Religious Groups Face Opposition

Religious organizations that have been proliferating on college campuses across the country and abroad now face new opposition.

The Campus Freethought Alliance (CFA), a coalition of atheist and secular humanist student factions under the auspices of the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH), has announced plans to develop 100 new subsidiaries during the 1997-98 academic year.

Derek C. Araujo '99, president of the CFA and a resident of Winthrop House, said he expects rising alarm over the combative stances of faith based groups will enable the Alliance to reach and even to surpass this target.

"Evangelical and extremist religious groups are inundating our campuses with messages of guilt, unreason and intolerance. Freethinkers...present an alternative," Araujo said.

Since its August 1996 inception with two campus affiliates, CFA has grown to encompass 36 member organizations. Students at schools from Auckland University in New Zealand to nearby Amherst College have signed the CFA's mission statement, "A Declaration of Necessity."

According to the Declaration, the CFA has emerged to counter the "resurgence of religious fundamentalism."

"Our task is to actively defend and fight for the rational principles and ideals we hold so dear and to demonstrate, by argument and practice, that it is possible to lead a good and meaningful life without religion," the Declaration states.

Representatives of the CFA at the University of Alabama, Birmingham were involved in the protests over local Judge Roy Moore's posting the Ten Commandments on the walls of his courtroom.

The Christian Coalition and Alabama Governor Fob James mobilized to support Judge Moore. Having commanded national attention, the controversy has yet to be resolved.

At Harvard, according to Araujo the CFA sends its mailings to 150 students and draws about 30 students to its meetings.

Araujo participated in a September convocation of the CFA's executive council, where the possibility of establishing a National Freethought Awareness and Pride Day was discussed.

The next major event for local CFA campus groups is a conference set for Oct. 18 and 19 at the Howard Johnson Hotel on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. The meeting will feature speakers including CSH founder and chair Paul Kurtz, Araujo and Sarah Carlson of the MIT's CFA chapter.