Atheists Face Discrimination On A Shocking Level (INFOGRAPHIC)

THE HUFFINGTON POST
By Yasmine Hafiz

It's a sad, but well-known truth that many people around the world are persecuted for their religious beliefs. But many people are also suffering for their lack of religious belief, though their stories are not as often shared. The American Humanist Association created this infographic which shows some of the ways in which atheists are socially and legally discriminated against. [link]

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A Nonbeliever, Curating Religious Art at NYC's Morgan Museum

ALJAZEERA AMERICA
By Judith H. Dobrzynski

NEW YORK---Roger S. Wieck is glowing like a doting father, though the cause is a tiny painting that sits in a glass vitrine in the center of a gallery at the Morgan Library & Museum. Occupying the left-hand page of a 2.75-by-2-inch prayer book made for Queen Claude of France (1499–1524), the painting portrays the Holy Trinity. His fervor is understandable. The 500-year-old prayer book is the centerpiece of Wieck’s new exhibition, “Miracles in Miniature: The Art of the Master of Claude de France.” At a time when society is increasingly secularized, when adherence to religion, at least in an organized form, is waning, it’s Wieck’s job, as the Morgan’s curator of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, to wax enthusiastic about religious art.  So it comes as a surprise, perhaps, to discover that Wieck himself does not believe in God. Though raised Catholic, he says he “became a nonbeliever gradually when I was in my 20s.” [link]

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Monday's Madonna & Child by Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS NEWS
By TAHLIB

Detail from the "Detroit Industry Murals" by Diego Rivera

This Monday's Madonna & Child outraged religious fundamentalists in Detroit in 1933. It is a small portion of the "Detroit Industry Murals" by Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts unvieled. Many local church leaders saw the murals as promoting atheism, in part for his portrayal of the holy family in a scene known as the "vaccination." Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest even demanded the work be destroyed. Today,  Rivera is regarded as one of the most influential painters in Mexican history. According to Adherents.org, "Diego Rivera was a Converso, a member of an ethnic group comprised of Jews whose ancestors had been forced to convert to Catholicism. Diego Rivera was raised as a Catholic, but was aware of his Jewish heritage. As an adult, Rivera was a self-proclaimed atheist."

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