Prev Next
Featured Quizzes
Politix Daily Headlines
Featured Debates
Issues

See all 17 issues

People
White House

See all people

FAITH-LESS IS MORE

Atheists and Religiously Unaffiliated on the Rise in Congress

And among the religious, diversity is up, reports Pew

Next>

by Dain Fitzgerald

Staff Writer t

Image: Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)

Atheists, nonbelievers, secularists, "nones," and other nouns to describe those without faith in a higher being are starting to gain a foothold in politics, reports Politico.

Citing data from the Pew Research Center, the report notes that the nation's 113th Congress includes ten representatives who refuse to specify any particular religion as their own, and another, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who more boldly claims no religious affiliation whatsoever.

And where religion is still present among the nation's elected officials, notes Pew, it's more diversified than it used to be: "While Congress remains majority Protestant, the institution is far less so today than it was 50 years ago, when nearly three-quarters of the members belonged to Protestant denominations."

Politico's Charles Mahtesian sums up: "The Pew numbers seem to be a sign that the taboo about religious identification is being broken and members of Congress are increasingly comfortable admitting they don't adhere to any particular faith."

Via Politico and the Pew Research Center.
Like this article? B Vote Up
?

What does the increasing representation of secularists and non-Christians mean for the future of politics?

Comments (view in Forum)

  • Zazziness
    !
    Hopefully it will mean the American theocrats will continue to be frustrated in their efforts to turn our country into a totalitarian nightmare. Free to practice your religion or none? Yes. Free to impose your religion on everyone through acts of law? Never. Not in the U.S.
  • PNWest
    !
    The evangelist right gives Christianity a bad name. They do for Christianity what the Taliban does for Islam.
  • Zazziness
    !
    @PNWest The very far right. But they are vocal and there are sects which are not just praying for an American theocracy. They're actively working toward it. It's a conspiracy but not a secret one since they are proud of their goals and have web sites explaining their strategies and purposes. Frankly, I do not want the U.S. military in the hands of those who look forward to the Apocalypse.
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    @Zazziness

    have you heard the stories of the christian bias in the USAF academy?

    Uber-christians with jets and bombs...Yikes!
  • Zazziness
    !
    @woodtick57 I try to follow the public activities of the Dominionist churches because I feel they are dangerous. One of their tactics is deliberately sending chaplains into our military with the intent to convert. Many are very unfriendly to anyone who isn't another evangelical Christian. That is not what our men and women in the military deserve when they seek spiritual comfort/advice.

  • View all 18 replies >

  • wild_turkey6
    !
    I would hope that religious affiliation would have nothing to do with how you legislate. Congressmen work for their constituents, not their pastor. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, hence the current state of the GOP. Barry Goldwater warned of this in 1981. "I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?...I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
  • u
    S-N-A-F-U
    !
    Does that surprize anyone in the direction this country is going?- You can't open any page of the news paper on any given day, that's not plastered with Murder, rape, incest, wholesale degradation, wars and deviant behavior. This country has lost its moral compass........

    John Adams
    2nd U.S. President and Signer of the Declaration of Independence

    "Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be."
    --Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III, p. 9.
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    yeah, look at all the theocracies in the world, present and past....they have been so moral! perhaps that has to do with the outrageously immoral guidbooks those religions use?
  • frigginhell
    !
    Imagine? Go to any place that practices sharia law. You can remove the whole imagination arguement with the truth of what happens when the bilbe/koran are used to run a country. Don't give me some crap about the fact it's the koran. They are for all intents and purposes nearly identical religions that are based on many of the same writings. You want to stone your wife for adultery you don't need a koran. You don't even need to go very many chapters into the bible. You want religion as a guding compass in this country? Pick up a history book. I'd suggest you read up on the religious tolerance and faith in god's will that was demonstrated in Salem, Mass.

    Now onto the article itself. How many more "nones" do you think there would be if we removed those who view religion as nothing more than a tool to garner votes and gain public favor. Religous lawmakers would indeed be in the minority as both sides are filled to the brim with men from both sides of the aisle who attend church on sunday the same way others punch a time card at the factory. They're putting in their time and being seen doing it but in the end it's just another day at the job. This is why Rev. Wright was never an issue for me. I've always believed Obama was probably sitting in the pews humming motown songs to himself as his church attendance was just another day being seen by his local voters like it is for damned near every politician in this country.
  • Zazziness
    !
    "You can't open any page of the news paper on any given day, that's not plastered with Murder, rape, incest, wholesale degradation, wars and deviant behavior."

    And that has been true of this nation and all nations since the dawn of time, except we didn't used to be able to share the news about it in print, for profit.

    Theocracies are the most violent, oppressive, and stagnant form of totalitarian government the Earth has ever seen. Why anyone would look at Afghanistan under the Taliban and say "Gee, I wished I lived under the same form of government" is totally beyond me.

  • View all 56 replies >

  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    yes! crimes rates going down. treating more of our citizens as equals. the further we get away from stone-age, immoral religions, the more moral of a country we become. it is not rocket science...
  • WittyUsername
    !
    No, this "us vs. them" mentality you and others have is part of the problem. Religion and morality are not mutually exclusive, and religious belief, or lack thereof, should be a nonissue when it comes to politics and legislation. Religion divides people more than it unites them, and I'm glad the playing field is starting to level a bit.
  • u
    Blessed
    !
    @woodtick57 Religion and morals go hand-in-hand! Crime rates going down? Where? Rampant drug abuse, teen pregnancy and lazy, dependent youth are the results of religious-free homes, schools and Congress.
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    @Blessed

    Hardly! religion has nothing to do with morals.

    Crime rates are down across the country. Drug use has remained pretty stable regardless of peoples' faith or federal laws. teen pregnancy rises when religious abstitnence only education is forced on teens.

    Seems you have it all backwards...
  • Zazziness
    !
    @Blessed I'm sorry to say facts show you to be wrong. The highest teen pregnancy rates are in the Bible Belt, for instance.(Probably because of schools there being force to teach abstinence-only birth control instead of including other science-based methods of birth control.) http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/08/03/63... Nevada excepted, the highest divorce rates are in the Bible Belt. http://www.statemaster.com/graph/lif_div_rat-... And rural areas of the Bible Belt have lots of folks who are on welfare. http://www.google.com/imgres...

  • View all 22 replies >

  • DerivePI
    !
    I am trying to cite some examples of countries who have turned away from their faith and have performed better because of it. Notably, the hardcore socialists like the USSR are examples of the failure of a forced non-religious state. Turkey is an example of the success of a civically secular nation in a muslim country, but that success is due to religious tolerance and not the promotion of atheism. Perhaps we need to relearn the lessons of the French Revolution and the barbarism coupled with atheism that followed.

    Please respond to me with examples in history of an atheist (or sim) people that have performed well.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
  • Zazziness
    !
    No one is "turning away from their faith." People are just more free to express where their faith truly lies. And good for them and good for this nation because we are *free* men and women.
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    the people in the USSR didn't give up their faiths just because the gov't was secular or tried to get rid of religion. And look at all the evils those people of faith did!
  • WittyUsername
    !
    from above link...
    "The twenty-five nations characterized by organic atheism with the highest proportion of nonbelievers are listed in Table 1. When looking at standard measures of societal health, we find that they fare remarkably well; highly religious nations fare rather poorly. The 2004 United Nations' Human Development Report, which ranks 177 countries on a "Human Development Index," measures such indicators of societal health as life expectancy, adult literacy, per-capita income, educational attainment, and so on. According to this report, the five top nations were Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. All had notably high degrees of organic atheism. Furthermore, of the top twenty-five nations, all but Ireland and the United States were top-ranking nonbelieving nations with some of the highest percentages of organic atheism on earth. Conversely, the bottom fifty countries of the "Human Development Index" lacked statistically significant levels of organic atheism."
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    How 'bout you look at the countries with the highest percentages of non-believers and see how they are doing. most of them are also teh most stable, safest, most moral countries.

    Just look at the moral steps the US has taken as it has become socially acceptable to openly claim no faith...

  • View all 20 replies >

  • Keyjo
    !
    Good question. However, none claimed to be Atheist, only that they had no religious affiliation.
    And the oath on the Bible is mostly ceremonial.

  • View all 10 replies >

  • MadAmerican
    !
    @woodtick57 No- my point was why claim a religion when it's so obvious all polictians are corrupt. It was a sarcastic comment with a little bit of dry humor.
  • Denizen_Kate
    !
    @woodtick57 - "What hell is that? Do they all retire in Gary, Indiana?" LMBO! Thanks, my first major chuckle of the week. I passed through Gary once ...

  • View all 6 replies >

  • Zazziness
    !
    Respect the agnostic then; they're the only ones with the sense to say "Insufficient data therefore any conclusion is sheer speculation." Religious and atheist alike make assumptions then have faith those assumptions are the right guess.
  • Russell797
    !
    @Zazziness Yes, I agree. However the null hypothesis is that there is no god. It is the responsibility of the theist (those making the proposition) to make the case for god, which can not be logically accomplished beyond a matter of faith. Therefore, I consider myself an atheistic agnostic. We can't know one way or the other for certain, but I can find absolutely no indisputable evidence for god. We can always have faith, but faith is irrational and does not constitute evidence.
  • hwyangel
    !
    @Russell797

    I realize that it's another subject but...
    I disagree with faith being "irrational". There are many concepts that are widely accepted as truth that can be proven, tested, measured, predicted, or counted. Like for example, love, forgiveness, hope, peace, and charity. All things that require faith.
  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    @hwyangel

    how does love require faith in some mythical god? or any of the other things you mentioned. the fact that non-believers fall in love by the millions would be proof enough that that is BS...
  • hwyangel
    !
    @woodtick57

    1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

    Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
    37 Jesus replied:“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it:‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

  • View all 32 replies >

  • o
    woodtick57
    !
    No it was purposefully set up as a secular nation and the values it was founded on were around long before the christian religion was invented. they may be values tht christians agree with, but the christian religion has no claim to them...
  • u
    RobertJHarsh
    !
    ...and that is why Thomas Jefferson spoke of the EVILS of organized religion. Many of the Founding Fathers were sick of the Church of England or the Vatican meddling in the government and that is why there is a separation of church and state.
  • u
    Yank
    !
    @wild_turkey6 You should read the entire thing. "Some historians, secular and religious, have argued that the phrase specifically refers to the government and not the culture, that it only speaks of the founding and not what America became or might become,[13] and that many Founding Fathers and newspapers described America as a Christian nation during the early-Republic"
  • Buzzfriendly
    !
    I guess you and I live in an parallel universes. The one I lived in people left Europe BECAUSE of religious persecution.

    Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

    What is it men cannot be made to believe!-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee (British), April 22, 1786.

    The 1796 Treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" . This was not an idle statement meant to satisfy muslims-- they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.

    "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." -Ben Franklin

    "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies." -Thomas Paine

  • View all 24 replies >

  • Speedieg
    !
    I don't see this as a problem and I hope that it will lead to us getting along better and stop pushing for one doctrine over another. Religion is a personal matter and has no place in government. The idea that atheists or non religious persons are immoral is just not true.
  • u
    Educate
    !
    Religion has every place in Government, as long as it's Christianity. The man without God should never be a legislator (law-maker), for how does he know what law is? To the man without God the law is just a figment of his imagination, whatever he wants it to be (to kill babies is okay, for example). Only a man of God can legislate with justice for all.
  • u
    Grubby
    !
    It means that Freedom of Religion will continue to be the single most endangered of the Bill of Rights. The athiest non-believers are actively trying to replace it with the "Freedom FROM Religion" by banning any semblence of Christian religion wherever possible from any aspect of our lives. Of course, anything against Muslims will be excluded out of sheer fear of retribution.
  • u
    Libertyiskey
    !
    You seem to clump all athiest in a group. Is that the Christian thing to do? Or whatever religion you are? Freedom of religion includes the right to not practice religion, which unless you're in one that preaches intolerance, bigotry, and stereotyping, you're not practicing religion(correctly) right now either. Not all athiest want to remove religion completely, and not all religious are intolerant bigots who clump people together because they don't practice religion.

    By the way athiest's don't ignore Muslims like you seem to think. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/01/athe...
    And in case you think CNN isn't reputable here's it in The Blaze
    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/atheists-bill...
  • Denizen_Kate
    !
    "The athiest non-believers are actively trying to replace it with the "Freedom FROM Religion" by banning any semblence of Christian religion wherever possible from any aspect of our lives." Absolutely not true. Atheists object to religious references, icons, and activities on PUBLIC property, and not just Christian but any religion. No one is trying to ban it from your life or anyone else's. Worship in private. Is that so hard?
  • Buzzfriendly
    !
    It means we are getting closer to the feelings and sentiments of our founding fathers.

    "Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." -Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782)
  • R Load more comments...