Atheists' world is a small one

Continued from Page 1 prayer breakfasts at the White House; all statutes regulating divorce, abortion, homosexual encounters, and any other variety of behavior on the grounds that it offends some religious sect or precept; crosses as part of Christmas decorations, in federal buildings; the officially programmed spontaneous moment of prayer by the Apollo 8

astronauts as they circled the earth.

cases

At present, she is trying to raise $200,000 to hire a top-quality law firm, instead of the "turkey lawyers" she has generally had to settle for, to fight two one to bar the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from allocating educational funds to states that have moved to bring prayer back into the public schools; the other to prevent the U.S. Treasury from granting aid to states that have a religious test for employment; even unto a "So help me God" at swearing-in ceremonies.

She is not unrealistic about her chances: "The U.S. Supreme Court is shot to hell. This is a symbolic war that we sure as hell are losing."

In the decade since her battle against school prayer, Mrs. O'Hair, now 57, has grown larger and grayer, but the face beneath the bangs is youthful, as alive as it was in the days when defenders of religion in Baltimore were breaking her windows and slashing her tires and posting obscenity-garnished letters wishing her and her family painful deaths.

She talks at a peppy pace, the sentences well marshaled, the sincerity indubitable, the sentiments unequivocal: "You cannot close down the schools for Easter and Christmas and Passover and Hannukah unless you also close them for the great natural atheist holidays, two at the equinox, two at the solstice season.... People in trouble are being handed over by the federal government to religious institutions.

"The Office of Economic Opportunity ought to be called the Office of Ecclesiastical Opportunity. Unfortunately, most of the homes for wayward girls are in the hands of the Catholic Church. They ought to be secular, but nobody has the brains to see it... If you go into a hospital for an appendectomy, you have to tell them what religion you are before they'll take out the appendix. If you say you're an atheist, they'll send for a minister to look at the appendix first ...

"We'll attack any candidate who oversteps the line between church and state. We gave George Wallace good marks for wanting to tax churches, bad marks for holding prayer services in the state capital. Carter thinks he has a personal relationship with God, but there's no candidate out there for the atheists."

The Society of Separationists, based in Austin, Tex., is a combination of Mrs. O'Hair, a handful of relatives and friends, and a claimed mailing list of 70,000 mostly inactive families: Accord ing to Mrs. O'Hair, it has attracted a disproportionate number of Republicans

and Jews, as well as small businessmen, engineers and veterinarians: "Every vet in the country must be an atheist."

She believes that at least a quarter of the nation is made up of practicing atheists, and she has set herself the job of "getting closet atheists out of the closet."

She dismisses the conversion of the

religious as waste effort: "Religious people are throwaway people." And she has scant sympathy for persons who whisper their support for her crusades, yet make a public show of piety. When a doctor who tithed religiously to his church came to her back door in Maryland one night to offer $200 in cash for land one night to offer $200 in cash for her school-prayer fight, she told him what unprintable thing he could do with his money. Nor do most kinds of atheists fall into her good graces. She categorizes them by species:

Primitive atheists "People who come of age, look at Christianity and find it incredible, as any sensible person would, and eventually join the Unitarians or Ethical Culturists. They don't like to get mixed up in physical combat.”

• Hate atheists "They cite the number of incidents of priests living with housekeepers, or ministers making indecent advances on choir boys. They may move on to astrology."

• Philosophical atheists "They get bogged down in reading holy books, the Torah, the King James Bible, the Upanishads, 'Science and health.' These people use up precious time analyzing trash and writing genteel, erudite and worthless articles and join the American Humanist Association.”

"They all

• Fanatical atheists convert from Jehovah's Witnesses."

Sectarian atheists

"They love internecine strife. There are now 12 or 13 atheist organizations in the country which do nothing but fight each other."

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Some 500 free wheelers were ex-

pected at the convention, About 100 showed up, including a couple from Silup, including a couple from Silver Spring, Md., whose surname, honest to God, was Secular. Three celebrities, Linus Pauling, Isaac Asimov and Butterfly McQueen were promised, but only the last appeared, much plumper and grayer than in "Gone With the Wind." Her inimitable voice, however, was intact, as she told the company that a highly intelligent Jewish man had informed her that the Bible was written by rich Jewish businessmen in order to exploit the poor.

The Atheist of the Year, the fraillooking S.O.S. treasurer, had a stroke just before he was scheduled to receive his award, an occurrence which was not construed as an omen. Sessions started late and tended to limp along, except when Mrs. O'Hair herself took the microphone: "I'd like to get a Madalyn O'Hair Special on TV, like the Billy Graham Special' Enthusiastic applause. John Murray, her son and the S.O.S. secretary, showed slides of the family house in Austin and reported on his difficulties getting past secretaries at the United Nations in his efforts to

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establish S.O.S. as part of the world body.

But the audience did not seem to mind the disjointedness or the languid pace of the proceedings; I encountered no grumbling and the few expressions of disappointment I heard were mild.

Most people seemed very pleased to be there, to see Madalyn O'Hair in person and resolve to submit Democratic conventions, to hear atheher name to both the Republican and ism extolled in the ballroom of a big hotel, perhaps to wear for a few days the atheist medallion (an A on a nuclear field), which they will not have much occasion to wear in the offices, shops, bars and bowling alleys back home. "In a small town," said an Indiana man, "you can't afford to be an atheist."

For a number of these atheists, perhaps most of them, the end of the convention meant a return to the closet. Mrs. Secular dashed away in panic when she noticed that I was jotting down her name.

A former minister had difficulty in bringing himself to explain what he was doing at the Sheraton: "I'm still a Presbyterian. I am not an atheist. I am interested in criticism from atheists or anybody else. I participate in criticism. I'm sympathetic to atheists. My philosophy is existential. God! Let the chips fall where they may I am an atheist." He gathered up the chips and asked that his name not be published since he is still collecting a pension from the Presbyterians.

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The man who was given a charter at the meeting to organize a New York chapter, a former theology student whose conversion began when he saw "Inherit the Wind," preferred that his name not be published because he makes his living playing an organ in a church.

The organizer of the New Jersey chapter, sporting a Tax-the-Churches button, didn't mind being known as an atheist as long as the fact was not connected with the gas station he runs. The elderly organizer of the Florida chapter

had not felt able to declare himself an

atheist until a few years ago when he retired, as a captain, from the New York City police force: "All I had to do was announce myself as an atheist and I'd've stopped being a cop.

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There are only a half dozen operating S.O.S. chapters, and most of them are barely operating. The problem, according to Mrs. O'Hair, is economic pressure: "Only a self-sufficient businessman or a retired person dares take on the public role of organizer."

We may draw at least two conclusions from the recent convention: One

the decline of ministerial students has depleted the stock of positive atheists. Two potential proselytizers for atheism have learned that persons who avow a lack of faith are treated in most cities and towns as members of an eccentric, if not dangerous, class, no matter that they are demonstrably less dangerous and much less eccentric than the disciples of numerous religious cults.

Even among those at the meeting who were unqualifiedly willing to go on record for their beliefs and man the barricades if need be, there was a sense that their causes might do better if they personally remained apart from the fight.