it. In Altizer's words: He goes on to say that our response to atheism should be one of "acceptance and affirmation". Colin Lyas stated: Separation from the church Thomas Altizer has said: [T]he radical Christian believes that the ecclesiastical tradition has ceased to be Christian. Altizer believed that orthodox Christianity no longer had any meaning to people because it did not discuss Christianity within the context of contemporary theology. Christian atheists want to be completely separated from most orthodox Christian beliefs and biblical traditions. Altizer states that a faith will not be completely pure if it not is open to modern culture. This faith "can never identify itself with an ecclesiastical tradition or with a given doctrinal or ritual form". He goes on to say that faith cannot "have any final assurance as to what it means to be a Christian". Altizer said: "We must not, he says, seek for the sacred by saying 'no' to the radical profanity of our age, but by saying 'yes' to it". They see religions which withdraw from the world as moving away from truth. This is part of the reason why they see the existence of God as counter-progressive. Altizer wrote of God as the enemy to man because mankind could never reach its fullest potential while God existed. He went on to state that "to cling to the Christian God in our time is to evade the human situation of our century and to renounce the inevitable suffering which is its lot". Centrality of Jesus Although Jesus is still a central feature of Christian atheism, Hamilton said that to the Christian atheist, Jesus as a historical or supernatural figure is not the foundation of faith; instead, Jesus is a "place to be, a standpoint". Christian atheists look to Jesus as an example of what a Christian should be, but they do not see him as God, nor as the Son of God; merely as an influential rabbi. Hamilton wrote that following Jesus means being "alongside the neighbor, being for him" and that to follow Jesus means to be human, to help other humans, and to further humankind. Other Christian atheists such as Thomas Altizer preserve the divinity of Jesus, arguing that through him God negates God's transcendence of being. By denomination Out of all Americans who do not believe in God, 5% identified as Catholic while 9% identified as Protestant and other