I know. Here comes Greta, the eternal optimist, the relentless Pollyanna cheerleader, always holding out for hope. Stay with me. I really think I’m right about this.

Yes, the recent weeks in organized atheism have been incredibly discouraging, disheartening, disillusioning, demoralizing, dis- and de- just about every good thing that keeps people engaged in activism. Heck, the recent months and years in organized atheism have often been discouraging. Our most visible representatives are saying and doing horrible things: they’re perpetuating horrible sexist and racist ideas, they’re trivializing rape and making excuses for it and blaming the victims of it, they’re apparently committing sexual assault. The online hatred and harassment squad has been in full force. The defenses, denials, rationalizations, trivializations, and victim-blaming about all of this have been in full force. And in the last few weeks, all of this has been in overdrive. I can totally understand why some people, even people who have been in organized atheism for years — strike that, especially people who have been in organized atheism for years — would be losing hope. I’m feeling it, too.

And I’m not going to say for a second that the awful shit isn’t awful. I’m certainly not going to say that we shouldn’t talk about it just because it’s giving people a sad. I’m not going to tell anyone else that they’re bad or wrong for being disheartened — or even that they have any obligation to stay in organized atheism.

What I’m going to say is that I have hope. And I’m going to explain why.

I spend a lot of time traveling to local atheist community groups — both off-campus groups and student groups. I’ve been doing this for about four and a half years. And I have noticed an enormous shift in these groups. There are now lots more women in them — and I mean lots. In many groups, half or close to half of their attendees are women. There aren’t just more women attending these groups, either — there are more women leading them. There are more African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, people of Middle Eastern descent, and other people of color in these groups: we’re further behind in this area than we are with gender, but things are noticeably better than they were even four years ago. There’s a much wider range of ages in the groups. There are more families.

None of this was true four and a half years ago. Four and a half years ago, it was the norm for local atheist groups to be overwhelmingly male, and to be overwhelmingly or even entirely white.

Things are changing. They’re changing fast.

There are also lots more women and people of color on the speakers’ circuit. When local groups invite visiting speakers, it’s not overwhelmingly white men on the podiums anymore. And women and people of color aren’t just being invited to speak about gender and race and diversity — we’re being invited to speak about Biblical history, about handling criticism in social media, about coming out as an atheist. Our voices are being heard. When we speak about our experience of our marginalization, and when we speak about our experience and knowledge about atheism or science or history or organizing, we’re being heard.

More importantly: There’s a shift in the activities that these local groups are involved in. There are local atheist groups, both off-campus and student groups, doing fundraising for women seeking abortions. Teaching English as a new language. Organizing protests against the Hobby Lobby decision. Organizing events for parents and families. Organizing events for children. Founding a secular humanist soup kitchen. And I strongly suspect that this shift in activities is at least partly responsible for the demographic shift — and is partly a result of it as well. Like I say when I give talks on diversity: Inclusivity is a self-perpetuating cycle. The more diverse a group gets, the more likely it is that they’ll get involved in projects that matter to a wider variety of people — and as the group gets more involved in projects that matter to a wider variety of people, it draws a wider variety of people. I don’t know this for sure, I’m not even sure how you would test it — but when I ask group leaders, this is what they commonly say. Either they started taking on more diverse projects as their group got more diverse, or their group got more diverse as they started taking on more diverse projects — or both.

And when I speak at local atheist groups (student or off-campus), or when I talk with local group leaders at conferences, and when we talk about diversity and making groups more welcoming and supportive to a wider variety of people, the conversation is almost never about “Why?” anymore. It’s almost always about “How?” And when we talk about “How?,” a lot of specific ideas are already being put into action. The conversations often go like this: “Yes, we’re doing A, B, and C, and that seems to help; we tried D and E, and that didn’t seem to make much difference. What else can we try? What ideas do you have? What are other groups doing?” The ideas that many of us have been talking about for years are being echoed in local groups across the country — and the local groups are putting them into practice.

And no, this isn’t just in the super-liberal cities like New York and San Francisco. (Don’t get me started on regional snobbery. I’m actually working on a whole piece about that.) This is in South Carolina, in North Carolina, in Indiana, in Rhode Island — everywhere.

It can be easy to overlook this. Even the biggest local groups in the U.S. just have a few hundred people in them. They don’t have the visibility of the big-name Famous Atheists, or the national atheist organizations, or the atheosphere on the Internet. That’s why I’m writing this. I think a lot of people aren’t aware that this is happening.

I will acknowledge that there’s probably some selection bias at work here. Groups that invite me to speak are… well, groups that invite me to speak. I’m pretty well-known for advocating a greater emphasis on diversity, intersectionality, and social justice in organized atheism. The groups who invite me to speak almost certainly know this, and are at least somewhat on board.

But these groups are not rare. There are a lot of them. (I get way more invitations to speak than I can fit into my calendar.) And these groups are flourishing. They’re growing. Hey, whaddya know! Put some effort into making your group more attractive to a wider variety of people, show them that you give a damn about their concerns, and a wider variety of people — which generally means a larger number of people — shows up!

In other words: It’s working. The work we’re doing is paying off.

I do agree with Sikivu Hutchinson: Diversity is not enough. The way I would put it (what with me being a relentless Pollyanna cheerleader) is that diversity is a means to an end. It’s what needs to happen for the real work to happen — creating support networks for marginalized people that replace the ones they lose when they leave religion, and pushing back against the institutionalized bigotry that marginalizes people in the first place (and that makes them look to religion for support). Diversity is a means to an end — and to some extent, it’s a sign that you’re probably doing at least some things right. It’s necessary, but not sufficient.

But that necessary step is being taken. And the next steps are also being taken — the actual activism, and the actual support.

It’s not enough. Not by a long shot. We have a long way to go on this, in all areas. We still have plenty of work to do on gender; we have a shit-ton of work to do on race; we’ve barely even started on class. (And I’ve had more than one discouraging conversation about the “How?” of diversity, with organizers who said they wanted to diversify but then shot down all the suggestions because they might upset somebody or were too hard.) But what we’re doing is working. In the face of incredible opposition, in the face of hatred and harassment, disinformation and flat-out lies, threats and abuse — what we’re doing is working.

So I have hope. And I hope other people doing this work can hold on to hope, too. Things are changing. They’re changing fast. And they’re changing because good people are making them change. So I hope that good people — some of us, anyway — keep heart, and stay in this fight.

(Note: If you are getting seriously disheartened and feel like you’re burning out, do take care of yourself. If that includes taking a break, do it. See my Skepticon talk on prevention and treatment of activism burnout for more about this — or see my shorter SSA talk about this, if you don’t have time for my Skepticon talk.)

(Gay Pride cheerleader photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Greta Christina’s books, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why and Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, are available in print, ebook, and audiobook. Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More is available in ebook and audiobook.