Christopher Hitchens is in treatment for esophageal cancer, and the prognosis is grim. If Hitchens were anyone other than Hitchens, this sad news would already be a footnote in last week's news cycle. But, since he is an outspoken atheist and since the typical American response to others' suffering is to pray for them, a public debate has popped up.

Should one pray for an atheist?

The American press is in remarkable agreement that it is appropriate to pray for an atheist. Even an atheist who has argued that intercessory prayer is not only "in bad taste" but also "immoral."

Despite the objections and pleas of a handful of atheists and freethinkers  (and a few others), most seem to agree that there is nothing wrong with praying for Hitchens (as long as they praying is done "quietly, quietly").

Praying is the most common religious act performed by Americans (nearly sixty percent of all Americans say they pray at least once a day). Americans regularly and reflexively tell others that they are praying for them, and in so doing explicate their relationships with other and to the divine. There are, of course, ongoing debates about the "efficacy" of prayer. But more frequently "prayer" is a way for Americans to describe their relations with others, and to talk publicly about the meaning of suffering and humans' ability (or inability) to do anything about it.

Enter the atheist. Hitchens and others like him cogently and vociferously contend that a way of life – public or otherwise – where prayer shapes understandings of human relationships, suffering, and morality is fraudulent, immoral, and wrong. Hitchens, in other words, envisions a different kind of world altogether. One grounded on non-transcendent frameworks and ethics, one that begins with a rejection of whatever social (or divine) powers that prayer may have. Their refusal to live on the religious grid, even a "plural" religious grid, makes them a symbolic other – a godless atheist communist, in the old parlance. Sociologists note that Americans remain less tolerant of atheists than Muslims. To be nonreligious is worse than believing in the wrong religion.

Some praying for Hitchens do so with a view that he is their enemy. Their prayers are, in their own understanding, acts of aggression upon an opponent whose challenges seek to undermine the very basis on which prayers are grounded.

But most who have weighed in about praying for Hitchens have a hard time viewing him as an enemy. They live in a pluralistic universe where there are no (religious) enemies, only religious differences. In these stories, atheists have joined a religiously plural grid as another "religious" minority, taking up a place alongside the Muslims and Sikhs and Zoroastrians. No longer not tolerated, they have been welcomed in.

We need look no further than Obama's inaugural vision to see this at work: "we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers." Secular humanists are invited to (and attend) the interfaith meetings at the White House. The military considers atheist chaplains. Pundits and journalists state that praying for an atheist is a nice, generous and innocuous thing to do. And even Hitchens comes to see the point.

But what is the consequence? Tolerance is good, to be sure. But if prayers for Hitchens herald the beginnings of a shift toward toleration of atheism, it also augurs a shift in our view of atheists – as another minority embedded in the pluralistic grid. Which raises the question: if atheists are just another kind of religious person, then are we all religious now?  The irony here might be that an increased tolerance for atheism, along with Americans' affinity for  prayer, make Hitchens' and other atheists' desire to live non-religiously an ever more elusive goal. Reporters seeking to understand Americans' religious practices and perspectives may need to factor this into new mental maps.

* * * * * *