN #3: Her daughter found out and told everybody at school the next day, and my daughter was attacked on the bus.

ROLLIN (To Man #3): By whom?

MAN #3: The students on the bus of all ages.

ROLLIN (To Man #3): How did they attack her?

MAN #3: Slugging her, punching her.

ROLLIN: Adam Butler heads an atheist group at the University of Alabama. He’s been threatened and ostracized by religious friends.

ADAM BUTLER (University of Alabama): If someone finds out, it gets around that Adam doesn’t believe in God anymore, nobody wants to talk to you, and nobody wants to be around you, as if it’ll rub off.

Mr. BARKER: So atheism is like a big scarlet A. We feel that religion is the cause of so much harm and divisiveness. Look at these bombings, look at the terrorists, look at the abortion clinics. They’re doing it in the name of God, and they’re calling it good.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Jesus promised to come back to his own generation several times, you know — didn’t quite make it.

ROLLIN: But these folks don’t just talk about their beliefs or lack of them, they practice what they preach, involving themselves in First Amendment battles. Whenever a separation of church and state is threatened, the freethinkers are there.

The most recent conflict in Alabama involved a judge displaying the 10 commandments in his courtroom. And when the Supreme Court decision came down in 1963 that removed prayer from public schools, that case was spearheaded by the then head of the American Atheist Organization, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who was promptly voted the most hated woman in America.

MADALYN O’HAIR (American Atheist Organization): No federal official may ask you what your religion is.

ROLLIN: Three years ago, she became equally unpopular among her followers when she mysteriously disappeared, along with several hundred thousand dollars.

UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: Fear is a core value of religion, okay? They exploit fear.

ROLLIN: But the organization lives on. Based in Texas, the American Atheists have a weekly cable television show and a Web site. The leaders are first to admit, however, that atheism has never caught on in this country. Partly, they say, that’s because atheism has often been linked with communism. And it’s true that most communist regimes, like the former Soviet Union, have not permitted religious expression.

Some atheists join organizations in order to stop what they see as a dangerous erosion in the separation of church and state. Some just want to be tolerated and understood. But they are all faced with the same question. If you don’t believe in God, what do you believe in?

Mr. B. WARNER: I believe that people are basically good. And we don’t need a God to make us good.

C. WARNER: Most of the time I believe in what I see evidence of.

Mr. BARKER: We feel that we are improving the world. We feel that reason and kindness, more of that and less superstition, less nonsense, would be better for the world.

ROLLIN: We pride ourselves on religious tolerance in America. Yet as more and more Americans count themselves among the religious, there is no indication that tolerance for the nonreligious will grow. I’m Betty Rollin for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY in Talladega, Alabama.

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