On Fri., Sept. 24, Hemant Mehta came to Longwood and talked to students about his viewpoints on atheism, religion, and his popular book "I Sold My Soul on eBay." The book focused on Mehta's Christian church visits after auctioning his time on eBay. He posed to bidders he would attend the service of the winner's choosing. The media publicized his actions as him "selling his soul."
Yet if there is one thing that Mehta wants known, it is that he did not sell his soul on the Internet. The rumor was probably started in the deepest cubicles of The Wall Street Journal by someone who knew little about Mehta. What he did do was post a bid on eBay so the Internet community could send him to church. Mehta auctioned one day of church for $10 and a week of mass for $50. It was an obvious experiment to test waters he had never known.
In his walk with atheism, Mehta had many former Protestant and former Catholic acquaintances whose experiences with church had led them to agree with atheism. However, he had never been to an organized place of worship. Born to a Jain family, Mehta was privy to belief in heaven, hell, reincarnation, and karma but never anything like a church, mosque, or synagogue.
Mehta said he was not scarred by a mass-laden childhood, but rather the realization of how uncommon his faith was. In an environment where no Jainism could be easily found, he became an atheist in high school. However, he did not "come out" until his enrollment at the University of Illinois. There, he became friends with a young woman who directed him to other atheist students. Shortly afterwards, Mehta joined the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) and won a position on the board of the SSA that he retained until recently.
The idea of an auction occurred to him after college, while he was living in Chicago. He became interested in Old St. Patrick's, a Catholic church not far from his home, which, to him, represented many of structured religion's ambiguities. His eBay auction was devoid of activity until he found a unique opportunity.
On Jan. 31, 2006, he was able to circulate news of his auction via the article "Auction for Salvation." He then received an influx of questions on his auction page. Some of them he found easy to answer, while others challenged him to explain his exact feelings. The next step was to contact the conservative Christian blog "Dawn Patrol," which landed him his first bid. The contact also led to a phone interview with fundamentalist Kirk Cameron's radio show. He was openly disrespected by Cameron and received a $300 bid.
However, the auction soon ended with OffTheMap.org's Jim Henderson winning at $504. Henderson, a Christian, had created a program in which he awarded everyday people with $30 if they would fill out a survey in church. He would then give the surveys to the church pastors with suggestions for catering to the non-religious folk.
When "buying" Mehta, however, Henderson challenged him to go to different churches in the Chicago area of varying size and composition. The first Mehta attended was Old St. Patrick's. He was impressed by some sectors of church life, such as the priest's testimony to quitting cigarettes after conversion. However, Mehta was amused when what he saw as amazingly moving energy had gone to support particularly pale themes. He dealt with what he'd found about church inconsistencies through Henderson's website and the arguments about what he should have online.
His rapidly-popularized story came to the attention of The Wall Street Journal's Suzzanne Sataline who wrote the article "On eBay an Atheist Puts His Soul on the Auction Block." The Chicago Sun-Times decided to reprint the article and take a photograph of Mehta at St. Patrick's. CNN and a Harvard University representative also invited him to speak, but the opportunities evaporated. The only interviewer who retained Mehta was Fox News, where his interview went down the now-common avenue of "selling his soul." Then, an article about Mehta and his auction arrived in the Christian magazine Charisma followed by coverage from The Village Voice.
Through his media journey, Mehta and Henderson were followed by The Wall Street Journal, gaining attention for Henderson's book. When Mehta's own work, "I Sold My Soul on eBay," was followed by interviews with Ted Haggard and Joel Osteen, he found it ranked high in the polls of Outreach, a popular Christian publication. Enjoying the feedback from Henderson's site, Mehta created his own webpage called "The Friendly Atheist." From there, it became not only a place to get questions and feedback, but operated as a grassroots for neglected community service performed by atheists.
"The Friendly Atheist" fostered a secular organization for feeding the homeless, tried to redeem the negative perceptions of atheists in the public, announced non-religious candidates, and affiliated with the Secular Coalition for America, an association dealing with issues of religious discrimination and prejudice based on sexual orientation. Mehta even acted as an interviewer to such groups and figures such as Terry Jones, a Florida pastor who urged his church to burn Korans, the male escort of Pastor Ted Haggard, and the Anti-Gay Rights Academy. Mehta has also acted with such groups as the Foundation Beyond Belief and worked to persuade increased charity from the Atheist community.
Despite his rejection of Jainism, Mehta is still a vegetarian, as his former religion prescribed. He has not found a reason to change his views in either his personal or his professional life in the Illinois public school system. However, he stated the importance of coming out for young people who find themselves opposed to religion. If not to their family, Mehta said, then to teachers or friends should to encourage they are not immoral or strange individuals. For such newly self-discovered atheists, reaching out to resources in their city or online environment can be an important step. For those interested in using Hemant Mehta as a resource, a speaker, or just someone to check out, he can be contacted via his Twitter account @hemant Mehta, his email Mpromptu@gmail.com, or his website www.friendlyatheist.com.
