The Lemur recently sat down with the president of Duke’s new chapter of the Secular Student Alliance to discuss the club and its goals. As the editors-in-chief of The Lemur, we are very interested in clubs that try to reshape intellectual culture at Duke. And as people who disagree all the time about faith and morality (Sherman is a Christian and Zachary an atheist) we wanted to have a serious conversation with the club’s president about the nature of secular morality, whether atheists and believers can agree on a definition of religion, and what it means to be anti-religious.
If you have started—or run—a club that promotes conversations about the issues that matter, let us know! We would love to talk to you.
Below are selected quotes from our conversation. We hope you enjoy.
Note: the SSA president asked not to be identified by name for personal reasons, and we have honored her request.
Starting the Club
The Lemur (Zachary): When did you start the club?
SSA President: I started it last October. We had to register for the following semester, so we’re going to start this semester.
The Lemur (Zachary): Why did you start it? In particular, why did you think Duke needed this club, which is, I believe, a chapter of a larger organization?
SSA President: Yeah. It’s a chapter of the Secular Student Alliance in the U.S., which has 300 different chapters at high schools and colleges. I started it because I felt that atheists or people who didn’t fit into a specific religious group at Duke weren’t represented or were shy or not free to speak their opinions on campus, because of how present religious groups are here.
In my own experience, I’ve had a lot of other people at Duke attempt to convert me, especially as a freshman. And I thought Duke needed a space to talk about this and discuss ideas like humanism and atheist morality when there’s clearly a lot of religion at Duke.
The Lemur (Zachary): By conversion attempts, do you mean something like Cru or a Christian campus organization coming up to you? Or was it more in a friendship context?
SSA President: Friendships, yeah. It would be like friends being like, “Have you heard of the gospel?” and then giving you the spiel, and being like, “I want you to come to church with me on Sunday.” That just felt a little uncomfortable for atheist people or people who were not Christian and were born into another religion. It felt like they were kind of shoving it at us.
The Lemur (Zachary): And how did you get the sense that you weren’t alone in having that experience?
SSA President: I think I started having open conversations about it in my writing class last year as a freshman. It was called “Challenges of Identity, Belonging, & Connectedness in a Global Society.” We had to write essays about our beliefs and values. I wrote about being an ex-Muslim—growing up in a Muslim family and not being Muslim.
I wrote in that class about how I have very religious, practicing Muslim friends here at Duke, and I felt like I couldn’t tell them that I’m not Muslim. I think that’s a very common experience for ex-religious people—the social disconnection and stigma. And I found someone else in that writing class who had similar experiences.
The Lemur (Zachary): By the time you started the club, how big was the group? What kinds of people have joined?
SSA President: It’s about 25 right now. One thing I love is that many different types of non-conformist religious thought are represented. I’m an ex-Muslim, which is super hard to say out loud because there’s a lot of stigma around that. A lot of people are born atheists with atheist families, but there are also people in the club who are culturally Jewish but don’t really practice, and people who are agnostic Catholic and all that kind of stuff. I thought we needed a space for people who don’t really fit into strict categorical groups.
The Lemur (Sherman): Do you find it difficult to organize a group around a mission that’s not necessarily “you believe X, Y, and Z things”? Because people can believe very different things under this umbrella of secularism.
SSA President: Yeah, it’s a very wide definition. I think it was really hard to define it because people would ask me, “is it just for atheists?” And I’m not really atheist—I’m agnostic and ex-Muslim. I’m just not religious, so I would still fall into that category. The way I described it in the club constitution is that the club is for any person who doesn’t fit into an organized religious group. That could include humanistic, agnostic, atheist, ex-religious people, or allies who are religious but care about the separation of church and state. That was one of our biggest shared beliefs—the separation of church and state.
Duke’s Religious Culture
The Lemur (Sherman): Along those lines, one question I have is related to Duke as an institution. What value does religion serve in the university setting, if any? Because, I mean, obviously Duke’s motto literally has the word religion, and we have a divinity school. We have a ton of money going towards it. It’s not like 60 years ago when if you went to Duke, you’d be given a Bible and take religion classes. But if I was not Christian and I saw that we have a religious studies department that’s taking these ideas seriously, when I thought that they were harmful—should that be something that’s still a valuable part of human society and culture to pursue? Or do you think that’s something that shouldn’t be allowed? Or is that even a conversation?
SSA President: No, I think it should be an option. I think if it’s an option for people, that takes away the whole “I’m being forced and I don’t really want to listen or care about this.” But if someone is religious and that is something that they hold deeply to their heart, and it’s part of their ingrained community, I think it would be really nice to have a class at Duke that can teach you more about your religion or for you to take classes about other people’s religions. But I think it would be more from a secular perspective, just to learn about the religion, not saying this is truth.
The Lemur (Zachary): In general, I think the approach of a religious studies department, here and most other places, is just to present things in the context of their historical significance. I am not religious but my freshman year I took Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, taught by a professor who is Orthodox Jewish but a renowned biblical scholar. It was one of the most intellectually exciting experiences I’ve had at Duke. We did the historical-critical method, which is the modern way of interpreting the Bible through its historical context. Maybe half the people in the class were Jewish and some were raised Christian, and some were neither. And honestly, I think it would actually be harder to take that class a a person of faith. So I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I imagine studying religions in the context of their historical or intellectual significance—it seems like that would be interesting to you.
SSA President: That’s totally fine. I mean, I took a Buddhism class last semester. It just made me more atheist, but it was really cool to learn about it! There were people in that class who were Buddhist, and they really appreciated this being taught in a grand institution and being taught in the historical lens as well, not just scripture.
The Lemur (Sherman): I’m from southeastern North Carolina, and grew up with Christian conservative parents. When I think of Duke, I think of it as a barely Christian, very liberal institution. But in your experience you’ve felt that religion is very strong in the campus culture here. When you see Duke, do you feel like it’s a distinctly religious or Christian place? When you walk by and see the chapel, does it come across as religion being forced on you? What is Duke’s relationship to religion as an institution and what do you think about that?
SSA President: I wouldn’t say the institution itself forces religion on its students. I think it’s doing a really good job of pluralism and having multiple religions living on the same campus. The Quad-Ex chaplain system is really cool.
I talked to DSG about this, actually. I talked to the chair of religious life at DSG and she told me, “I think you need to bring atheism into organized religious life at Duke.” And I don’t really know how I feel about that. I don’t really consider us a religious group. I just think we’re a group based on different ideas than religion.
The Lemur (Zachary): It’s true, though, that at Duke we have a center for Catholic students, a Christian House, the Freeman Center, et cetera. I think there is some kind of affinity space or student life institution for basically every major culture or religion, although some are better funded than others. It’s an interesting question—do you feel like there needs to be something like that for people who aren’t religious? And what would that even look like because, again, that’s such a broad and diverse category of people?
SSA President: I think as of now, SSA can be that. Religious organizations here have a lot more support financially compared to humanist organizations, but it would be really cool to have a place where people can meet that’s owned by the institution and funded and supported by them. But I think that’ll take a lot more push. I think it’s really hard to prove why students need that because a lot of people still have misconceptions about who atheists are and what we believe.
I don’t know if you guys saw it, but there was some discourse on Fizz about SSA. People were like, “why do we even need this? Atheists don’t have a common holiday, there’s nothing to gather around except bashing God.” I think these kinds of misconceptions need to be addressed.
The Lemur (Zachary): What’s your best argument for why that’s a “misconception” [about atheists being a fractured community that doesn’t believe anything]? Is it that atheists share the feeling of being alienated by organized religion, and that’s enough to unite around? What would you say is the purpose of the club?
SSA President: That’s definitely one of them. And the second one would be to promote intellectual conversation about religion—if it is needed more or if it’s needed less, examining what kind of harm religion can do if it’s integrated into government policy. We want to talk about American policy but also international policy—we know that religion in a lot of countries is integrated into the state, and that has really dire effects. I think students want to have debates and discuss these kinds of things. One of the things we want to talk about is blasphemy law, for example. A lot of countries put people in jail for blasphemy, which is very loosely defined. There’s no trial for this kind of stuff. So I think that’s something we can also work on on a more professional and intellectual end through thought-provoking conversations.
The Lemur (Zachary): Yeah, the conversation element sounds very appealing to me. I’ve often noticed that the place on campus where I’m most likely to overhear an intellectually interesting conversation is the Divinity School Cafe. People there are often talking about very interesting things—whether it has to do specifically with theology and scripture or just general big picture conversations about meaning or whatever. I’m like, why is this only happening in the Divinity School? I’ve often felt that.
Club Activities and Mission
The Lemur (Zachary): What value do you think the club brings to its members? What kind of events and activities do you do?
SSA President: There’s the community aspect and then also a professional development aspect. The community aspect is just having communal dinners together and having lunch together, because I think people who experience religious differentiation don’t really have that familial support sometimes, especially if they didn’t grow up atheist and come from a different religious background. This is actually an idea from one of my friends who’s helping me start it. She was like, “it would be great if all of us had a family dinner or whatever you want to call it.”
The Lemur (Zachary): You’ve done those dinners in the past?
SSA President: We’re having the first one next week. And then there’s also the professional element, like the opportunity to attend the SSA conference, which is every year in D.C. It’s a two-day conference where people who are atheists, humanists, agnostics can come together and talk about what research is going on in that field and meet other leaders of SSA clubs. They also have scholarships available. I think sharing these kinds of opportunities to atheist or non-religious students is really important because most of them don’t even know that there are things like this specifically for them. So one, just support from a community, and two, the networking aspect.
Faculty Support and Academic Perspectives
The Lemur (Sherman): How do you envision faculty getting involved? And do you have support from any specific faculty or departments?
SSA President: Yeah. Our sponsor is Dr. David Wong. He’s a distinguished professor of philosophy, and he talks a lot about moral relativism. He works on questions like whether FGM [female genital mutilation] is morally “correct” in a given culture because people back it up with religious scripture, but it’s harmful scientifically. Dr. Wong focuses on Eastern religion and Eastern philosophies, but he also thinks in a comparative perspective with Western Christianity.
The Role of Religion
The Lemur (Zachary): You mentioned moral relativism and I’m not sure if you knew this when you reached out to us, but Sherman and I have very different views on a lot of things, and one of those things is religion. Sherman is Christian. I’m atheist. We were literally just talking over break about something related to the moral relativism question—basically whether it’s a coincidence that the morals of Christianity align with what Kant and others during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment settled on, or whether that’s just the state of reality.
The Lemur (Sherman): Yeah, exactly—we like to debate these “big ideas” related to belief so we were interested to hear you are starting a club that seeks to do exactly that. On that note, do you think there’s something about religion in particular that necessitates a secular worldview? And that can either be you just think it’s false or any number of reasons.
SSA President: Yeah. I think a lot of the members think that religion has done a lot of harm in history and is still doing harm now. I think that’s kind of unavoidable when you talk about religion—how large of an impact religion has had in the world. And not just one religion, but almost all of them, right? I think it’s really important, especially as students, as scholars who want to go out into the world and make a difference, to really analyze if this kind of effect of religion is doing more harm than good. I think it’s up to us to really ask the big questions and see if religion is something that we still need as a human race to make our future better, or if it’s something that should stay in history.
Defining Religion
The Lemur (Sherman): Do you think there is a settled definition of religion? I’m asking, speaking candidly as a Christian, because there’s a lot to be said about the definition of religion. Within these spaces, is it one of those things where you know it when you see it, but it’s kind of hard to make sense of? Is there a settled definition?
SSA President: I think the most convenient answer would be organized religion, so religion that has scripture and groups where people can gather. I think that would be our definition. There are obviously different modes of thought—there are religious people who don’t go to church, and there are religious people who have disaffiliated but still believe in religion. But I think for now we’ll define it by structural religion.
Closing: Pitch to Students
The Lemur (Zachary): One last question—what’s your pitch to Duke students about joining and, practically, how would they go about joining?
SSA President: Practically, we have a GroupMe. There’s a bunch of fun stuff coming up, like the conference and the scholarships. But my pitch would be, if you care about the separation of church and state, if you’ve ever doubted that there was a God, or if you don’t think there’s a God, I think you should join us. I think we can have some good conversations, debates, lectures from professors, and family dinners that are free.
The Lemur (Sherman): Is there a pitch you want to make to more politically minded students—people who might be interested in religion in the context of what’s going on in the news or historically?
SSA President: Yeah, for the public policy and political science students, I think the separation of church and state part is really important because in our conversations we will be looking at things our current president is doing, and things like putting religious ideals into public education and children’s education as well. So I think people in public policy and political science would have a lot to say about that. And also if religion should be used in things like law and broader terminology.
But also, I think the philosophy department would enjoy the work that we’re doing. I think they would enjoy our talks about moral relativism and philosophy in cultural contexts—if there is one truth, if God is real, all the fun questions.
And of course, for the science community, we talk about evolution a lot. And if science and religion can exist peacefully or if they’re enemies.
The Lemur: Thank you for joining us.
SSA President: Thank you!
More information on the Duke Secular Student Alliance can be found at this link.
