Apostasy Campaign in Chile

Written by Esteban Cortés, News Team | 17 April 2012

Share

Tweet

The AECH, Skeptics Association of Chile, started as a group of people who got to know each other through debates on online forums.  They were familiar with the work of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, among others, and were also catalyzed by the appearance of a very well known charlatan on television.

AECH’s work involves publishing articles online, running two radio shows, and also going after possible charlatans or quacks, explaining people why some benefits-for-little-money might be a scam.  They spread science through the internet and their radio shows, which a lot of people still don’t have access to in our country, where statistics about reading skills and reading comprehension are frantically depressing.

AECH’s objectives are to undertake an educational role in the mass media, create debate wherever and whenever it’s needed and raise awareness of all the quackery still going on.

I contacted Luis León Cárdenas Graide, better known as ‘Luchostein’, who is a member of this association.

But before Luis’ interview, what is the apostasy campaign and how does it work?

The apostasy campaign is a (hopefully) massive gathering of people to formally renounce their religion. People participate by attending a meeting in their communities where they are given apostasy letters to fill in.  The letters are handed in by groups to their respective archdiocese, which then has two days time (by law) to go through the papers and delete the apostates from its records permanently.

For more information on the apostasy campaign in Chile see: http://www.aech.cl/2012/03/convocatoria-participar-en-apostasia.html.

Why an apostasy campaign?

“We were evaluating the possibility of forming, but what really made us go for it in the end was the clerical outbreak against public policies such as granting gay marriage to the homosexual community, whose legal status is not officially recognized yet. When the ‘joint life agreement’ was proposed, they opposed it as well. Also, the evangelical organizations organized the ‘family walk’, in which they blamed homosexuals for everything they could come up with from their theology and things imagined, as well as verging on the edge of madness”

I clearly remember evangelical bishops and the like claiming that homosexuals were to blame for a wide range of recent catastrophes and assuring they had a cure for it, enraged by the simple idea of a couple of men or women getting married. They were also telling the president that he should hold religious views above the law, because according to them, their god’s laws are above man-made laws.

“They wrote a public letter addressed to the president, in which they urged the state to enforce their religious agenda imposing their view on all citizens, of course, all in their slippery language filled with moral hegemony. This one was their most vile action of 2011, and its influence is still holding back the development of secular policies of a supposedly non-confessional state in subjects such as euthanasia, reproductive rights, sexual education, equal marriage, and tax exemptions diverting public money from the state to these cults.”

They have indeed messed with all attempts to grant gay marriage a legal status and oppose abortion, even if it is to save the mother’s life, by claiming, among other things, that a morula (an early stage of embryonic development) is a human being with full rights.  The church has politicians on its side holding religious views to stop legal reform.

“Chile is a moral monastery ruled by the Opus Dei, with the church holding the 85% of the population that identifies as Christian (63% Catholic) as a political argument. That’s why we started this campaign, as an act of minimum moral consequence and intellectual honesty; because disagreeing is not enough, when you are part of their numbers by being somehow still affiliated. And now that this year’s census is about to begin, apostasy is a civil action”

A civil duty I might add. Unfortunately I have met many atheists, non-religious people and agnostics whom feel like becoming an apostate is not in their interest, claiming their ideas are clear enough to them so they don’t need to go through the process required. But still, I can’t wait to see the AECH’s numbers once this campaign is over!

PS: thanks to Luis León Cárdenas for taking time to answer.

If interested you can follow him @luchostein_cl or the AECH @a_esceptica on twitter.

Original transcript.

Luis’ answers were long so I had to edit quite a lot to make it short and comprehensible for English speaking people, but if you can handle Spanish, Here is the full transcript.

Esteban: Partamos por cómo surge la idea y quien la organiza.
 
Luis: La estamos organizando la Asociación Escéptica de Chile (AECH). Desde el 2011 que veníamos evaluando si realizarla o no, pero la decisión
terminó de precipitarse a fines de ese año ante el irrumpimiento clerical contra el avance de las políticas públicas que, en este caso, estaban destinadas a permitir el matrimonio entre homosexuales, a quienes hoy todavía no se les reconoce su vínculo ni para efectos afectivos ni patrimoniales (entre otros). Por el 2010, ante la negativa al matrimonio, primero tuvieron que proponer como alternativa el Acuerdo de Vida en Común (AVC), siendo, esperablemente, rechazado por los sectores más conservadores. Tras múltimples tijereteos y contrapropuestas, hoy están trabajando en el Acuerdo de Vida en Pareja (AVP), pero el matrimonio sigue siendo una meta lejana. En julio de 2011, agrupaciones evangélicas convocaron a la "Marcha por la Familia" [http://goo.gl/5XlZi], con vociferaciones rayantes en el delirio supersticioso, imputándole a los homosexuales cuanta barbaridad fueran
capaces de idear a partir de sus particulares teologías, que todo lo pueden demostrar. Sin quedarse atrás y tras múltiples declaraciones desafortunadas por parte de sus obispos y cardenales, en octubre del mismo año, la Iglesia Católica, en concomitancia con otras denominaciones cristianas, emitieron una carta pública "acerca de los Valores Fundamentales sobre la Vida, el Matrimonio y la Familia" [http://goo.gl/LfKBo] donde insisten, con su acostumbrado lenguaje resbaloso, en su implícita hegemonía moral y su afán porque el Estado implemente su agenda religiosa particular hacia toda la ciudadanía. Esta ofensiva clerical fue de las más abyectas del 2011, pero su influencia sigue trancando el desarrollo de políticas seculares en un
estado supuestamente aconfesional en temas tales como los derechos reproductivos, la eutanasia, la educación sexual en las escuelas, la libertad de expresión, el matrimonio igualitario y excensiones tributarias que significan un trasvasije significativo de recursos públicos del Estado hacia los cultos.
 
Chile es un monasterio moral gobernado por el Opus Dei y no es indiferente que la Iglesia esgrima el 85% de cristianismo o su 63% de catolicismo como argumento de peso político. Por eso iniciamos esta campaña, como un acto de mínima consecuencia moral y honestidad intelectual, pues no basta con sólo estar en desacuerdo con su doctrina política si se le sigue apoyando del punto de vista institucional al permanecer afiliado religiosamente a ella. Ad portas del Censo 2012, la apostasía es un acto cívico.

Esteban: Excelente, cuéntame un poco más sobre la AECH respecto a como se forma y quienes la conforman. sobre lo otro como se está organizando, vias de  difusión y que zonas del país están siendo objetivo de esto, o si es en todo  el país. que resultado se espera y un punto de vista personal sobre el ateísmo en chile.