Week of Action Inspires Secular Students at Oregon State University to Work Together

By ROBERT PERRELL

May 30, 2019

Students who belong to the Advocates for Freethought and Skepticism (AFS) at Oregon State University teamed up with the Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) to help clean up Willamette Park after a recent flooding event. The students, led by Shreyans Khunteta, the Vice President of AFS, participated in the cleanup as part of the Week of Action, a national secular campaign which encouraged participants of all backgrounds to participate in community service projects from April 26 through May 2. Earth Day, which occurred during that same time period, also influenced the project at Willamette Park, involving the two groups clearing debris and trimming fallen trees.

Pictured from left to right: Zachary Lee, Mr. Khunteta, and President of CRU, Nate Glass. Photo courtesy of Shreyrans Khunteta

“Environmentalism is an important issue regardless of whether you are religious or secular” says Mr. Khunteta. “We are all dependent on one Earth, and this was a good cause for us to work with CRU on.”

Another event that occurred during the week was the National Day of Prayer, which was formally signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. The National Day of Prayer is a Christian promotion that secular organizations have been pushing back against for years. The first attempt at this led the secular community to create a National Day of Reason, which represented a free-thinking belief that reason was more powerful than prayer. However, this year, secular organizations around the country took the event a step further, creating the Week of Action campaign.

“A huge part of the conversation was centered around the idea that the National Day of Reason just wasn’t working…” says Sarah Levine, the Director of Governmental Affairs for the Secular Coalition for America. “…the Week of Action was a much more positive message.”

This positive message of service brought the two groups from Oregon State together for a common cause, working side by side to help the community in a time of need. According to Mr. Khunteta, his secular organization and CRU never had problems coexisting on campus, but the Week of Action helped direct their joint effort on the park cleanup.

“We have a good relationship with CRU and decided that working on this project together was mutually beneficial to everyone” Mr. Khunteta stated.

Pictured Center: Current AFS president Lindsay Hirsch and Zachary Lee, who will take over as president in 2020. Photo courtesy of Shreyrans Khunteta.

During the Week of Action, national secular organizations all over the country called for atheists, agnostics, free thinkers, secularist and everyone in between to take part in a week filled with community projects, volunteerism and service, to showcase the power of action over inaction. According to Ms. Levine, the idea came from a Society for Humanistic Judaism branch in Chicago, which had created their own Week of Action several years prior. Organizers from the Secular Coalition for America (SCA), the American Atheists and the Secular Student Alliance structured the event as a powerful national movement, a way to unify and mobilize local secular organizations around the country.

“Local groups are not connected very well, and we are trying to bring together leaders from these organizations to improve communication and networking” added Ms. Levine. “We really have to make it mainstream within our community, before we can make it mainstream for the whole country.”

At Oregon State, a school that is described as “fairly secular” by Mr. Khunteta, the community is not just atheists and agnostics, but includes students of many different religious and spiritual backgrounds.

The

, which helps create groups like AFS, has been growing steadily over the years and the Week of Action demonstrates that secular communities are becoming more involved in political movements and activism.

“We don’t create the communities, we mobilize them” says Ms. Levine, who worked closely with the Secular Student Alliance on the Week of Action.

A recent Pew Research Study supports this growth and shows that America is becoming more and more secular. The 2015 study, which sampled more than 35,000 Americans, found that atheist and agnostics made up a little over 7 percent of the group. This percentage was higher than Non-Christian Faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu) combined. Christians, however, still made up the vast majority of the sample group, representing just over 70 percent.

This is why Mr. Khunteta believes working together with Christians is imperative. He said his journey to his secular beliefs has become more philosophical and introspective in recent years, which has allowed him to be more proactive when teaming up with these organizations.

“I believe secularism is important for freedom,” he said. “It guarantees freedom of and from religion, which usually signifies freedom of thought.”

For more information about the Week of Action visit https://weekofaction.org/#what and for more news and information about the secular community follow @SecularShepherd on Twitter.