October 22, 2001
New rebels on campus are secularists and atheists
___By David Briggs
___Cleveland Plain Dealer
___COLUMBUS, Ohio (RNS)--They celebrate Darwin Day instead of Christmas, are among the staunchest opponents of President Bush's proposed faith-based initiative and like to relax with alternative rock.
___Dressed in black or in an array of T-shirts with sayings such as "Smile, there is no hell," members of the Secular Student Alliance are the future of the atheist and secular humanist movements.
___These leaders of religious unbelief can be found in schools across the country holding superstition bashes, fighting in local city halls to have the Ten Commandments removed and sponsoring debates on creationism vs. evolution.
SANE co-founder Tyson Gustus (at center) during a lecture the group sponsored at Berkely last spring.
___Recently, about 100 young atheist and humanist leaders gathered at Ohio State University for the association's second national conference.
___They're non-believers, they're proud, and they're not going to stand in the shadows along school walls anymore.
___"It's similar to the gay pride movement," said Tyson Gustus, 25, co-founder of Students for a Non-religious Ethos, or SANE, at the University of California at Berkeley. "It is sort of a coming-out-of-the-closet issue in a lot of places."
___But first they have to get organized. And that, student leaders say, is a difficult task.
___Like the larger atheist and secular humanist movements, they do not have a large pool of people to draw from in America, where Gallup Polls have consistently found 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God.
___The largest of the 40 affiliated campus groups of the Secular Student Alliance is the Berkeley group, which has a mailing list of more than 400 people. But only about 30 show up at meetings.
___Stephanie Kirmer, 17, who organizes high school groups, said there are only six chapters in the United States. Kirmer said she could not even start a group at her high school in Topeka, Kan., because she could find only three students who were non-religious, and one of those students just moved to Alabama.
___In addition to the difficulty of finding secular humanists, there is a fierce individualism that causes many to look suspiciously at any type of organization. Adult groups are organized under several banners, including the American Atheists, Atheist Alliance International, Council for Secular Humanism, Freedom From Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association.
___"I've heard it compared to herding cats," said Abraham Kneisley, 22, a member of the executive council of the Campus Freethought Alliance, which is sponsored by the Council for Secular Humanism.
___Humanist leaders at the conference expressed fears that some people outside their circle view them as "baby eaters." In reality, they contend, they are like a typical group of college students, with perhaps a slightly more independent streak.
___They were raised as Catholics, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ or, in the case of Brunsman, by "lapsed atheists," and are searching for a sense of community to replace the isolation they often have felt as non-believers in a religious society.
___"In high school, it's really easy for people to get lost and blend in among the woodwork," Kirmer said. "It does make you feel different" to not believe in religion.
___Discovering a nationwide network of people who share similar skepticism, however, "makes me a lot more self-confident," he added.
___John Franson, 25, started an Individuals for Freethought group at Kansas State University in reaction to fundamentalist evangelists who were active on campus.
___"It's a community experience for me," said Tracy Pinsent, 20, a member of the Kansas State group. "Everybody needs to belong somewhere. ... We don't go to church. We go to free-thought things."
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