An interesting battle is brewing in Asheville, North Carolina. Cecil Bothwell was recently elected to hold a City Councilman’s seat there, but opponents are arguing that the self-avowed atheist should not be allowed to assume the office.

At issue is Article 6, section 8 of the North Carolina state constitution which says:

“The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

There are a couple of issues that arise here. First and foremost is the legality of the constitutional clause, and it is this conflict that will likely be addressed by the courts. The overriding U.S. Constitution is pretty clear in Article VI where it says:

“no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Given that “God”, in any form, is definitionally “religious”, it’s pretty hard to see how requiring that office holders not deny the being of Almighty God is not a religious test. Granted, it’s a little backward in that you might ordinarily think of a religious test as requiring that you do believe in something, where this test requires that you don’t not believe. But it’s clearly still a test. Based on this alone, it’s pretty hard to imagine the courts won’t rule the state’s clause as unconstitutional.

However, the unique wording of the clause raises another, more interesting, question. Does being an atheist mean that you deny the existence of God? Certainly some atheists actively deny the existence of God. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (among many others) make no bones about their outright rejection of God, but they do not speak for atheists as a whole.

Atheism, by definition, is simply a lack of belief, a passive action. While denial is an active action. Atheists don’t personally believe in any gods, but they can’t prove they don’t exist. And I think they are foolish to actively deny their existence as, ironically, denying the existence of God actually requires a leap of faith. Bothwell’s assertion supports this active/passive distinction, “I don’t ‘deny the being of Almighty God;’ I simply consider the question of denial or acceptance irrelevant.

The key here is that denial requires an active position. You can’t passively deny. Not saying yes is not the same as saying no. So it seems to me that even under the existing state constitution Bothwell is fully qualified for office.