EARTHWARD
Our Beginnings
Turn your vision earthward –
'Tis we must lend a hand.
Samuel P. Putnam
Between two thousand and three thousand nontheists participated in the Godless Americans March on Washington to let America know that we’re here, we want the separation of church and state, we want bigotry against nontheists to end, we want an end to the religious medical neglect of children, and we want an end to all other forms of violence in the name of God or religion. EARTHWARD, which stands for Earth’s Atheist Resistance To Holy War And Religious Devastation, was one of the many participating organizations of the March. Thanks in part to a link provided from the Godless Americans March site to ours, EARTHWARD gained a couple of volunteers. This in turn, encouraged us in our new recruitment campaign and we gained more, and we would like to keep this momentum going.
EARTHWARD is a non-profit charity organization run by volunteer atheists and agnostics. Our goal is to provide humanitarian relief aid to civilian victims of religiously motivated violence. We do not discriminate against recipients of aid on the basis of religion or any other factor besides need. We incorporated in Iowa in June of 2000 and are currently in the process of moving our incorporation to the state of Washington, but we are an international organization.
Before EARTHWARD became an organization or even had a name, it was a little seed of an idea kicking around on the Godbusters email list. We were sickened by all the violence done in the name of God and religion. We also knew that many atheists and agnostics were willing to contribute to charity but were frustrated by the fact that many charities are religious and divert a good portion of their contributions to proselytizing endeavors, rather than helping. (EARTHWARD does not proselytize to aid recipients because we consider proselytizing in that context to be exploitive and therefore immoral.)
So in April of 1999, a few of us started a new temporary email list called THWART (Thwart Holy Wars And Religious Terrorism) in order to discuss the possibility of forming a charity run by atheist and agnostic volunteers. We spent some time trying to decide what sort of charity it would be, and what our goals should be.
Then on May 5th, 1999 we decided the name of the new organization would be EARTHWARD. Since only one of us had any experience at all in forming a charity, we had to spend some time on researching what it was we needed to do legally. We had elected officers, written bylaws, and were just in the process of collecting the paperwork needed for incorporation when our Vice-Chair, Jyoti Shankar, suddenly died from a heart attack on April 16th, 2000. We considered him a friend, and his death affected us personally as well as the fact that he had been very helpful and active in getting us ready to form EARTHWARD.
Jyoti was born in India, and from 1970-1977 he had been very active in the Rationalist movement there. He had written books and articles, as well as running a Rationalist magazine. When we met Jyoti he was married and living in Atlanta, Georgia and was the webmaster of a site called Bubbles-Online. After we discovered that he had died, we expressed our condolences to his wife and held our own online memorial in his name. We also created a Memorial Webpage for him.
His death was a personal loss to us, and also a great loss to the Freethought movement and to our efforts in creating EARTHWARD. Our soon-to-be organization was already very small and I remember being rather discouraged after Jyoti’s death. However, others of us pointed out the importance of our efforts and in seeing that Jyoti’s help was not wasted. So we filed our papers, and in June of 2000 EARTHWARD was officially incorporated in Iowa. We closed THWART, starting a new email list for our new charitable organization. EARTHWARD was born.
In July, we elected a new Vice-Chair, and in August, we applied for membership in the Atheist Alliance. Unfortunately, we were turned down at the time because our goals were “too ambitious”. Rather than giving up, EARTHWARD volunteers discussed how we could take progressive steps from smaller projects to larger ones as our organization grows.
In October of 2000, we discovered that the IHEU was collecting money for a legal defense fund for Dr. Yunis Shaikh, a university professor accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. So for our first project, we sent money to the IHEU earmarked for Dr. Shaikh’s defense fund. At the time, we had no Treasurer so we sent individual contributions with notes attached explaining that we were sending the money in the name of EARTHWARD. We also made phone calls and wrote letters to various authorities, as per the general publicized request of the IHEU.
In December of 2000, we learned that the IHEU was asking concerned people to write letters to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh State in India concerning Dr. Shaikh’s nonbailable arrest warrant. We did so, and forwarded the notice to others. In the meantime, we started building our website and tried in vain to find a Treasurer.
In May of 2001, we tried to start a second project but were not able to do so. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that in March, seven adults were arrested and 41 children were rescued from the House of Prayer, a church that encourages “Bible-based” child abuse. According to the article, there were reports that church members beat their children with belts and other objects allegedly under the direction of the pastor, the Rev. Arthur Allen. Photographs produced at the hearing showed welts on some of the victims. Rev. Allen and most of his followers, though, denied any abuse and Allen defended his position on so-called "Bible discipline," saying he takes a literal interpretation to Proverbs 23:13. Allen said, "It's hard to give them a meaningful whipping without putting a mark on the child."
Members of EARTHWARD wanted to send these children some greeting cards showing our support and letting them know our thoughts were with them, but we were saddened to discover that the social services department in Georgia was not very helpful in providing an address to send the cards. We can, however, at this time recommend two organizations that are fighting to strengthen laws against child abuse and neglect. No Spank provides information concerning corporal punishment, while CHILD, Inc has been successful in repealing religious exemptions to laws requiring medical care for children that favor “faith healing” parents at the expense of their children’s health and lives.
In June of 2001, volunteers of EARTHWARD voted in favor of signing an online Resolution Against Apartheid in Afghanistan. At this time, we’d also like to recognize the positive efforts of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, for their efforts in combating religious fundamentalism and promoting women’s freedoms in Afghanistan. The Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society is also part of the Islamic society reform movement.
On August 18th, 2001 Dr. Shaikh was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death. His sentence is still on appeal and he is still in jail, but alive. We have been keeping tabs on action alerts by the IHEU and have been sending letters and forwarding requests for letters to other lists and friends.
On September 11th, 2001, we were horrified to learn of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That event more than anything else reminded us of the importance of our goals, yet we were still frustrated by our small size and lack of funds. We still had no Treasurer, so again we sent individual donations in EARTHWARD’s name. We sent money to the 911 Disaster Relief Fund and related charities.
On November 8th, 2001 we discovered information on the Facets Multimedia website that Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani had been arrested for blasphemy. The website included a petition to protest her arrest, and we signed for EARTHWARD.
For the next several months our efforts focused on publicizing our organization, adding to our website, and creating a newsletter. Then in July of 2002, we decided to add our name to the list of organizations supporting the Godless Americans March on Washington. The link from that website to ours helped us gain two new members, including our long-awaited new Treasurer elected in October. That encouraged us to start a more aggressive recruitment campaign. We just added an 8th volunteer, and are in contact with at least four other potential volunteers.
We are more optimistic about the growth of the organization than ever before.
But when we consider the alarming acceleration of religious violence, in recent years, we clearly have a long way to go. Religion is no excuse for violence. It’s time to take a stand. This is why we are urgently seeking peace-loving atheists from around the world, who wish to take a stand against religiously motivated violence, who are willing to put a little time and effort into deterring it, and who choose to make a better world for their children. We invite all such persons to look over our website and/or contact us for further information. And we urge all who deem our organization to represent a worthy cause, to join us. We may be reached at: pr@earthward.org. We look forward to hearing from you.