Organizing in my area means you have to consider religion. A little less than 37% "aren't religious"*, but that doesn't always mean they're atheists. West Virginia has one of the largest "unchurched" populations, but plenty of those folks consider themselves God-fearing Christians, they just think that none of their local churches are the right kind of god-fearing. And of the rest, plenty of us were raised Christian and still have Christian beliefs and ideologies that influence us, even when we stop considering ourselves "religious".
Moreover, you have to look at who in the area is already organizing for collective action, and at least 90% of those organizers are religious people. There are the churches and religious non-profit organizations created by churches, and then there's the less obvious non-profits that just have boards that are 100% made up of religious people.
These religious folks aren't uniformly evil. The local anti-war activism group that takes folks to demonstrations and runs a liberal/left radio station is held together by devout Quakers. The house that feeds and clothes anyone who needs it, including the queer homeless kids, is run by Catholic Workers. The Catholic Workers also did some extremely effective organizing this year to expand public transportation.
Of course the Catholic Workers are also vocally anti-abortion.
I'm thinking about religion a lot because I'm in a book club that's reading "Let This Radicalize You", and religion comes up often in our discussions. Pretty much everyone in the group is very new to the ideas presented in it.
The group includes an experienced Quaker migrant justice organizer and a - well I can't think of a better word than "hippie". The hippie has attended a lot of demonstrations but hasn't done any local organizing before, believes in a lot of conspiracy theories, and is very against "organized religion". If she just criticized Christianity I would understand because like I said, that is the one religion that has enormous political power locally. But she often brings up Judaism out of nowhere and we have to shut down the tangent before it strays into what I worry would be outright antisemitism. Sometimes I wonder if we should ask her to leave, but she also seems to be learning a lot from the book. I think our discussions are helping her consider different explanations for the way things are than "a secret evil organization of bankers did it".
Meanwhile the Quaker organizer has this thing where she seems to think motivation or thought is as bad as action. Hating a person who has hurt you or others is immoral. Getting angry (even if you don't act on it or show it) is wrong. Using "violent language" is wrong. Jokes about violence or destruction, about hating someone or something is wrong. And this is clearly coming out of the Quaker culture that she grew up in and still lives within. It seems to cause her a lot of discomfort when it comes to organizing with non-Quakers, but that also seems to be something that she's very interested in. I'd like to help her but I'm not sure how.
Not really any point to this, just lunch-break musings. Now back to work!
* So, during a break I looked up where this number for "No Religion" came from, and it's from the U.S. Religion Census, which asked congregations for "membership" and "adherent" data. So it's really a number of people who aren't in any religious congregation, not a number of people who self-identify as atheist or lacking religion. IMO it's likely that most of these folks consider themselves Christian and just don't go to church. I'd guarantee the number of atheists is much much lower.
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