Evangelical Atheist Quotes

Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible.

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, 'Well, are you a Republican or an American?' The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, 'I don't have a knowledge that God exists.' The atheist says, 'I don't have a belief that God exists.' You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.

I'm kind of an evangelical atheist.

The author says those who often claim to be tolerant are tolerant of those who agree with them – which is no one's definition of tolerance.

Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism.

There is no “universal moral urge” and not all ethical systems agree. Polygamy, human sacrifice, infanticide, cannibalism (Eucharist), wife beating, self-mutilation, foot binding, preemptive war, torture of prisoners, circumcision, female genital mutilation, racism, sexism, punitive amputation, castration and incest are perfectly “moral” in certain cultures. Is god confused?

When did atheists become so evangelical? I mean, if you don't believe something to be true, wouldn't you just ignore it? That's certainly what I do. Whether it's leprechauns or a congressional debt reduction plan - if I'm convinced it's fiction, I simply put it out of my mind. Not the atheists. They are obsessed with faith and religious practice. Their identities and their works are one big reaction to that which they hate. No longer content to simply dismiss God and those who follow in Him, the New Atheists have created a cult of unbelief.

Perhaps the funniest example is that of the Rev. Milton Barfoot, who said to Dan’s brother, in apparently honest bafflement, “But, isn’t Dan afraid of hell?” No, Reverend, Dan doesn’t believe in hell anymore, that’s one of the things about being an atheist, you see.

God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

The short life of Jesus can hardly compare with the suffering of brave heretics who have been persecuted for criticizing Christianity, or with the agony of the “witches” who were burned, drowned and hanged by bible believers (quoting Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). Nor

The Gospels, written many decades after the fact, are a blend of fact and fantasy—historical fiction—and although the proportions of the blend may differ from scholar to scholar, no credible historians take them at 100 percent face value.

Pastor Ted and other evangelical pastors I hear about in the media seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. And so on. I don't see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics, or social issues, or the matter of origins, isn't that just democracy and free speech in action? How do opposing viewpoints constitute a threat?

Why is there no governmental oversight of how public money is spent by these organizations and churches? Probably because there is an assumption that if it is religious, it must be good.

In any event, how can the temporal sufferings of Jesus compare to the sufferings of the entire human race? Did Jesus ever experience the pain of childbirth? The billions of women going through labor are much more life giving, much more nurturing of value than a few hours of self-imposed bleeding on a cross. The

Mithra’s birth was witnessed by shepherds and by Magi who brought gifts to his sacred birth-cave of the Rock. Mithra performed the usual assortment of miracles: raising the dead, healing the sick, making the blind see and the lame walk, casting out devils.

Jesus supposedly lived sometime between 4 B.C.E. and 30 C.E., but there is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime.

Nor can the one day of suffering Jesus supposedly endured compare with the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans or the pain of those who were tortured during the Inquisition. His supposed contribution to the world hardly compares with the hard work, sacrifice and discipline of intelligent individuals who have dedicated their lives to science and medicine. Just because Jesus was considered a Higher Power does not make his alleged suffering any higher than yours or mine.

The Greek god Dionysus was a man-god said to be the “Son of Zeus.” He was killed, buried, descended into hell, and rose from the dead to sit at the right hand of the father. His empty tomb at Delphi was long preserved and venerated by believers.

Bethune was a communist and an atheist with a healthy contempt for his evangelical father.

What does the number of copies have to do with authenticity?

Bart Ehrman, in Misquoting Jesus, reminds us that there are more variants among the ancient documents than there are words in the New Testament.

Matthew is caught tinkering with the facts. His reliability as a historian is severely crippled.

The Gospel writers wanted to make of their hero nothing less than what was claimed of saviors of other religions: a king born of a virgin.

The Gospel accounts cannot be considered historical, but even if they were, they tell us that the earliest biography of Jesus contains no resurrection!

Before returning to heaven, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

You can’t have the freedom to believe if you do not have the freedom not to believe.

with hundreds of millions of good people believing that the illiterate Muhammad miraculously wrote the Koran.

Don’t you see, Anthony? For all the evangelicals’ talk about this nation being founded on religious principles…this being a Christian nation and all…most of the Founding Fathers were like Jefferson…atheists, pointy-headed intellectuals, Unitarians…

But we exist now. We are caring, intelligent animals and can treasure our brief lives. Why is eternal better than temporal, or supernatural "higher" than natural? Doesn't rarity increase value? God is an idea, not a natural creature. Why should his "image" be more valuable than our own "nature?

As surely as I feel love and need for food and water, I feel love and need for God. But these feelings have nothing to do with Supramundane Males planning torments for those who don't abide by neocon "moral values." I hold the evangelical truth of our situation to be that contemporary politicized fundamentalists, including first and foremost those aimed at Empire and Armageddon, need us non-fundamentalists, mystics, ecosystem activists, unprogrammable artists, agnostic humanitarians, incorrigible writers, truth-telling musicians, incorruptible scientists, organic gardeners, slow food farmers, gay restaurateurs, wilderness visionaries, pagan preachers of sustainability, compassion-driven entrepreneurs, heartbroken Muslims, grief-stricken children, loving believers, loving disbelievers, peace-marching millions, and the One who loves us all in such a huge way that it is not going too far to say: they need us for their salvation.

A weak and dying Messiah is the very antithesis of a man-made cure.

The Christ in Paul’s writings is a different character from the Jesus of the Gospels.

Luke says Jesus was born during a Roman census, and it is true that there was a census in 6 C.E.

We think this is unconstitutional. Our secular government should not be promoting or funding religion.

To sum up: 1) There is no external historical confirmation for the Jesus story outside of the New Testament. 2) The New Testament accounts are internally contradictory. 3) There are many other plausible explanations for the origin of the myth that do not require us to distort or destroy the natural worldview. 4) The miracle reports make the story highly suspect.

Pagan mythical parallels can be found for almost every item in the New Testament: the Last Supper, Peter’s denial, Pilate’s wife’s dream, the crown of thorns, the vinegar and gall at the crucifixion, the mocking inscription over the cross, the Passion, the trial, Pilate’s washing of hands, the carrying of the cross, the talk between the two thieves hanging beside Jesus, and so on.

People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God.

The only logic which succeeded in convincing the Protestants of their fallacy was the logic of facts. So long as nobody except scoffers and atheists challenged the truth of the scriptural narratives, the doctrine of inspiration maintained its curiously inflated credit. Then Christians, nay, even clergymen, began to wonder about Genesis, began to have scruples about the genuineness of 2 Peter. And then, quite suddenly, it becomes apparent that there was no reason why Protestants should not doubt the inspiration of the Bible; it violated no principle in their system. The Evangelicals protested, but theirs was a sentimental rather than a reasoned protest. … For three centuries the inspired Bible had been a handy stick to beat Catholics with; then it broke in the hand that wielded it, and Protestantism flung it languidly aside.

Jesus certainly was not a “Bible believer,” as we use that term in the post Billy Graham era of American fundamentalist religiosity that’s used as a trade-marked product to sell religion. Jesus didn’t take the Jewish scriptures at face value. In fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking relativist who wasn’t even “saved,” according to evangelical standards. Evangelicals insist that you have to believe very specific interpretations of the Bible to be saved. Jesus didn’t. He undercut the scriptures.

Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ’s miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not.

With the decline of clerical power in the eighteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be deist, sceptic or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs. He proclaimed, from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. He brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach than his clerical predecessors.

Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, you are that because of where and when you were born. If you are an atheist, you are that because of a book or two you read, or who your parents were and the century in which you were born. Don’t delude yourself: there are no good reasons for anything, just circumstances. Don’t delude yourself: you may describe yourself to others by claiming a label of atheist, Jew, evangelical, gay or straight but you know that you are really lots more complicated than that, a gene-driven primate and something more. Want to be sure you have THE TRUTH about yourself and want to be consistent to that truth? Then prepare to go mad. Or prepare to turn off your brain and cling to some form or other of fundamentalism, be that religious or secular.

A second point that caught my attention was that the very persons who insist upon keeping religion and science separate are eager to use their science as a basis for pronouncements about religion. The literature of Darwinism is full of anti-theistic conclusions, such as that the universe was not designed and has no purpose, and that we humans are the product of blind natural processes that care nothing about us. What is more, these statements are not presented as personal opinions but as the logical implications of evolutionary science. Another factor that makes evolutionary science seem a lot like religion is the evident zeal of Darwinists to evangelize the world, by insisting that even non-scientists accept the truth of their theory as a matter of moral obligation. Richard Dawkins, an Oxford Zoologist who is one of the most influential figures in evolutionary science, is unabashedly explicit about the religious side of Darwinism. his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker is at one level about biology, but at a more fundamental level it is a sustained argument for atheism. According to Dawkins, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." When he contemplates the perfidy of those who refuse to believe, Dawkins can scarcely restrain his fury. "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Dawkins went to explain, by the way, that what he dislikes particularly about creationists is that they are intolerant.

There is an irony of history that completely escapes Harris and other new atheists in their evangelical quest for a global morality rooted in scientific truth. As philosopher John Gray of the London School of Economics convincingly argues, it is universal forms of monotheism, such as Christianity and Islam, that merged Hebrew tribal belief in one God with Greek faith in universal laws applicable to the whole of creation that originated the inclusive concept of Humanity in the first place. Universal monotheisms created two new concepts in human thought: individual free choice and collective humanity. People not born into these religions could, in principle, choose to belong (or remain outside) without regard to ethnicity, tribe or territory. The mission of these religions was to extend moral salvation to all peoples, whether they liked it or not. Secularized by the European Enlightenment, the great quasi-religious isms of modern history—colonialism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, communism, democratic liberalism and accompanying forms of messianic atheism—have all tried to harness industry and science to continue on a global scale the Stone Age human imperative “cooperate to compete” (against the other-isms, that is). These great secular isms, often relying on the science of the day to justify their moral values, have produced both massive killing to save the mass of humanity as well as great progress in human rights

The last generation’s Religious Right activism was, to the contrary, the exact opposite, affirming and reaffirming that they were not a theological movement but a political one. The tent was broad enough to include evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Jews, and even socially conservative agnostics and atheists.7 The rhetoric was focused much less on the kingdom of God or on the gospel of Christ than on “traditional family values” or “our Judeo-Christian heritage.

My visits to Hungary over the past twelve years absolutely fixed my conviction that God’s Holy Spirit was releasing a spiritual force in that part of the world that was bound to challenge the atheistic philosophy that had dominated nations in that region for decades.

So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion. [Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse]

For this reason, history may yet identify the atheist Joseph Stalin as the greatest gospel deployment strategist in the history of Turkestani evangelization.

Even as the apostle Paul described his mission to unbelievers, so it is the primary task of all Christians to reach out to the lost “to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in [Christ]” (Acts 26:18; see also Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9). If we do not evangelize the lost and make disciples of new converts, nothing else we do for people—no matter how beneficial it seems—is of any eternal consequence. Whether a person is an atheist or a theist, a criminal or a model citizen, sexually promiscuous and perverse or strictly moral and virtuous, a greedy materialist or a gracious philanthropist—if he does not have a saving relationship with Christ, he is going to hell.

IN THE YEARS AFTER 9/ 11, MORE EXTREME expressions of militant masculinity gained traction across American evangelicalism. At GodMen revivals, evangelist Brad Stine challenged men to “kick ass,” to “grab your sword and say, ‘OK family, I’m going to lead you.’” Profanity was encouraged, “liberals, atheists, and the politically correct” were denigrated, and men were called upon to combat “the wuss-ification of America.

Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your fragile ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

It is both ironic and sad that CSJ’s attack on the Gospel is so clear that an atheist can see it, yet many churches, denominations, seminaries, leading ministries, and ministers have fallen prey to this movement.

Allow me to illustrate the principle with another observation. The Christians who are most concerned with adjusting the “faith once delivered” to suit the sensitivities of unbelievers are the liberal Christians. And those who are the least concerned about it are the traditional dogmatic Christians. But as C.S. Lewis once pointed out, when atheists are converted it is almost never to the “broad-minded” forms of the faith. If they are going to be a Christian, they want to be an actual one. In the same way, an ardent feminist is unlikely to “convert” to the soft feminism of the evangelical edges.

You will probably never fully understand God with your mind, but through your heart, you can glimpse Him partially.

We gave people these doctrines to believe, and then did not give them the proper software to process those very beliefs, and so ended up producing far too many atheists and former Roman Catholics and Evangelicals.

Some mornings she looked at the news and wondered if she recognized her country anymore. When the citizenry wasn’t gripped by fear, it always seemed angry. Angry at the president, at politicians, at Muslims, gays, transsexuals, gun owners, evangelical Christians, Catholics, celebrities, radio talk show hosts, single moms, drug users, college students who were allegedly “snowflakes,” small town bakers, football players, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, government bureaucrats, cops, young African-American men, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, atheists … Oh, she thought, looking at the tiny six-pointed star on her bracelet, and of course, Jews. They always seemed to be the universal scapegoat of every extremist on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Does one approach the Scriptures (or any other influential document or collection of documents in the history of world civilization) with a hermeneutics of consent or a hermeneutics of suspicion? Christians have not done well in trying to read literature from other religions empathetically, and atheists and adherents of other world religions today increasingly approach the Bible with preexisting hostility.

For the average American during the 1950s, afraid of facing societal backlash, the question may simply have been: Which god or which religion? Today, the question is not which god or religion, but: Should I accept any god or religion? Increasingly, the answer is no. America is seeing a surge in atheism. A 2018 survey found that 21 percent of Americans born after 1999 are atheist or agnostic. Another 14 percent have no religious affiliation. These Americans do not trust in a god; they do not consider themselves or their nation to be under a god. Evangelical Christians, right-wing Catholics, orthodox Jews, and other hardline believers often find themselves in bed together, defending these idioms against secular Americans trying to uphold the Constitution. The advance of atheism and the rise of the "nones" have oddly unified religion, forcing believers to circle the wagons for a common defense of phrases that were imposed on a fearful nation. But such a legacy cannot last. For these phrases, the end is near.

Much of the contemporary American atheistic movement seems to be treating atheism like a new kind of religion.  .... It's just that some atheists are so damn evangelical about their nonreligion they might as well be ringing doorbells and handing out leaflets. 

Much of the contemporary American atheistic movement seems to be treating atheism like a new kind of religion. ... It's just that some atheists are so damn evangelical about their nonreligion they might as well be ringing doorbells and handing out leaflets.

The last thing I crave is to be exposed to the sort of grandstanding preachers that so many evangelical churches seem to breed with the ubiquity of maggots appearing in road kill. The last thing I want is a new and improved “worship experience.” The last thing I want is for the service to be socially and politically relevant

was within this social context that I and an entire generation of young evangelicals constructed our Christian worldviews. You might say that we were born ready with answers. We grew up with a fervent devotion to the inerrancy of the Bible and learned that whatever the question might be, an answer could be found within its pages. We knew what atheists and humanists and Buddhists believed before we actually met any atheists or humanists or Buddhists, and we knew how to effectively discredit their worldviews before ever encountering them on our own. To experience the knowledge of Jesus Christ, we didn’t need to be born again; we simply needed to be born. Our parents, our teachers, and our favorite theologians took it from there, providing us with all the answers before we ever had time to really wrestle with the questions.

The apologists have shot themselves in the foot.

evangelical translators are simply trying to paper over a discrepancy.

National Association of Evangelicals),

Holy Scriptures

the bible is not a reliable source of truth.

evangelicals,

[T]he translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the bible as God’s Word in written form.

This is not the agenda of a team of objective scholars.

preacher

rigid evangelical position.

the translators of the NIV and the Living Bible and other evangelical apologists have dishonestly tampered with the meaning of scripture, using a phony argument (a phone argument!) in order to deceive the readers and disguise an embarrassing discrepancy in their so-called “holy book.

The evangelicals I have mentioned are doing more to damage the Christian witness than the so-called New Atheists ever could.

Mark Twain said the same thing better: “Heaven for climate; hell for society.

The answer, they say, is that the parties we perceive are quite different from the parties that exist. To test the theory, they conducted a survey asking people “to estimate the percentage of Democrats who are black, atheist, or agnostic, union members, and gay, lesbian or bisexual and the percentage of Republicans who are evangelical, 65 or older, Southern, and earn over $250,000 per year.” They were asking, in other words, how much people thought the composition of the parties fit the caricatures of the parties. Misperceptions were high among everyone, but they were particularly exaggerated when people were asked to describe the other party. Democrats believed 44 percent of Republicans earned over $250,000 a year; it’s actually 2 percent. Republicans believe that 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual; the correct answer is about 6 percent. Democrats believe that more than 4 out of every ten Republicans are seniors; in truth, seniors make up about 20 percent of the GOP. Republicans believed that 46 percent of Democrats are black and 44 percent belong to a union; in reality, about 24 percent of Democrats are African American and less than 11 percent belong to a union.

Modern evangelicals had probably done more to swell the ranks of atheists than a thousand Carl Sagans could ever have dreamed of doing.

Though most scholars (pro and con) agree that the current edition of the Book of Mormon is a trustworthy copy of the 1830 version, few Christian scholars consider it to be reliable history.

Perhaps Matthew was right, or perhaps Luke was right, but both could not have been right. (See Chapter 13 for the exact citations.)

Believe it or not, many Christians can make these statements with a straight face.

An idea does not need to be true in order to be believed, and the same could be asked about any other myth: Santa Claus, William Tell or Zeus.

if a miracle is defined as some kind of violation, suspension, overriding or punctuation of natural law, then miracles cannot be historical.

orthodox claim of scriptural inerrancy and reliability.

It could also be applied to the Moonies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many other successful religious movements. If smoke is evidence of fire, are they all true?

Billions of tax dollars have freely flowed to undisguised religious organizations that openly laud faith to accomplish their mission.

Faith Works’ only tools were prayer, bible study and church attendance,

Pat Robertson

Whether the questions are old or new—or angry varieties of either—we should be more engaging and less confrontational in our sharing of the good news. We must find new hinges upon which to swing open new doors. RANDY NEWMAN, Questioning Evangelism

For example, Christians evangelize because if they were lost and going to hell, they would want someone to tell them about Jesus. Therefore, they feel that, according to the Golden Rule, they should be telling others about Jesus.

Over the following decades, other identity markers became politicized. Religion was next. In an effort to secure the support of evangelical leaders and their increasingly mobilized flock, Republican elites staked out more and more pro-life positions. People like Jerry Falwell, Sr., the leader of the Moral Majority, a political organization associated with the Christian right, grew increasingly powerful. Democrats, seeing a chance to win over more atheists, agnostics, and culturally liberal voters, came out more and more in favor of women’s rights and access to abortion. By the early twenty-first century, if you were Christian or evangelical, you had little choice but to vote Republican. Early partisan divides on abortion were followed by increasingly polarized positions on gay rights and eventually transgender rights. Wealthy Republicans used these issues to capture the white working-class vote, and they largely succeeded, even though voting Republican was often not in workers’ economic interest. Moral imperatives and cultural identities were now, more than ever, driving voting patterns. White evangelicals now represent two-thirds of the Republican Party. By contrast, non-Christians—including agnostics, Jews, and Muslims—represent half of the Democratic Party.

When people say things such as, “Speaking as a white man,” or “Speaking as a woman of color,” that’s impossible. One can only speak for one’s self. A white man, a woman of color, an evangelical, an atheist, a homeless person, a billionaire, a straight person, a gay person, a boomer, a millennial—each has a singular experience that separates them from everyone else who shares that label. Making assumptions of uniformity or solidarity based on age, gender, skin color, economic status, religious background, political party, or sexual preference reduces and diminishes us all.