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GODLESS
IN AMERICA
LONG SYNOPSIS
of
the BBC4
Documentary by Leslie
Woodhead
Provided courtacy of BBC4
London (8th February 2007)
 Madalyn Murray O'Hair, center, poses with her son, Jon, and granddaughter, Robin. |
| This is the story of Atheist Leader Madalyn Murray O’ Hair who, for 30 notorious years, successfully chal- lenged God in America, and then in the summer of 1995 suddenly disappeared. She left a meal on the table - and half a million dollars missing from her organisation’s bank account. Madalyn Murray O’Hair had come to oc- cupy a special place in the American psyche since her 1963 campaign which ended compulsory prayer in US schools after a Supreme Court action on behalf of her son William. O’Hair’s campaign succeeded, but she became “the most hated woman in America” as she fought to remove the name of God from the Dollar bill - and her son became a Born Again Christian. |
The
film tells the astonishing story of Madalyn Murray
O’Hair through her singleminded battle to take God
out of America to her mysterious disappearance
and murky end. Mad- alyn
Murray O’Hair came from a poor working class family in
Philadelphia, and fuelled her militant atheism partly from early
griev- ances against the Roman Catholic Church
which she felt had blocked her pros- pects of marriage to a rich man.
Highly intelligent and well educated, O’ Hair
had an eventful career during World War 2
as a cryptographer in North
Africa, France and Italy.
She soon revealed her taste for iconoclasm, having herself enthroned as
a female Pope during a nightime spree in the
Vatican. “I want
to drink life to the dregs” she said. But after the war, her
rebellious nature found her out of step in an age of con- formity when
President Eisenhauer insisted that “without
God there can be no American Way of life.” O’Hair
briefly applied for Soviet citizenship,
but was rejected.
The divorced mother of two illegitimate children, she struggled to try and build a life in suburban Baltimore. Her lifelong campaign for a godless America began in the early 1960s when she went to war against the educational authorities by refusing to allow her son William to take part in morning prayers at his school “My mother did not create the times,” William said, “the times created her.” In the depths of the Cold War, Atheism was synonymous with Communism. “Kill a commy for Christ!” the slogans said, and Senator Joe McCarthy declared: “The fate of the World rests with the clash between the atheism of Moscow and the Christian spirit.” O’Hair’s fierce campaign against School prayer was met with hostility and sometimes with violence. Her son was beaten up, her car was shot at, her cat was killed. “COM- MUNIST” was daubed in red paint on her house. But in June 1963, the court declared in her favour, and the ban on school prayer spread across the country. Undeterred by hate mail, obscene phone calls and death threats, O’Hair set up an Atheists’ committee. In a wild tangle of legal battles and domestic uproars. Madalyn and her son were charged with criminal assault by the Baltimore police and fled to Hawaii - where she again challenged prayer in her son’s school.
By 1964, O’Hair was a lurid celebrity. Rude, impertinent, loud and blasphemous, on an endless campaign against accepted values and beliefs, she was perfectly placed to exploit the gathering counter culture. “I’m an outsider, a dissenter” she said. She became a celebrity on the radical student circuit, noisily opposed to the Vietnam War. She was profiled in “Playboy” and “Esquire”. “Life” Magazine called her “The most hated woman in America”, and she embraced the label with enthusiasm. Pursued by believers and cops, facing a year in jail, she fled again - to Mexico and Canada, and back to Hawaii. Finally, she settled in Austin Texas. O’Hair continued to champion a wide range of scandalizing causes: taxing the church, free birth control, celebrating masturbation in “Hustler” magazine. She set up the Amer- ican Atheist organisation, and arranged the first National Convention of Atheists in 1970. She inspired country-wide Atheist groups, and established Atheist radio and TV Programmes. O’Hair’s organisation did healthy business selling godless books, posters and bumper stickers - HONK IF YOU LOVE MADALYN - APES EVOLVED FROM CREATIONISTS. She filed atheist lawsuits with a pathological agression for 32 years. She became adept at persuading elderly atheists to leave their bequests to the organisation. She became a notorious regular on the TV talk shows - Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Phil Donahue. She pledged she would run for President in 1976. She vowed to stop “the religious exploi- tation of outer space”. She said: “I love a fight. I guess fighting God and God’s spokesmen is the ultimate.” She made Atheism in America a new brand of religion.
But by the 1980s, O’Hair and her family had alienated many of their associates and splinter groups, often viciously. A movement observer called the O’Hairs “factories of ran- cour. They went through people like popcorn”. Madalyn told her critics that they were ‘excommunicated’, and called fellow atheists “more nutty than the religionists”. Meanwhile, in Ronald Reagan’s America, millions declared themselves “Born again”. One of them was O’Hair’s son William, who was now her fiercest critic, appearing with Jerry Falwell and pledging to put prayer back in schools. In 1987, William and his followers picketed the American Atheists’ Convention in Denver, and there was a skirmish which ended with the arrest of furious believers. By the early 90s, Madalyn Murray O’Hair had become a curiosity, crossing “In God we Trust” off 2 dollar bills, auto- graphing them and selling them as souvenirs. The Amer- ican Atheists were called “a dangerously authoritarian cult”, and O’Hair was compared with Jim Jones, leader of the mass suicide of his followers. She grew despondent, say- ing “the window of opportunity for non religion has closed”. By now, the Inland Revenue Service was pursuing the Atheists’ Organisation for $1.5 million in back taxes
The strange circumstances surrounding the disappearance of America’s campaigning atheist in the summer of 1995 read like an episode from “Twin Peaks." After abandoning their 3 dogs at their home in Austin Texas, O’Hair with her younger son Jon and grand daughter made a series of evasive phone calls from a San Antonio number. She told friends that she had gone to New York to picket the Pope’s visit. It emerged that Jon had converted $500,000 of the assets of the American Atheists Organisation into gold coins. There were dark rumours that the family had embez- zled money to set up a new identity in New Zealand, or had been assassinated by the CIA or the Vatican. Then, from September 1995, there was silence. In the months which followed the disappearance, the police gave up on their lethargic investigations. But a local private eye joined forces with a reporter and began to follow the trail. By now, O’Hair’s older son William was working for a Christian lobbying group in Washington, and he tried to put pressure on the Governor of Texas and Presidential Candidate, George W. Bush to investigate the mystery of his mother’s disappearance. But the Governor’s Christian convictions did not make him anxious to pursue the fate of missing atheists. Finally, |
|
a
bizarre story began to emerge. At the centre of it was David
Waters, a 52 year old criminal with
a conviction for beating a man to death who had been Office
Manager for the American Atheists
in the early 1990s. In 1994,
he had been convicted of stealing $54,000
from the organisation, for which he is still serving a10
year probation. Waters had then hired a
ghost writer and begun putting toge-
|
Protest PLatform in Washington |
| ther
a book called “GOOD GAWD MADALYN”
about the organisation. In the manuscript, he depicted O’Hair
as a foul-mouthed bigoted misanthropist who had built up a fortune
while pleading poverty. Waters also suggested
she was planning to abscond with Atheist funds
to New Zealand. Then in October 1995, the story plunged even deeper into David Lynch territory. The headless, handless body of a small-time Florida conman called Danny Fry was found near Dallas, and the police discovered that Fry had been invited to Texas by David Waters - together with another career criminal called Gary Karr - just before the O’Hair disappearance. Karr admitted to moving 4 bodies, and the suspicion was that Waters extorted the O’Hair’s money and then killed them, together with the hapless Danny Fry to keep him quiet. Waters in Jail for firearms offences, denied everything.
In 2000, the story resurfaced in an Austin courtroom where Gary Karr was found guilty on 4 charges relating to the O’Hair mystery. But despite 2 new police searches Madalyn Murray O’Hair was still missing, still demonised by millions of God-fearing Americans. A scare story surfaced on Christian Internet sites that O’Hair was alive and threatening to ban Christmas Carols in schools - and to get the popular show “Touched by an Angel” banned from TV. It caused national outrage, before it was reveal- ed as a hoax. Meanwhile The American Atheists Website continued to celebrate O’Hair’s battles while yelling: ”Grab that checkbook - books, pamphlets, and even some Christmas- time specials for friends and associates.” |
|
Main protest speaker
 New Chief-Atheist Ellen Johnson speaker on platform |
|
Finally, in March 2001, David Waters was sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnap and murder of the O’ Hairs. Investigators followed the money trail to crack the mystery. Waters plea bargained his life by leading police to a remote farm in Texas where the dismembered bodies were found. Madalyn’s Born Again son Bill said: “My mother would have enjoyed this. It has brought her back into the limelight.” A battle broke out between O’Hair’s son and the American Atheists over who was to get Madalyn’s body. Finally, Bill received the remains and buried them in an unmarked grave in suburban Austin. He honored his mother’s request, and no prayers were said at the burial site. Atheist leaders are still vow- ing to recover the remains, and some have suggested that Madalyn Murray O’Hair could become “an atheist saint”.
The
tone is dark and delirious. We meet the people who worshipped her, those
who worked with her, and those who hated her. |
GODLESS
IN AMERICA
THE DAILY
TELEGRAPH - THURSDAY,
8TH FEBRUARY 2007
(DIGITALREVIEW)
by Patricia
Wynn Davies
Broadcast on
BBC4 TV (London) 7th
Feb. '07
|
To be Godless in America (BBC4 TV) might seem a contradiction in terms, at least after Eisenhower altered the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words "under God", giving he notion of patriotism a whole new dimen- sion. But one spiky lady stood up for the right to think the unthinkable, as writer Reggie Nadelson reminded us in this fascinating slice of US social history. Step forward Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an outspoken, jobless, no-hoper of a single mom who spotted her life's vocation, if that's the word, when she heard prayers being said at her son's school. That was unconstitutional, O'Hair surmised, cor- rectly, and took a case all the way to the US Supreme Court to confirm it. If anyone thought this stunning victory would shut her up, they were badly mistaken. As leader of the pressure group American Atheists, she morphed into a TV personality, relishing spats with leading Catholics. "Boy, you folks are crazy as hell," is a mild example of what she'd hawl at scandalized audiences. So reviled was O'Hair that when she, two other family members, and $600,000 of AA funds vanished in 1995, people assum- ed they'd taken the money and run. In fact, they were actually victims of kidnapping, and brutal murder. For all the private relief felt by Christians alongside the shock of such a tragic end, Catholic talk show host Phil Donahue still felt there were "not enough dissenters" like O'Hair in America, and was brave enough to say so. And atheists (of which there are around 30milllion, apparently) are still barred from public office in some US states. |
Cutting Edge: Godless in America
The Sydney Morning Herald, MondayFebruary 5, 200)
Farah Farouque, Reviewer )
Biopic Channel SBS Tuesday February 6 8:30 PM
| Ohmigod.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the polemicist from Hell.
Problem was she didn’t believe in any form of damnation. Fire and
brimstone? That was another matter. This was, after all, America’s No.1 atheist and her own brand of fundamentalism (her claims included that the Bible was a ‘‘bestial book’’) equalled the God-botherers who lined up against her on the religious right. Naturally this made her a rollicking media talent in her time, and she remains brilliant fodder for a documentary. This program — part detective story as much as portrait of O’Hair — is fascinating on these terms. After decades of publicly prosecuting her unpopular cause, she met a grisly end in 1995. But more than her personal tale — correctly described as ‘‘part light comedy, part epic adventure’’ — this program also offers a lively perspective on the ideological cross- currents that shape contemporary America: a society that at once holds Christianity sacred but has a constitution that explicitly provides for separation of church and state. O’Hair seized on the latter to mount a legal challenge to compulsory prayer at her son’s state school in Baltimore and the landmark fight of the early 1960s wound its way to the US Supreme Court. She won, and it secured her reputation as, among other things, ‘‘America’s most hated woman’’. She was, predictably enough, thrilled and it became part of her schtick on the talk-show circuits. After a peripatetic youth, which included a bizarre attempt to defect to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War (wisely, they declined her application), O’Hair had stumbled on her life cause. With the financial help of a 77-year-old nudist atheist patron (yes, really) she kick-started the American Atheists lobby to state the claim of the organised godless. While segueing in and out of O’Hair’s biogra- phical story, reporter-narrator Reggie Nadelson — who also has a memorable line of patter — leads us into the world of the 21st-century atheists who, despite claiming silent support from 30 million fellow Americans, struggle for paid-up members to turn up at their rallies. Ellen Johnson, who inherited the job of leading the lobby, is a reasonable and moderate figure, which probably explains why she’s not been invited to mount a tour of the Bible Belt states as O’Hair did alongside an evangelical Christian in a Punch and Judy style of vaudeville operation. The tour, as in most of O’Hair’s endeavours, became the stuff of legend. This penchant for extremity must have a genetic component. Bill, the son whose right not to pray at school O’Hair so staunchly defended, eventually became a bornagain Christian. He now heads his own lobby group to return prayer to its rightful place in the school curriculum. Unlike his mother, he has many friends in powerful places |
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RRECOMMENDED |
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NOTICE: Tthe synopsis of the film discussed above, cxcept for sharing a title with it, has nothing whatever to do with the contents of the book entitled Godless in America: conversations with an atheist (left) by author George A. Ricker (righ). Godless
in America:
conversations
with an atheist by
George A. Ricker is now available at most
book retailers or try |
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