Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumThere's (Officially) Not a Single Open Atheist in the New Congress
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/03/theres-officially-not-a-single-open-atheist-in-the-new-congress/
Theres (Officially) Not a Single Open Atheist in the New Congress
By Hemant Mehta, January 3, 2019
When the new members of Congress take their oaths today, we will once again see a House and Senate completely devoid of open atheists at least officially.
But wait! Isnt Rep. Jared Huffman openly non-theistic? Doesnt he call himself a humanist? Didnt we make a big deal about that in 2017? Yes. Yes. Yes. However, according to the Pew Research Center, which reports on the religious makeup of Congress every two years and just released a new report today, Huffman declined to state his religious identity in the CQ Roll Call questionnaire used to collect data for this report. (Huffman! You had one job!)
With that in mind, heres what we know about the religious affiliations of the 116th Congress.
Its overwhelmingly Christian with a smattering of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and followers of other faiths.
Yet, even though people without any organized religion represent 23% of the population, only 0.2% of Congress is Unaffiliated. And that lone members name is Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).
Bradshaw3
(7,962 posts)Obviously. According to 538 the number of atheists in the population could be ten times as high as the three percent who recently identified as such in a recent poll. In addition, four percent call themselves agnostic and 22 percent are unaffiliated, with Sinema being the only one in Congress who identifies as that.
mountain grammy
(27,276 posts)is much higher than we'll ever know. Good to see as many as 18 refusing to answer but what the hell is don't know? The correct answer is "none of your business."
progressoid
(50,747 posts)They could be at least agnostic. A couple decades ago I went to a Unitarian Church for a brief period. There are lot's of A/A there.
I'd bet that Sinema is also an atheist. Being an out bisexual, she'd knew that adding atheist to the list might be too much for voters to handle.
NeoGreen
(4,033 posts)...to your point:
In the footnotes of a article from Pew:
http://www.pewforum.org/2019/01/03/faith-on-the-hill-116/
6) Former Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., publicly stated that he did not believe in God, but identified as Unitarian.
progressoid
(50,747 posts)Would be nice if we had more like Pete Stark who were able to just say they don't believe.
NeoGreen
(4,033 posts)...I like UU's on the whole.
No creed, very open, very progressive and absolutely not evangelical (there is a reason they use the phrase "chosen faith"; you almost have to hunt them down to find them).
As a realist/atheist, this is the "religious" community that works for me.
Did I mention there is no creed?
A good person trying to be good in the world, that is all it really takes to be a UU.
RussBLib
(9,666 posts)...they detail how "secular candidates" fared in the midterms, including state legislatures. A little different from the Pew Research Center's stats.
Unfortunately, the electronic version is spitting up at the moment, so I cannot cut-and-paste, but will list the results manually.
US Senate - 1
Krysten Sinema - D-Arizona (religiously unaffiliated)
US House - 10
Jared Huffman - D-CA (District 2) Humanist (incumbent)
Katie Hill - D-CA (District 25) Religiously unaffiliated
Sean Casten - D-IL (District 6) Religiously unaffiliated
Sharice Davids - D-KS (District 3) Religiously unaffiliated
Jamie Raskin - D-MD (District 8) Jewish and humanist (incumbent)
Tom Malinowski - D-NJ (District 7) Religiously unaffiliated
Antonio Delgado - D-NY (District 19) Religiously unaffiliated
Chrissy Houlahan - D-PA (District 6) Religiously unaffiliated
Jennifer Wexton - D-VA (District 10) Religiously unaffiliated
Mark Pocan - D-WI (District 2) Religiously unaffiliated
There are 47 names (winners, 33 of them are incumbents) in the state legislatures (too many to list), but in summary:
9 Atheist
7 Religiously unaffiliated
1 Scientist (Rep. Bill Quirk D-CA District 20, incumbent)
13 Agnostic
5 Spiritual but not religious
4 Unitarian Universalist
2 Nontheist
2 Humanist
3 Nonreligious
1 "Governs with Reason" (Sen. Dick McCormack VT Senate Windsor District, incumbent)
And in the "Election non-winners" section, there are almost 100 names listed, so there are more secular candidates out there than you might think. Not enough, frankly, but the numbers are growing.
NeoGreen
(4,033 posts)...and it is a nice change from the recent past when a candidate couldn't even mention they were unaffiliated.