Welcome! I am Judith Hayes. I write monthly columns here. I post a new current column on the first of each month. And every time that happens, the current offering gets pushed back into my previous columns. The Happy Heretic was born in November 1996. It’s all about religion. Some politics will creep in now and again but unfortunately that is now quite unavoidable in this country. For decades now, politics and religion have been hellishly blurred. Far from the sensible separation of church and state that our Founding Fathers envisioned, we came frighteningly close to a theocracy during the ghastly years of the George W. Bush presidency (2001-2008). I wonder what James Madison and Thomas Jefferson would have thought about that.

I am not, however, unduly prejudiced against Christianity. Far from it, I have disdain for all religions. The evil done in the name of religion is infinitely greater than any good it may have done. Fatwas, anyone? That is why I am an atheist and proud of it. Unlike others who proclaim their pride to be Irish or Italian or black or white and so on, conditions over which they have no control whatsoever, my atheism is the result of my own actions and critical thinking. I had to get over the indoctrination of my youth. And believe me, it wasn’t easy. See about the author for more on that.

From the outset, my own struggles in freeing myself from my fundamentalist upbringing provided the inspiration for my writing. My target audience was, and always had been, fence-sitters and closet atheists. Based on much of my mail, however, I am now including outraged atheists. Our number is legion. There are more of us than anyone realizes. Yet we are still treated as lepers.

Over the years I have received thousands of messages from people all over the world. (I do enjoy hearing from you, pro or con, so please feel free to contact me.)  In this country I heard from every state, and I do wish I had a dollar for every time someone wrote, “I thought I was all alone!” Interestingly, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, they all referred to their location as smack in the middle of the Bible Belt. That speaks to the intense intolerance toward nonbelievers we find in the USA.

The only bright spot on this gloomy horizon is that the Internet and all things related have made the world smaller. Religious as well as political gaffs zip around the world at the speed of light. As a result, The Faithful have dug in their heels in defense of their particular brands of religion, and their strident blasts accompany suicide-bombers and saber-rattling. Religion, as always, makes the world less safe. But thanks to the Internet we can now all see the man behind the curtain—if we choose to look with our eyes wide open, devoid of blinders.

For a shorthand view of my opinions on religion please check out my FAQs. And once again, welcome!

Judith Hayes