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Advocating for Atheist Clients
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Transcript
ACA Code of Ethics
Diagnosis & Treatment
- A.4.b. Personal Values
Counselors are aware of—and avoid imposing—their own values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Counselors respect the diversity of clients, trainees, and research participants and seek training in areas in which they are at risk of imposing their values onto clients, especially when the counselor’s values are inconsistent with the client’s goals or are discriminatory in nature.
- A.7.a. Advocacy
- When appropriate, counselors advocate at individual, group, institutional, and societal levels to address potential barriers and obstacles that inhibit access and/or the growth and development of clients.
- When making a diagnosis, the professional counselor recognizes that the client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives can a) enhance well-being; b) contribute to client problems; and/or c) exacerbate symptoms
- The professional counselor sets goals with the client that are consistent with the client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives.
- The professional counselor is able to a) modify therapeutic techniques to include a client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives, and b) utilize spiritual and/or religious practices as techniques when appropriate and acceptable to a client’s viewpoint.
- The professional counselor can therapeutically apply theory and current research supporting the inclusion of a client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives and practices.
Public Arena
Assessment
Public Information
- First recognize the impact that oppression plays on healthy development.
- Second, identify environmental factors, like belonging to a community of atheists and strong commitment to atheist beliefs, that are protective for healthy development
- Third, prepare written and multi-media materials that provide and ethically human development factors
- discuss definitions of atheism and morality as well as dispel common myths that perpetuate atheist oppression
- Fourth, work with popular atheist groups that have strong media presence, such as American Atheists, the Secular Therapy Project, the Atheist Experience and others to disseminate information.
- Finally, the counselor can assess the influence of advocacy efforts and make meaningful changes from there. This may include providing additional information or working with other groups to disseminate information.
- During the intake and assessment processes, the professional counselor
strives to understand a client’s spiritual and/or religious perspective by gathering
information from the client and/or other sources.
Communication
Social/Political
- Counselors should distinguish problems that can be best resolved through social/political action such as:
- changing discrimination laws to protect atheist populations
- enforce the policy of church/state separation
- Appropriate avenues for addressing these problems may include:
- writing to congressmen
- hosting peaceful protests,
- joining with prominent atheist groups as an ally, or even helping raise funds to lobby for change
- Counselors can help allies identify convincing data for lobbying such as:
- arguments that religious freedom should also include freedom from religion
- polls or petitions among communities that promote policies with church and state separation.
- Counselors should continue the dialogue with clients and communities to ensure that atheists are happy with the issues being lobbied for so that they do not contribute to the cycle of oppression atheist clients may feel.
- The professional counselor responds to client communications about spirituality and/or religion with acceptance and sensitivity.
- The professional counselor uses spiritual and/or religious concepts that are consistent with the client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives and are acceptable to the client.
- The professional counselor can recognize spiritual and or religious themes in client communication and is able to address these with the client when they are therapeutically relevant.
Community/School
Counselor Self-Awareness
Community Collaboration
- For atheist clients, environmental factors that work against client development may include:
- groups that speak openly against nonbelievers
- workplaces that discriminate on the basis of nonbelief
- lack of community programs that make atheists feel welcome
- judges or court systems that are harsher on known atheists
- Counselors should try and ally with a local atheist community and work to understand the mission of that particular group
- Counselors can communicate their respect for nonreligious beliefs and offer the knowledge they have about atheism and working with atheist clients to the group
- Counselors should be sure to assess their effectiveness of their interaction in the collaboration and make changes from there
- The professional counselor actively explores his or her own attitudes, beliefs, and values about spirituality and/or religion.
- The professional counselor continuously evaluates the influence of his or her own spiritual and/or religious beliefs and values on the client and the counseling process.
- The professional counselor can identify the limits of his or her understanding of
the client’s spiritual and/or religious perspective and is acquainted with religious
and spiritual resources and leaders who can be avenues for consultation and to
whom the counselor can refer.
Systems Advocacy
- Counselors should start by identifying the factor they see as infringing on a clients’ development such as:
- lack of nonreligious grief counseling provided by a clients’ school.
- Compile data and find allies who recognize this data and change as relevant and important
- create a vision for change
- Political or social factors should be acknowledged
- Counselors should identify a step-by-step process for implementing change and dealing with resistance
ASERVIC Spiritual Competencies
Terms about atheism:
Client/Student Domain
CULTURE AND WORLDVIEW
- The professional counselor can describe the similarities and differences between spirituality and religion, including the basic beliefs of various spiritual systems, major world religions, agnosticism, and atheism.
- The professional counselor recognizes that the client’s beliefs (or absence of beliefs) about spirituality and/or religion are central to his or her worldview and can influence psychosocial functioning.
Empowerment
- Atheist clients should have resources available to them identified for when they are facing identity conflict including:
- nonreligious literature, atheist communities and groups, or understanding close friends
- Help clients self-advocate through:
- acknowledging and understanding their own beliefs (including where they fall on the spectrum of atheism)
- sharing with others what those beliefs mean to them
- Counselors should acknowledge that oppression of atheists is a systemic issue
- Collaborate to identify factors that make self-advocacy difficult
- Community, politics, education for and by the client
- Atheists may develop self-advocacy plans that involve further self-exploration of beliefs, greater education on oppression, joining a community of atheists, or beginning to explain beliefs and attitudes to others.
- Weak/Negative Atheism
- Strong/Positive Atheism
- New Atheism
- Atheophobia
Advocacy
- Counselors may need to negotiate the provision of services and education or other resources on the behalf of clients including:
- getting atheist clients with substance abuse problems access to nonspiritual programs
- comprehensive sex education
- Counselors may also need to identify barriers that act against individuals or groups and develop plans for confronting these barriers such as:
- employers that actively discriminate against atheist employees
- ally with tolerant groups or organizations to bring more awareness of multicultural issues into the workplace or several workplaces.
Okay, atheists are a marginalized minority and it is an ethical imperative that counselors recognize this.
So how do we advocate?
So why does this matter in the US?
Here's a chart to help!
Why does this matter to professional counselors?
If Atheism is so easily explained, why is there so much confusion around defining it?
Quiz Answers
Defining Atheism vs Theism: Where are we starting?
- 6 States have laws in their state constitutions which prohibit atheists from public office
- Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas
- There are 13 countries where atheism is punishable by death
- Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen
- Voters in the US are more likely to vote for a candidate who has smoked marijuana or had an extramarital affair
- 53% said they would vote for an atheist last
- Only 33% of people said they would hire an atheist to work in a day care
- 49% of Americans surveyed said they would be unhappy if a family member married an atheist
- far more than those upset by marriage to a gun owner or person without a college education
- 50% of atheists reported having experienced discrimination
- When asked to place hypothetical individuals on a list based on demographics, atheists were ranked significantly lower than Christians
- Atheists were reported to be equally as distrusted as rapists in a UBC study
- 53% of Americans said belief in God is necessary to morality (Pew Research)
- Atheists found to have comparable mental health to religious counterparts
Quiz Time!
Defining Atheism
At it's core: what does the term atheist even mean?
Atheism is defined simply as a lack of belief in God or Gods (and usually a disbelief in all supernatural claims)