There's a group of people in your local community working hard to bring about a state of affairs you find undesirable. They aim to limit your access to ideas they do not favor. They want to take away some of the rights you've taken for granted. They might even aspire to criminalize some aspects of who you are. In short, they seek dominion over you.
This group is well organized. They meet at least 1-3 times each week. They know each other well, share many goals, and support one another in the process. Few have close friends outside their group, and prefer it that way. Their group provides plenty of support, community, and access to like-minded people. What more could one need?
Together, they are committed to enacting their vision, and they are in it for the long haul. Some of what they want to do may seem difficult to outsiders, but it isn't. Their opponents have been sleeping and have no countermeasures. The group has erected structures to support their efforts in every town. They have several meeting places, and they have set up revenue streams to fund their work. They're even committed to raising their children to continue their work.
The group has been smart in its approach. While some may talk about changes they'd like to make on a national scale, most of their efforts are local. Some start as small as joining the boards of homeowner's associations. Nobody else wants to do it, so they face little opposition. They get themselves on small-town school boards. They run, sometimes unopposed, for a variety of local offices. The more they win, the more their power grows.
We could dismiss these efforts as irrelevant, but that would be a mistake. They are effective in shaping their local communities. This makes it much easier to achieve higher offices. They end up on the city council or in the mayor's office. By normalizing what they want, they gain easier access to county and state positions. And throughout it all, they face little opposition.
Are you an atheist, humanist, skeptic, or freethinker living in the United States? How about an LGBTQIA+ person? How about a Pagan, Satanist, or member of any non-Christian religion? If so, I'd like you to consider a question:
Do you have access to an effective local group working to defend you from what I've described above?
My guess is that most of us do not. If you do, I hope you realize how fortunate you are to have one. But even you will have to admit that your local group is tiny and underfunded by comparison. It may be doing some great things, but it struggles to counter their efforts.
We are in danger of losing ground to the Christian nationalists. We haven't been paying enough attention to what is happening in our local communities. We have some vague awareness of a threat, but we have done little about it. We haven't been organizing to counter it.
We could form our own groups. We could meet on a regular basis and get to know each other. We could build a community and support one another. We could develop creative ways to raise funds for our efforts. We could work together to counter the threat we face.
Image by T Mannis from Pixabay
