Eric Lyons, a Sunday school teacher, asked his class of teenagers, "Does the name, Madalyn Murray O' Hair, mean anything to you?"
One in the class answered, "Yes, she was a nurse." Another said, "She was a character in 'Gone with the Wind.'" Only one out of the 20 knew that she was the most famous atheist in America back in the 1960's, a person who, in 1963, took her case to the Supreme Court and got Bible reading and prayer thrown out of the public schools across the nation. (There were others waiting to do so; she just happened to be first.)
But that was only one item in her hall of shame. In 1965, she founded American Atheists Inc. and was its director for 20 years. But before that, before her crusade to get "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, before her filing suit to erase "In God We Trust,' from American currency, and before she went so far as to file a lawsuit against NASA to try to ban astronauts from praying in outer space, who was M. M. O' Hair?
O' HAIR THE MARXIST
In 1960, she took her family to Paris and tried to defect to the Soviet Union because she wanted to live in an atheist state. However, she was unsuccessful, so she returned to America, angry and agitated, looking for trouble. But that's the way Madalyn was, always looking for a fight. Even one of her sons admitted that his mother couldn't keep a job because she was so constantly combative.
Pugnacious to the core, she was looking for a cause celebre; she found it in atheism, and the rest is history.
In addition to founding American Atheists, she wrote articles and books, published posters and bumper stickers, hosted radio shows, gave interviews, engaged in debates, and made guest appearances on TV talk shows.
UP CLOSE
But there was something else about M. M. O' Hair: she was obnoxious, noisy, rude, and crude. Her son said she had a dysfunctional, argumentative personality and another said that she wasn't just rude, she was "viciously rude." Her language was so obscene, it had to be bleeped out of interview after interview, as it would be today, even in our anything-goes-culture.
"People Magazine" called her "a blustery and pugnacious woman." With glee, she called herself, "The most hated woman in America." And, talk about fanatical, she was even known to mark out the words "In God We Trust" on the paper money that passed through her hands. (Some might say, "Get a life!")
NIGHTLINE NIGHTMARE
Valerie Williams, a journalist for ABC's "Nightline," interviewed M. M. O' Hair. She said that the reason for the interview was a story that O' Hair had asked them to do, and they were cooperating with her. Williams later said, "I've never encountered a more bitter, a more distasteful person than Madalyn Murray O' Hair. She was extremely foul-mouthed; we had to stop the interview in the middle because she was cursing so much."
IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF M. M. O' HAIR
In 1980, one of her two sons, William, became a Christian. His mother's response was swift and vicious: She said, "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I
guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times …
he is beyond human forgiveness.” (No one crossed M. M. O'Hair. She was so angry that she wouldn't let Jon, his brother, nor William's own daughter speak to him for the rest of their lives.)
William wrote: "My mother had [total] control over my daughter. She lived with my mother. My mother used
food to control her and make her unattractive. By the time she died, she was so heavy she had to purchase two airline tickets
because she could not fit in one seat.
"For twenty years I could not talk to my brother. He would hang up the
phone on me or tear up my letters and send them back. The same was true
of my daughter. They both called me, “Traitor” because I had accepted
Christ and changed my life. By 'traitor' they meant that I no longer
followed the absolute direction of my mother as they did.
"My mother was an evil person … Not for removing prayer from America’s
schools … No … She was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She
misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents’
inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own
organizations. She placed vulgar statuettes on her mantle. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own
printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company. I
could go on but I won’t."
In the end, it was M. M. O' Hair's mouth and her pen that triggered her sad, tragic, and brutal demise. She learned that an employee, David Waters (one of the many who couldn't get along with her) had stolen $54,000 from American Atheists Inc. She filed a lawsuit, which is strange, since she had to borrow from the character of God to be able to morally condemn such an act.
But that wasn't all she did--she went on the warpath against Waters, an ex-convict, who'd been in prison for many crimes, including murder. M. M. O' Hair wrote an article about him, shortly after she discovered the theft. The scathing article appeared in the 'Members Only' section of the American
Atheists newsletter exposing Waters' previous criminal record, including a 1977 murder of a teenager at the age of
17, exposing him as a convicted felon. Leaving no stone unturned, she accused him of beating his mother and being a homosexual. Waters' girlfriend later testified that he was enraged by O' Hair's
article, and that he wanted to torture her in gruesome ways.
THE END
Waters and two others kidnapped M. M. O 'Hair, her son, Jon, and William's daughter, Robin, forcing Jon to withdraw $600,000. M. M. O' Hair, her son, and her granddaughter were never seen alive again. Their dismembered bodies were found in January of 2000 near Camp Wood, Texas, five years after they disappeared, murdered and sawed asunder by fellow atheists.
The son she spurned said that he hoped that in his daughter's, his brother's, and his mother's final moments they trusted Christ, but he doesn't know. What we can know is that, if they did not, as they went into eternity, God wept.
THE LEGACY OF M. M. O' HAIR
What did her fellow atheists learn from the life and legacy of M. M. O'Hair? Let's focus on one atheist who said that what he learned and what all atheists should learn is that "We're never going to advance our cause by being like she was was--argumentative, combative, rude, pugnacious, foul-mouthed, and proud of it.
Say what? That sounds like he's borrowing from the Book he rejects: "The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth," (II Tim. 2:24-25)
A MOTHER IN TEARS
A woman came to see me and she needed help. Her son had become a Christian and was learning a great deal about the Bible. Unfortunately, his teacher had many of the bombastic characteristics of M. M. O' Hair and her son was being infected with them just by being around him. She was concerned.
She said that she couldn't say anything to her son without being corrected, put down, and told she was wrong. She said he always had to have the last word and that she couldn't take it any more. On one occasion, he was headed to a job interview and inadvertently, she said, "Good luck."
He stopped, came back in the house, and delivered a put-down lecture on how there's no such thing as luck, which she knew, but she meant nothing by what she said other than to wish him well. Her son was gaining knowledge, but like his teacher, had no wisdom. We don't have to have the last word; the Holy Spirit will have the last word; we don't have to nit-pick incidental comments, and we don't have to fight over everything.
David French, writing in "National Review," said, "Good manners matter . . . because I care about my colleagues." We could paraphrase him just a bit to say, "Good manners matter. . . because we care about people . . . because we're to shine as lights in a dark world."
M. M. O' Hair alienated Christians and non-Christians--the ABC reporter, as well as her own employees, and her associates. She had no manners, was crude, and proud of it. Because of that, she did more damage to the cause to which she devoted than can be calculated. And that was a good thing.
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