Pollsters tell us that 20 percent of Americans today are secularists—that is, they are atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated with a religion. According to author and atheist Susan Jacoby, the reason why secularists don’t wield an influence commensurate with their numbers is their own reluctance to speak out, “particularly at moments of high drama and emotion,” such as the massacre of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut.
Ms. Jacoby expanded on this theme in an opinion piece published last month in the New York Times. “It is vital,” she said, “to show that there are indeed atheists in foxholes, and wherever else human beings suffer and die.” In particular, she suggested that today’s atheists should emulate Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), the great 19th Century skeptic and freethinker, who frequently delivered secular eulogies at funerals.
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Earlier this month, the voters of Maine, Maryland and Washington voted to legalize same-sex marriage. Gay marriage is now the law in nine states and the District of Columbia. That leaves 30 states with constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.
Lincoln’s Last Words
As it happens, we do know what Lincoln’s last words were. In an interview in 1882, Mary Lincoln, the president’s widow, confided that in the box at Ford’s Theatre, scant seconds before John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal Derringer ball into her husband’s brain, Lincoln had turned to her and whispered: “We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior.” And then: “There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem.”
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