In Congress Only One Openly Atheist } It’s Time To Come Out Of The Closet For Secular People Also
Religionists and atheists debate at the Reason Rally on the National Mall, 24 March 2012 in Washington, DC. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Despite the growing number of Americans who identify their religion as "none", our politics are still dominated by supercharged religious talk. But this past weekend, in a sort of coming out party, atheists and other non-believers gathered on the National Mall last Saturday for the first-ever Reason Rally. It was their way of saying, "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"
The Reason Rally was modeled, in part, on gay rights activism that urged people to personalize someone they'd always thought of as an "other". That strategy – recognizing your cousin, your neighbor, your classmate, your sibling isn't straight – has fueled greater acceptance of gays and lesbians, and advances in civil rights. Everyone knows an atheist, the Reason Rally reasoning goes, and knowing an atheist goes a long way to accepting atheism.
While the analogy is imperfect (LGBT people face far more daily overt discrimination and deprivation of rights than do atheists), secularism remains the third rail of politics, and atheists still face hostility from some religious believers. Religious right activists say atheists and secularists discriminate against them – witness the supposed "war on religion" – but on the flip side, witness the antagonism toward Jessica Ahlquist, the Rhode Island student who successfully sued to have a prayer banner removed from the wall of her high school's auditorium. At the Reason Rally, Ahlquist was introduced as the "Joan of Arc of secularism" and presented with a check for college tuition, collected from supporters by the American Humanist Association.
As secularists are fond of pointing out, there is only one open non-believer in Congress (California Democrat Pete Stark) and politicians of both political parties are allergic to acknowledging the role of secularism in a democracy. On the Republican side, secularism is vilified as un-American, and is the target of conspiratorial propaganda claiming that anti-religious forces aim to subvert God and country. The Republicans, to be sure, have cornered the market on faith-based pandering, coupled with antagonism toward church-state separation.
But the Democrats, anxious to curry favor with voters who are religious but offended by rightwing demagoguery, have largely avoided appeals to secularism as a campaign strategy.
President Obama has laudably recognized non-believers as part of America's religious landscape, and is the first president to host secularist activists for an historic White House meeting. Several House Democrats, faced with charges that the administration's contraception coverage requirement is "anti-religion", have fought back with arguments against intertwining Catholic doctrine with healthcare policy. But by and large, appeals to faith remain the order of the day.
Across town from the Reason Rally this weekend, Democratic activists received training on how to engage in faith-based outreach in campaigns. Sponsored by the Young Democrats of America, the session featured the Democratic party's faith outreach director, the Rev Derrick Harkins, and political strategists who seek contracts with campaigns to give them advice on how to attract religious voters. The "Faith and Values Leadership Summit" was designed to "demonstrate that people of faith have a home in the Democratic party". Young Democrats, YDA tells us, "are spreading the message that Democrats are the party that best represents religious values."
For a secularist, though, the answer to the religious right's injection of religion into politics, policymaking, and legislation, is not to inject a different kind of religion. The standard for secular politics, and a secular government, should not be to permit a kind of religion that happens to line up better with one's political stance to shape policy. The standard should be not letting any particular religious view dictate government policy.
At the Reason Rally, attendees were encouraged not only to "come out" in their communities, but to run for office and make their mark on our political culture. As a movement, the secularists have hurdles to overcome; some of their most prominent spokespeople, such as the British biologist Richard Dawkins, reject religious belief as wholly irrational, loopy, and crazy. But religious believers are important allies in forging coalitions to support a secular government, and alienating them isn't helpful.
Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America, notedbefore the rally that he'd like to see a movement modeled on some of the successes of the Christian Coalition:
"Though I disagreed with everything they stood for, they had a terrific model: put aside minor theological differences, work together on important political issues, and grab media attention."
The religious right has given the secular-humanist-atheist community a huge opening: by placing conservative religious doctrine front and center in the healthcare debate, they have raised serious constitutional questions about what religious freedom and church-state separation mean. Many of the organizations and activists who are part of a coalition of church-state separation advocates have long done stellar work in raising awareness of encroachment of religion in politics and policy-making. Being able to keep the pressure on church-state separation issues during a campaign season will be the test of the movement's political muscle. It might make Rick Santorum throw up, but that's kind of the point.
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