Oprah, Atheists, and Ambiguity
You may have heard that television personality and media mogul Oprah Winfrey caused a stir recently when she seemed to dismiss Diana Nyad’s claim that she was an atheist.
Nyad, who had recently completed a 53-hour solo swim from Cuba to Florida, appeared on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday program. At point during the interview she said, “I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist, go on down the line, and weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity. All the billions of people who have lived before us, who have loved and hurt and suffered. So to me, my definition of God is humanity and is the love of humanity.”
To which Oprah replied, “Well, I don’t call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is. That is what God is. It’s not a bearded guy in the sky.”
Leaving aside, for a moment, any discussion of Oprah’s theology :), I suspect she meant her words only to be accepting, trying to bridge any gap that Diana Nyad might have felt between herself and Oprah because of their distinct viewpoints. Oprah was trying to say, in a sense, “we’re not that different, you and I.”
But that’s exactly what has upset a number of atheists. They want to be seen as both different and acceptable. They don’t, in other words, want their convictions reduced to some slightly different from of faith but rather desire to be respected not just in spite of but actually for their disbelief.
I can appreciate that desire. In our contemporary culture, atheists regularly rate as among the most distrusted persons in society because of their lack of belief in God. And for this reason, Oprah’s gesture of acceptance felt more like condescension…or worse. As Chris Stedman, a graduate of Augsburg College and humanist chaplain at Harvard commented, “Winfrey’s response may have been well intended. But it erased Nyad’s atheist identity and suggested something entirely untrue and, to many atheists like me, offensive: that atheists don’t experience awe and wonder.”
In this exchange, it seems to me, lies one of the more profound and important challenges of our increasingly pluralistic world. How do we accept as fully human those persons who disagree with us profoundly, those whose very beliefs may, in fact, seem to call into question our own? This isn’t only a question for Christians or, for that matter, the religious. Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris frequently seem to give the impression that they have a hard time understanding how anyone could believe differently than they do, at least anyone remotely as intelligent or educated as they are.
The problem, I would suggest, for both believers and atheists alike, is when we need our beliefs and viewpoints validated by their acceptance by others. Perhaps this is an unfortunate consequence of modernity, when we came to accept rational proof as the ultimate criteria in all matters. When your standard is proof, disagreement is always and only oppositional. But what if we reclaimed a sense that belief in God – or, for that matter, disbelief – is less a matter of proof than it is confession: a willingness to give one’s good reasons for one’s views but also the acceptance that some things are beyond proof.
When one shifts from a desire to prove to a desire to confess, differences don’t need to alienate because the validity of one’s confession doesn’t rest in its acceptance by another but by the integrity of the confession itself. And the moment we stop seeing someone’s agreement as necessary for our own validity may just be the moment we can accord them their own dignity and full humanity as a person, a person who doesn’t exist to validate our beliefs but instead stands as beautiful and worthy in their own distinctiveness. That requires a level of tolerance for ambiguity, of course, and many of us are rather uncomfortable with ambiguity.
But if we can embrace the ambiguity inherent in living in a pluralistic world, then we may not only learn how to “tolerate” each other – which all too often feels like another form of condescension – we might even grow to appreciate and value each other as distinct persons. Further, we may then be able to find common ground on which to work together on the pressing problems of the day. For instance, had Oprah simply valued and identified with Nyad’s expression of awe and wonder at the world instead of reducing it to a slightly different but essentially same expression of her own faith, then the conversation might have moved on to how they could work together to save this precious world that elicits wonder from one and belief from another.
I say none of this, actually, to critique Oprah – I doubt she consciously intended any of this. But in her we see a fantastic example of how a well-intentioned person of faith can unintentionally erase the identity of another person. A person, I believe and confess, is also a child of God.
PS: The video below features CNN’s report on this event, including commentary by Chris Stedman:
Note: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
2) Thanks to Ryan Benson for pointing me to this video.
It is very interesting to consider…
And I often wonder about the definitions involved.
Religious institutions have so narrowly defined God, the spiritual life and engagement in faith that many who call themselves “atheist” are primarily outside the narrow, asphyxiating definitions of conventional religious institutions and conventional religious thought.
Are they, then, outside of God? Or is their location, as THEY define it outside of God? That is the question I hear Oprah raising.
In watching the video and the follow up tweet from Diana Nyad who says “God is love” – how radically different is that from what a Christian or Jew or various practitioners of other faith paths might say?
Does Diana Nyad fit the definition of a traditional Lutheran, Episcopalian or Roman Catholic in terms of “religious orthodoxy” – no.
Does she have no understanding or embrace or recognition of what is essentially God? I wonder…
Clearly, she thinks she needs to say she is atheist… but does she think she needs to say that to get free of the tiny, rigid minds that inhabit religious precincts hither and yon? Additional exploration may be in order – but I don’t see “BAD OPRAH” as the best response… Like Oprah, I feel like I have a lot of common ground with Diana Nyad…
I haven’t listened to the whole interview but I wonder if Oprah was thrown off (as I was) by Nyad’s reference to God. She said that for her “God is humanity” and in her tweet she said “God is love.” In terms of seeking understanding and based on her own comments, I am confused and still find myself asking is she an atheist or not?
I appreciated hearing Chris Steadman’s remarks. I truly don’t spend too much time talking with people who identify themselves as atheists. I should.
Perhaps no one’s opinion of another matters an iota. People are always trying to place themselves into some sort of “collective” and dislike or act suspiciously towards anyone who doesn’t profess the “right stuff” in order to be accepted in their particular clique or religion.
We may, indeed, be part of a collective that is God, but I firmly believe that it is God who organizes the pieces of the puzzle…not the other way around!
There’s what you believe, what I believe and then there’s the truth. No one KNOWS what that truth is. We only BELIEVE we do.
I was watching the interview with Oprah and Diana Nyad and was very impressed with Diana throughout the interview with everything she said. I heard her describe her view of “wonder, mystery and awe….and the love of all humankind” and thought the same thing Oprah said, she’s just described what I feel is a description of God. We’re trying to describe the indescribable, what we call God, what others name as something other than God. But, here we are at a middle ground and we are no different, we are the same.
Then, I saw a “discussion” by people who were very offended by Oprah’s words….harsh words and anger were expressed and the more someone who believes in God tried to explain, the more anger was expressed by those who identify as Athiest. I’m not sure I want to stick my toes in that water again.
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
The issue reminds me of the naming David highlighted last week in the Genesis passage. Do I get to name myself? Or is that up to others? Or God? I understand an Atheist’s desire to be self described rather than named by the community against which she or he defines him or herself. Still, words do matter; and once spoken no longer belong to the speaker. Others’ opinions do matter – that’s why we have courts. Oprah is open to harsh criticism in this matter because of her position of power and our collective value of self-definition.