Crash Bang Wallace

Jesus would vote Labour.

In a sane society, such a claim would be outlandish in the extreme. That’s not because, as Dawkinsians would claim, sanity and Christianity are incompatible – such a sweeping insult is obviously nonsense to all but the most arrogant person. No, pinning a red rosette on Jesus is bonkers because it is alien to the very personal nature of religious faith to issue every single follower of one religion or another with a pre-printed party membership card.

As peculiar and presumptive as it may be to slap party political allegiances on everyone who believes in the Gospel, attempts are still made to do so. The declaration I started this post with is not a straw man I built in order to knock it down, it’s the actual argument made by various people, including in this Labour List piece.

This is tiresome for those of us who aren’t socialists, and it is incredibly frustrating for non-socialist Christians, who see their God hijacked for party political reasons. It must be a severe irritant when some ignore the tenet “love one another” and instead send out the message that you’re not welcome unless you’re  into taxing one another as well.

So, as an atheist, imagine my frustration when I found out that some atheists are trying to follow the same route. “Atheism Plus” is a new movement which asserts that atheists are also progressives who campaign for social justice. (It’s worth remembering at this point that while we all want progress and justice, in the lexicon of the left these phrases are PR-friendly synonyms for “socialism”).

“A+” may have been born out of good intentions, having started as a reaction against Richard Dawkins, whose abusive approach I have criticised before. But it is symptomatic of the attitude of many on the Left that, when designing a new model of promoting atheism, they assumed that logical, fair-minded people could only possibly be socialists.

My religion, or lack of, does form my political views in many ways. My family background is Methodist, and I’m sure the culture and traditions of non-conformist religion contributed to my personal scepticism of instituted authority, for example. However, it is also the case that there are Catholic libertarians and, indeed, socialist Methodists.

It is the height of irony that some of those who proclaim to approach the world based solely on the facts are in this instance drawing a direct correlation between only two elements of such a complex topic.

For me, my atheism came about through the same process as my libertarianism – I believe in the natural dignity of human beings, and the importance of logic. That doesn’t make me a socialist, and trying to pretend that it should is, frankly, insulting.

To those self-proclaimed logicians and “skeptics” who have rallied behind the banner of Atheism Plus, I say this: leave us alone. Part of the tradition of atheism is the hard-won belief that you should be free to think what you want. Declaring that atheist=socialist is just as absurd as saying that followers of Jesus must be Labour voters, or that all Muslims should reject democracy. People’s personal faith and beliefs are more important than your petty political crusades.

Stop trying to claim us for your own – we each belong to no-one but ourselves.