My eyes went to the top of my e-mail account: “A plea,” sent by someone from my church. I… My eyes went to the top of my e-mail account: “A plea,” sent by someone from my church. I didn’t know the person well, and I could tell the message would have an air of activism about it, but I couldn’t resist opening it.

As I read the letter, I learned about the ghastly deeds of one woman who, apparently, has set out to destroy Christianity. She is — gasp — an atheist.

“Madeline Murray O’Hare [sic], an atheist, successfully managed to eliminate the use of Bible reading from public schools a few years ago,” the letter informed me.

Damned atheist — she was the reason I was given a lunch detention every time I bowed my head or muttered the words “God” or “Jesus.”

Naturally, I read on.

“Now, her organization has been granted a Federal hearing on the same subject by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pave the way to stop the reading of the gospel of our Lord and Savior, on the airwaves of America.”

The scoundrel!

As a journalist — and a plain old American citizen — I’m rather fond of my rights. Free speech is pretty nice. Of course, free speech that challenges my beliefs might be a little questionable, but that’s not the point. I’m a Christian. What would I do if it were too rainy or I were too tired to go to church, and I couldn’t tune in to my local, religiously affiliated cable station and watch a worship service on television?

My little fingers moved to sign the petition at the bottom of the letter, which would show the FCC and the Federal government that we Christians deserve rights, whether they’re constitutional or not. But before I could get there, I had a thought.

These rights are constitutional. School prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments might be up for contention, and Howard Stern may have been dropped by many of his previous affiliates. But broadcasting religious material, of any religion, is still a right guaranteed by the First Amendment, which requires the government “to observe a stance of neutrality toward religion, acting neither to promote nor to inhibit religion,” according to the FCC’s regulatory interpretation of it.

But just because the First Amendment is there doesn’t always mean we’ll follow it, so I thought I’d turn my questions to the most reputable source of information available: the Internet.

At first, it seemed my fears were in line. I found a number of petitions, similar to the one in my e-mail box, that described the atrocious acts of religious persecution performed by O’Hare.

Then I noticed a friendly little prompt from my search engine, which asked me if, perhaps, I mean “Madelyn Murray O’Hair.”

Perhaps the sly woman was trying to stamp out Christianity by using a variety of similar aliases?

Searching the new name, I found dramatically different results.

O’Hair is dead. Her remains were found in a shallow grave outside San Antonio, along with the remains of her son and grandson. The three disappeared in 1995.

This information baffled me. An atheist, who devoted her life to letting the world know that Christians were nuts with unrealistic hopes, had risen from the dead to continue her battle against religion. I thought that right was reserved for faithful believers.

But then, I found more. In December of 1974, two men did ask the FCC to “inquire into the operating practices of religious organizations’ stations,” according to the FCC’s Web site. This petition — which was assigned the moniker RM-2493 — was turned down in 1975, and the FCC explained that “must treat religious and secular organizations alike in determining their eligibility for broadcasting channels.”

By now, I had realized that O’Hair had not, in fact, returned from the dead. It seemed that I was the victim of a hoax.

More disturbing, however, were the hundreds of people who had signed the petition before it reached me. There are an awful lot of people out there, it seems, who are living in fear of a dead woman.

Since 1974, the FCC has faced millions of concerned callers, most of whom have presumably received a letter or e-mail resembling mine. O’Hair, it appears, has consistently been the named source of the threat.

How does an irreligious person attain immortality? By letting people know they’re not religious. O’Hair was not a particularly agreeable person. She consistently bashed Christians, and while some of her complaints were legitimate — such as her case against school prayer, which was consolidated into the 1963 Abington vs. Schempp decision that banned prayer in schools — her greater beef seemed to be with Christianity in general.

Considering that she was also a rather overweight, homely woman with an unpleasant disposition and a propensity for arguing, she was an easy target.

But O’Hair was not an average atheist, and there’s something wrong with the hatred and contempt for her that propagates these rumors — and may have led to her suspicious death. Christians are supposed to show compassion for everyone, and, while most atheists really don’t really want the pity that some religious people want to heap on them, they probably have even less desire for death threats and personal attacks.

O’Hair — or at least her legend — is alive and kicking, because many Christians want someone to hate and fear. It’s not easy to dislike the friendly, non-churchgoing neighbor next door, so some people turn instead to less appealing, easier targets, like O’Hair.

Holding beliefs of any nature will be challenging at times, because the nature of beliefs implies that there will be those who disagree. Being an upstanding, proud Christian can seem tough at times, but the same applies to people holding any other religious identity, as well as any political, social, sexual or racial identities.

I understand that most of the people who signed the petition I received are not atheist-haters — or anyone-haters — but simply people concerned about their rights, and the rights of others. But I think this petition originated out of people’s fears, not of losing their civil rights, but of beliefs they don’t find very palatable.

J. Elizabeth Strohm is a writer, not a hater. E-mail her [email protected].