Feb. 14, 2007
Editor's Note: This is the third of a series of interviews Jeff Nall conducted with Christian and atheist activists.
By now nearly everyone in the secular-humanist community knows Hemant Mehta, AKA the eBay atheist and the Friendly Atheist.
In 2006, Mehta, an ardent activist in the atheist community, wanted to show Christians that not all nonbelievers are the angry, anti-religious people they may think them to be. So Mehta auctioned off his soul -- that is, he allowed bidders on ebay to vie for his time, vowing to spend an hour in church for every $10 donated. By the time it was over, 41 bids had been placed and item number 5660982226 was sold for $504 (which Hemant donated to the Secular Student Alliance).
The winning bidder, Jim Henderson, a liberal evangelical seeking to reinvent evangelism, asked Mehta to attend nine church services and write two pieces for his website, Off the Map. For his part, Mehta agreed to attend the services with an "open mind" and to "respectfully participate in service, speak to priests and volunteer with the church if possible."
Graciously fulfilling his end of the bargain, Hemant’s humble, respectful manner immediately countered the "militant atheist" stereotype supported by the mainstream media to speak on behalf of the broader secular community. His strong but inviting manner resonated in the press coverage he received, helping to cleanse the long-standing visage of vituperative atheism.
By the time all was said and done, Hemant’s tour of churches in four states, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and Colorado, had been covered by major news outlets including Fox News, The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Seattle Times and National Public Radio. He even scored a book deal through the Christian publisher WaterBrook Press, which plans to release his book, I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes on April 17. Mehta currently maintains his busy website and is the chair of the Secular Student Alliance Board of Directors.
In an interview I conducted last year, Mehta told me he believed it was a waste of time to try to extinguish religion and said freethinkers were better off spending their time engaging in productive dialogue with believers. He pointed to Lori Lipman Brown and Julia Sweeney as having preceded him in proffering the "friendly atheist" image, one he believes is far more productive than the antagonistic models used by those encouraging believers to trade in Bibles for pornography.
A new voice for freethinkers, Hemant also believes freethinkers can learn a lot from church communities.
Interview: Hemant Mehta
What prompted you to auction your time off on eBay?
It’s an idea I’d had for a while, but the main thing is just spending so much time with atheist groups, and my family is very religious, too. I think what happens is people don’t want to see what the other side has to offer at a certain point, maybe it’s a certain age or a certain time in your life, but at some point you think you’ve seen what everyone has to offer. And so there’s no need to look anywhere else. And I think I hadn’t experienced Christianity anyway, so before I got so stuck that, "OK I’m an atheist, there’s nothing that’s going to change me," I figured, well OK, I’ll look into and see what they have to offer. That’s the least I could do....
Were you partly motivated by a desire to create dialogue between Christians and atheists?
I think if I said yes, it would make me sound better than I am. That wasn’t the original intention, the dialogue created. I did want to write about any church that I went to and I did want people to respond to it. But the dialogue that happened as a result was just a great byproduct but it wasn’t the original intention.
What was the response like from the Christian and atheist communities?
Most of the critiques from the Christians were pretty positive, the ones I’ve seen just going through blogs. I’ve seen very little criticism from people who actually knew what was going on….the first time I really talked to an atheist crowd was at the [2006] Kansas City convention for Atheist Alliance International [AAI], and it was unbelievably positive there too....
What about letters and emails?
I haven’t gotten that much response from atheists through email but a lot of religious people have emailed me. And most of them are positive about it too. Most of them want me to come to their church. Like I got seven Jehovah Witnesses, I got a Mormon, a lot of people saying, "That’s nice that you’ve done this with the Christian churches or those types of Christian churches, now come to mine"....no one’s said you’re going to hell for doing this, which surprised me.
Right before you took this up I wrote an article critiquing the approach of Brian Flemming’s film, The God Who Wasn’t There and its "war on Christmas" stunt; and then, at a Texas college, there was "smut for smut," where atheists were giving out pornography to people who would turn in their Bibles. Some responded to my article asking, hey, then what’s the alternative? Not long after you became the eBay atheist.
From what you’re saying, it seems that your activism was vastly well-received and managed to create conversation whereas these other forms of atheist activism created bitter controversy. Based on your experience what’s your impression of these more negative kinds of atheist actions?
It’s funny you mention those other examples because when I did my speech at AAI, I actually said the reason that the eBay thing worked so well is because I think it was a form of positive atheism. It was kind of putting a friendly face out there about it.
I actually gave examples, you know when you look at Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show, "Letting Go of God"; when you look at Lori Lipman Brown from the Secular Coalition for America, they’ve put a really friendly face about atheists out there, that they’re not out to attack anyone, they just want it to be respected and people to know where they’re coming from. I think that’s what I tried to model myself after, in terms of how to put this thing out there.
But I don’t care if you convert to atheism. I think the belief might be wrong but I don’t think in principle Christianity is a bad thing or anything like that. And then I had some examples of what I thought were bad images for us out there and I actually used the smut for smut as an example as well as the "war on Christmas" thing....Just the way you present it, the smut for smut thing, obviously that’s going to get publicity, but it’s not positive....what you can do is try to work with it and find a good compromise. When it comes to issues of having creationism in school, yes I have an issue with that. But if you want to believe that stuff on your own terms, that doesn’t bother me so much, except that, well, I don’t think it’s right.
From your sense of their [church communities] tremendous ability to produce a positive environment for the growth of a community, is there a lesson about our need to create that sort of community or community centers?
Yes, if we could create communities of reason or something where it’s like a church, in the sense that you have this community, a place to go to where there’s a set service every time; and a lot of local groups do try to do that and do it pretty well. But yes, to have something like that where anyone can come into and ask questions and talk about this type of thing. The churches do that better than any place else....
There are atheist pundits like Sam Harris out there right now who say the only way we will ever find peace on earth is when we eradicate religion from the face of the earth.
I just got his book and I haven’t been able to read it yet. But I know that’s his basic premise. He almost respects fundamentalism more than the liberal religion because at least they’re sticking to their faith. But we’re not going to get rid of religion any time soon, so what you’ve got to do now is learn to find the commonalities with them and work with them. There are legitimate church/state issues that we’ll come across, but you could still work with churches. Churches are not bad places and I think that’s kind of the impression you get a lot of time.
What’s the purpose of Friendlyatheist.com?
The purpose is I wanted to get those two words together....First of all, let’s link up the image of atheists being friendly because I don’t think they have that notion together, or those words are oxymoronic to them. That’s the main purpose, let’s get that out there. After that it’s just more of a personal website to dialogue what’s been going on since the auction.
Jeff Nall is a community activist and freelance writer. He regularly contributes to publications such as Online Journal, Toward Freedom, and The Humanist. For more articles by Jeff visit his blog. Humanists interested in building bridges with spiritual and religious progressives are encouraged to visit New Progressive Alliance and sign on.
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