Friendly Freethinker (the Book) was published during the pandemic.  A collection of 50 essays, drawn from my weekly newspaper columns, the book presents a good overview of my thought and work.  Read the Prologue below. . .

Friendly Freethinker (2021)

Being a freethinker (“a person who rejects accepted opinions, especially those concerning religious belief”) is often similar to choosing an unknown path into an unfamiliar wilderness. The adventure is exciting but the risks are great. What will I find out there? Am I prepared? Who else might I also meet on the trail?

With opinions and beliefs one risk is that you won’t find many companions as you venture into a landscape where every tree is bent into a question-mark, every birdcall stirs a new delight in beauty. If you do encounter another in the open spaces of thought, someone who shares the questions and the delight, freethought offers seeds for refreshing friendships beyond the boxed beliefs of tame tradition.

In his adventurous book, The Wild Places, Robert Macfarlane explores the countryside of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. He walks with an intense curiosity that leads him to consider the profound experiences humans have in their encounters with particular places in the wild. “Little is said publicly about these encounters. This is partly because it is hard to put language to such experiences. And partly, I guessed, because those who experience them feel no strong need to broadcast their feelings … . They would stay unarticulated, part of private thought.” This is a wonderful description of the tension between Religion and Freethought. The freethinker acknowledges that people have meaningful moments, enlightening encounters, in the natural world, but when they “put language to such experiences,” especially sacred or spiritual language, something is lost. The wildness and wonder is lost.

In the years since I left the ministry I have never lost the joy of a chaplain’s sensibility and sensitivity. In significant ways, I’ll always see myself as a chaplain, though my “chapel” has no roof or religion. My views are more expansive now, widened by the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Smoky Mountains, criss-crossed by trails, streams and rivers—the mind is on a perpetual saunter through a world of amazement.

Atheism is not a community. Yet, across the spectrum of seculars there are non-theists such as former preacher Dan Barker, who calls himself a “friendly neighborhood atheist,” and Hemant Mehta, who is well-known as “The Friendly Atheist,” who point the way toward friendlier freethought. They offer a healthy balance to the atheists who are angrily anti-religious. Though I may agree with some of their incisive critiques of religion, I rarely feel they are my comrades. As a long-time member of The Clergy Project, I enjoy hearing the stories of former or current clergy who share aspects of my own story of emergence. Our common experience of both loss and liberation, mixed with destabilizing disappointment, offers a sense of connection in a community where honesty is valued.

As I learn more of the history of Freethought, reading, teaching classes, and writing about secular issues and representative freethinkers, I have a clearer view of my place, my personal role on the wild pilgrimage beyond faith. Calling myself a “friendly freethinker” is one way I hope to convey a commitment to civility even in friendly disagreements. Faith is a touchy subject because it touches a deep need across the human landscape. I write to address sensible, reasonable people of faith, while fearlessly confronting the inescapable nonsense.

The essays collected in this book are selected from the “Highland Views” columns I have been writing since 2016 for the Asheville Citizen-Times. This follows in the finger-tapping footsteps of A Freethinker’s Gospel (2018), and Broken Bridges (2020). In Friendly Freethinker we encounter Charles Darwin and John Muir, Sojourner Truth and William James, Thomas Merton and Henry Thoreau, Lakota Black Elk and Hindu Ramakrishna, Katherine Stewart and Ann Druyan, Wilma Dykeman and James Baldwin, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, Sequoyah of the Cherokee and Oliver Sacks. We hear wisdom from radical priests, scientists, naturalists, poets, religion scholars, mountain folk and street folk. Essays touch on the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao and the Qur’an. And always, as usual, questions generate more questions.

I suppose I have always been a collector of sorts. As a young boy raised on the West Coast, I gathered shells on the beach and colored rocks from the mountains. Over time, I pick up ideas, images, questions. In my first six books beginning with Meditations of John Muir (2001) I compiled 360 wise thoughts, each one paired with a quote gleaned from an array of voices. In my book of chaplaincy memories, My Address is a River (2010), I brought together 70 stories reflecting on the people I encountered in jails, shelters and streets. Life After Faith (2010) was one long essay on my exit from belief, piecing together scraps along that meandering pathway. Nature is Enough (2013) was an earlier collection of essays. Finally, of course, my blog has been a bundle of thoughts for a number of years.

Altogether, with this pile of paper, I further stack the stories on the mental shelf. Maybe you’ll add this current collection to your own encounters with the wildness we all share.

Chris Highland
Asheville, North Carolina
Spring 2021