I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state (the separation of the institutions of religion from the institutions of government) as the Framers clearly laid out in the opening 2 clauses of the 1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Along with the statement in Article 1 of the Constitution forbidding any religious test for public office, those 2 clauses should give us a secular government. Whether or not the civil society is secular depends on many other factors, but the laws must be secular—have a secular purpose and neither promote nor hinder religious belief nor practice.
I am both a political progressive and a liberal Christian. I know that many on DKos are wary of any religious persons because of the actions of right wing religionists, whether of a Dominionist Fundamentalist Protestant variety, a right wing version of Catholicism or some other regressive form of religion. Fears of these types is justified. But, in my humble opinion, the belief of many that the only way we get a progressive society: inclusive of all, with justice to the poor, free healthcare, free education through university, clean energy and a healthy environment, an end to racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression, etc.--the view that the only way to such a society is for religion to die out is a false and self-defeating strategy. You who are atheists may be right that any religious belief is a form of superstition that must eventually die out. But, if so, the time will be very long and a just society will be a long time coming.
Consider the numbers: “Nones,” that is, those who self-declare as atheists, agnostics, secular, or list their religious affiliation as “none,” make up 1.1 billion people in the world according to the United Nations. There are quite a few of you. But most of those 1.1 billion folk live in Russia (and some of the former Soviet Republics like the Ukraine), China, and Europe. Yes, numbers are growing here in the U.S.--”Nones” now make up 20% of the U.S. according to the 2010 Census. But let’s look at the numbers for the world’s largest religions:
Christianity (all forms—Catholicism, Orthodoxy, all forms of Protestantism, etc.): 2.2 billion people.
Islam: 1.6 billion. Fastest growing religious movement.
Hinduism: 1 billion.
Chinese Traditional Religion (including Confucianism & Taoism): 394 million.
Buddhism: 376 million.
Primal-Indigenous (the spiritual traditions of Native Americans and other Indigenous People groups): 300 million.
African Traditional Religions (and those of the African Diaspora): 100 million.
Sikhism: 30 million.
Spiritism: 15 million.
Judaism: 14 million.
Ba’hai: 7 million.
Jainism: 4.2 million
Shinto: 4 million
Cao Dao (A mono religiontheistic religion in Vietnam I never heard of before writing this diary): 4 million.
Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million.
Tenrikyo: 2 million.
Neo-paganism (including Wicca): 1 million.
Unitarian-Universalists: 0.8 million.
Rastafari: 0.6 million.
Now, some people may fall into more than one category because not all religions are exclusive. Lots of people in Japan, for instance, are both Shinto and Buddhist. And others may not admit to pollsters that they’ve lost their faith—so maybe the Nones are slightly higher than recorded above. But rough calculations put the number of religious persons in the world to over 6 billion people, globally. Writing all of them off as “part of the problem” is declaring defeat for all the goals of progressives.
Sticking to the U.S., in 2016, our population was 323.1 million people. If 20% are “Nones” that equals about 1 million, 615 thousand. [As some have pointed out in the comments, I apparently hit the wrong button on the calculator. Here, from Nova Land, is the correction: No, 20% of 323.1 million would be close to 65 million. What you've calculated is what .5% of 323.1 million would be. That's 1 in 200 people instead of 1 in 5 people -- off by a factor of 40. ] You can abolish the electoral college and that math still loses if the Nones decide to go it alone. No redistricting helps with Congress. And, let’s face it, just as being religious doesn’t mean one is automatically conservative (no matter what the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jr. say), being an atheist or other form of None doesn’t make one automatically liberal or progressive. Ayn Rand, the mentor of Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, and so many others in the right wing was a strong atheist. In fact, she believed Christianity was a blight to a strong people. She wrote The Virtue of Selfishness as a direct challenge to Christian morality. A good half of the atheists I know are liberal Democrats—the others are Republicans or Libertarians.
A progressive future needs coalition politics, including a coalition of progressive believers with progressive unbelievers. We have to form connections. Now, many on this site already believe this. But many others—often those who have been harmed by nasty forms of religion or nasty experiences with those calling themselves religious—reject such outreach.
I not only come from Evangelical circles (though long since having left for Liberal Protestantism), I live in KY and have spent most of my life in the South. So, I run into religious people who vote Republican all the time. I asked one person who works with Kentucky Refugee Ministries who is a longtime Republican and who is frustrated with Trump’s policies about immigration and refugees this question, “Why do you continue to identify with the Religious Right?” She replied, “Because I am not welcome in the Secular Left.” I told her that there was also a Religious Left and that the Democratic Party was open to people of faith (as long as church-state separation is embraced). “That is not my experience,” she replied.
At first I told myself that her experience was anomalous. Many people of faith have long found a home in the Democratic Party. But I know what she’s talking about. I have a Ph.D. and teach philosophy, yet I know what it is to be ridiculed on this site as “worshipping a Bronze age Sky Daddy.” I know what it’s like to instantly be assumed to be anti-reproductive choice (I’m very pro-choice, but I did wrestle and change position on this during my 20s); assumed to be anti-LGBTQ; assume to love taking away people’s healthcare; assume to be pro-death penalty. None of this is true and many here know that, but others paint with such a broad brush that if done with any other group, it would be flagged as hate speech.
The rise of the Religious Right c. 1979 has caused this deep distrust between people of faith and those without it. I want to write a diary on the way that rise and spread hurt this nation—I saw much of it close up as it happened.
So, forging the kind of coalition we need between non-religious progressives and faith-based progressives is hard. It takes work. All I ask is an open mind and a gentle “tongue” or keyboard. It can take someone like me years to get someone raised by Fundamentalists to become more open to a progressive vision—only to have that work set back years in a few moments by derisive put downs which equate all believers with Roy Moore or his ilk. This is as unjust as equating all Muslims with Isis or the Muslim Brotherhood—or all atheists with Stalin or Mao.
Nuance doesn’t make for easy billboards or bumper stickers. But nuance sure makes coalition building easier.
I am not asking atheists or other secular folk to convert to anything—Continue to believe that a materialist worldview is the only logical one. We will agree to disagree. Just see us as fellow travelers in a movement (or potentially so) and not as the enemy—please.