I did not expect that my walks between classrooms here at UW would regularly consist of walking past street preachers. But I suppose I should not be too surprised. The religious have been pounding on my doors my entire life. Offering religious texts, prayers, salvation, and that oh-so-sweet grace.
I’m no longer surprised when I go to get a soda and see the sign that reads “evolution is a lie,” nor old men with staffs saying homosexuals are going to hell. Even the young Mormon boys with their Lamb of God books are on campus.
Although I throw away that little green New Testament every time I’m given one, they just keep coming my way. It seems like a waste— if I wanted to read the New Testament I could find it online, free of charge, without wasting all the paper. I’m as religious as a rock, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t read. I’ve read the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I even have an audio version of the Bible narrated by James Earl Jones, and if that voice didn’t convert me, nothing can.
At some point it really gets boring. I think what religious people forget is that some of us, actually a growing number of us, have no desire to be religious. Call it whatever you want, Atheist, Secular, Agnostic, Free, Damned, Rational or other. Doesn’t change that there are many who are satisfied without your brand of God and don’t fear your hell. It is fine to believe, but it is equally ok not to. The goal by no means is to “find” God.
This is not a Christian campus any more than it is an Atheist, Islamic or Baptist campus. It is a religiously neutral, state funded place of education, where science and math go as deep as you are willing to take them, history is brought back to life, and music is refined.
Truth is, even though I don’t understand it, I’m ok with these guys on campus. Diversity is a good thing and I will continue to support it. The fact that the university has public areas, and actually has them open to the public, is one of the reasons I have respect for this university. UW may not support your quackery, but if you have something to say then just go to the public area, get a cardboard sign, and have at it. That is the basis for tolerance.
If we want to claim to be a place of higher education, we need science in our classrooms. If we want to create the thinkers of the future, it would do us poorly to have them resolve the questions of biological systems with “God did it.” We used to do that in a time called the “dark ages.” We should constantly be asking ourselves if we have adequately addressed issues of inequality in sex, gender, and race right here, in this place we are all calling home for the moment. Because that is what being better is about.
I think it’s like so many things in life. You don’t go to a circus without having to walk past the clowns. While clowns are enough to give us a smile and sometimes perform some interesting acts, nobody goes to the circus for the clowns. Clowns are just what happen in-between acts.
— Josh Sharpe
