I kind of got what I wanted: the DNC to acknowledge atheists. Now what?

I submitted my dissertation on a topic I'd been thinking about for almost six years: the increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, the correlation to becoming more liberal after one has shed their religion, and what effect an increasingly liberal electorate will have on the American political landscape.

And it happened to be the very same day the DNC voted on a resolution regarding the religiously unaffiliated demographic. Coincidences can be bizarre!

I'm mostly happy as this is a step in acknowledging that atheists, agnostics, spiritual but not religious, and the religiously unaffiliated have a place in politics when the Religious Right has co-opted the political narrative for so long. It's a step toward acknowledging that the religiously unaffiliated often identify as humanist, or at least espouse similar views, ones of equality and justice.

I'm saddened to hear that it is not an operational document because I have always wanted to be courted by my political party. When I was growing up as an evangelical Southern Baptist Christian, atheists were blasphemers who were going to hell and no political party would touch them with a thirty-foot pole. Now that the religiously unaffiliated are more visible, they are being acknowledged as moral and patriotic individuals.

A similar phenomenon happened with lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people coming out of the closet. At first, people thought, "Oh, well, my sister isn't like all of them." But when they realized they knew not only their sister was a lesbian, but their uncle was gay, their coworker was bisexual, and the neighbor's child down the street was not a boy, they started realizing that LGBTQ individuals were both numerous, normal, and our friends and family.

The same phenomenon is happening with people who have shed their religious faith. They are increasingly visible, and therefore more understood, and they are decreasingly viewed as threats to religious institutions.

“We want to make sure people understand and recognize and respect the nonreligious as a constituency.”

-Sarah Levin, director of governmental affairs for the Secular Coalition for America

The new DNC resolution simply states that the irreligious tend to rally around issues like LGBTQ rights, women's equality, ethnic minorities, immigration, and other religious minorities, and reject using religious liberties as an excuse to justify discrimination and real harm toward minority groups and the oppressed.

However, Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, suggests the DNC should have said:

"We’re the Democratic Party: the party of Christians who get along with nonbelievers and nonbelievers who get along with Christians."

Which of course doesn't acknowledge the impact the largest growing "religious" demographic in the US right now, the religiously unaffiliated could have on the political dialogue.

Saying nice things about religiously unaffiliated Americans should not have a negative impact on the Democratic Party’s relationship to their Christian constituencies, according to Sarah Levin:

“I’m not persuaded that there are people who would see this resolution and suddenly say, ‘Now I’m never voting for a Democrat.”

So what's next?

This resolution provides suggestions for future action, but it is not a binding action plan; it's not funded, and it won't be publicized.

That's totally fine. But I hope that the DNC will have a Director of Humanist Outreach soon! We, as democrats, should be reaching out to a demographic that is ripe for political engagement, but we don't have to be public about it if the religious folks are going to feel persecuted.

The full text of the resolution can be found below:


Resolution Regarding the Religiously Unaffiliated Demographic












Quotes from Kelsey Dallas' article on Deseret News.

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