“And we'd like to really lean into that and get to know everyone in this diverse group.” “We believe diversity is an extraordinary superpower,” Hardin continued. Hardin said he is aware of this history and wants OnlySky to move beyond it. By the early aughts, many in organized secularism were calling for greater racial and gender diversity in both leadership and membership.
Religious venture definition series#
And there were a series of incidents in which women reported feeling harassed at secular events. Audiences at their events largely reflected that. For most of the 20th century, the public faces of nonbelief were largely White - like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that removed prayer and Bible reading from public schools, and Paul Kurtz, a philosopher and founder of Prometheus Books.Īnd the “New Atheists” who kicked off the 21st century with a string of books about the evils of religion were also White and male - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. In attempting to capture the diversity of nonreligious Americans, OnlySky is stepping into fraught territory. The name comes from the lyrics of John Lennon's “Imagine,” a 1971 song that has become a sort of informal secular anthem: He declined to provide further financial details. Hardin fronted his own money to start OnlySky and then brought in other investors. He wants to reach what he described as “a market with unmet needs” - secular Americans - and said he was prompted by “the increasing effort by some forces in our nation to create a sort of religious litmus test for everything.” Hardin said both business and personal reasons prompted the founding of OnlySky. And their attitudes towards religion range from a total apathy toward it to militant hostility.Ĭan any single media platform hope to be so many different things to so many different people? Studies have found some people who report no belief in God have other supernatural beliefs, such as a belief in psychics or UFOs, and some report that they pray. It aspires to be a central clearinghouse for news, commentary, criticism, discussion and ideas - all related to secularism and nonbelief - by and for people who span the spectrum of race, gender, age and lived experience.īut nonreligious Americans are a group notoriously hard to define and pin down. OnlySky is believed to be the first web platform devoted exclusively to secular ideas and voices. “That term defines this fast-growing group of Americans as what they are not. “You won't find much use of the term ‘nones’ on our site, and that's because we really reject that label,” Hardin - who describes himself as a secular humanist - told.
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