This article investigates to what extent William F. Buckley’s lifelong public campaign against atheism is actually motivated by religious values and convictions and to what extent the label ‘atheist’ has been used within the conservative discourse to stigmatize political opponents as well as opposing voices within the movement. It will be argued that Buckley-style conservatism, in spite of the fact that it rests on a Christian foundation of values, stands in the tradition of what I call the ‘hauntological’ tradition of atheism which conjures up the specter of atheism as a weapon to be employed in the battlefields of America’s culture wars.