NEWS STORY: Nonbelievers Organize in Fear of Bush White House and Republican Congress

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Bracing for what’s to come from a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, people who don’t believe in God are joining forces as never before to make sure their rights don’t get trampled in what they perceive as a stampede of religious zeal. Riding a post-election spike in new memberships, […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Bracing for what’s to come from a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, people who don’t believe in God are joining forces as never before to make sure their rights don’t get trampled in what they perceive as a stampede of religious zeal.

Riding a post-election spike in new memberships, groups of humanists, agnostics and other non-theists are raising funds to put their first-ever lobbyists on Capitol Hill. To shape an agenda, leaders from as many as 20 non-theistic groups will convene Jan. 15-16 for their largest summit since Ronald Reagan took the Oval Office with help from the Moral Majority in 1981.


For those who regard themselves as “freethinkers,” organizing into cohesive teams for any purpose has never been an easy task. But the effort this time has gained fresh momentum as those outside the world of organized religion brainstorm how to defend their freedoms in what feels to them like a time of siege.

“A lot of non-theistic people tend to be independent and non-joiners,” said Herb Silverman, president of the Albany, N.Y.-based Secular Coalition for America, which represents five non-theistic organizations and has endorsements from others.

“Now they’re starting to get worried. … It seems we’re a group politicians can feel comfortable discriminating against.”

Such a perception seems to be driving non-theists to get active. For example:

_ Membership in the Washington-based American Humanist Association has jumped 5 percent since the election and 15 percent since January to reach the 7,000 mark.

_ The Secular Coalition for America has grown its lobbying fund from $8,000 a year ago to $50,000 today. At $100,000, the group intends to hire a lobbyist and possibly an administrative staffer.

_ At the Los Angeles-based Atheist Alliance International, donations in November 2004 outpaced those of the prior three months put together as donors, apparently troubled by President Bush’s re-election, began giving in four- and five-figure amounts.

Encouraged by these developments, both the Secular Coalition and the American Humanist Association are pressing ahead with plans to launch their own 501c4 organizations so they can legally finance congressional lobbying efforts. And insiders are hearing some hardened non-theists warming to the notion of collaborating with liberal religious groups for pragmatic reasons.


“There’s been a shift,” said Roy Speckhardt, deputy director of the American Humanist Association. “Some in the atheist constituency are saying things like, `We’d like to work more with you (in coalitions with progressive religious groups) so we can have an effect in Washington.’ They’ve realized they need to do this in order to get things done.”

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Over the years, non-theist groups have tended to organize locally as supportive communities for those whose beliefs aren’t compatible with church, mosque or synagogue. Atheist Alliance International includes 40 local chapters whose collective membership totals about 3,700. Such numbers represent just a fraction of the 38 million Americans who self-identify as “secular,” according to the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Organizational numbers have tended to be small, leaders say, because skeptics are by nature wary of being followers. And in some cases, would-be joiners might fear potential repercussions for coming out of the closet publicly as non-theists in an overwhelmingly religious nation.

Leaders identified with atheism say they routinely receive anonymous hate mail, including threats. One staffer at the Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation reported received an early December e-mail saying, “You deserve to be shot in the chest.”

Others have been ostracized. When Silverman gave an invocation at a Charleston, S.C., City Council meeting in March 2003, six council members stood and walked out in protest.

But with a rising tide of power emboldening religious conservatives in Washington, non-theists are increasingly finding reason to stand, be counted and speak up themselves. Topping the list of concerns is a sense of decay in the principle of church-state separation. From faith-based initiatives to frequent religious expression in the public square, people of a secular viewpoint are feeling excluded from the public domain.


“There’s a strong impression on the religious right that religion has been excluded” from public life, said Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry, a bimonthly magazine read by 30,000 secular humanists. “Our perception of fairness is their perception of discrimination against the religious right. … This election really seems to send us the message that we’re probably going to keep losing ground.”

Yet as they get more organized, non-theists are also finding they are more than a one-issue constituency. Leaders say those who don’t believe in God share a virtual consensus in favor of gay and abortion rights.

“If you take religious arguments out of the mix, there’s no other group that’s opposing progressive values,” said Timothy Travis, a non-theist from King George, Va.

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On the judicial front, the New York City-based American Civil Liberties Union has seen membership grow by almost 50 percent since the start of 2004, from 300,000 to 445,000. Meanwhile, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has seen membership climb by about 4 percent since the election to about 5,100. Both groups use donations to mount legal challenges to government-sponsored religious activity.

Yet for non-theists, the new goal is to win a favorable opinion from lawmakers and their constituents. The arrival of a solidly Republican Congress and a second term for Bush mean, in Silverman’s opinion, it’s time to get more organized.

“There’s a feeling we need to get our community out and not just sneer at those we feel are influencing the culture for the worse.”


Action is needed, he said, to oppose what many in the movement see as a “creeping theocracy.”

MO/PH END RNS

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