It’s difficult to determine what percentage of the Americans have no particular religious affiliation.  The figure ranges from a low of 15% to a high of 37%.  If we have to pinpoint one number, the commonly accepted figure is 20%.

We might tend to feel that the preponderance of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics.  However, that is not true.  In a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, fully 70% of the unaffiliated simply say that they have “no particular religious affiliation” rather than being avowed atheists or agnostics.  The figure for atheists is 2.4% and for agnostics, 3.3% of all people.

It’s rather remarkable how much noise a relatively small band of acknowledged atheists and agnostics can create.  The noise does not emanate from the atheists and agnostics. They tend to quietly go about their business.  Occasionally they seek legal help such as when asking Congress to eliminate the “under God” provision in the Pledge of Allegiance.  The noise tends to come from the right wing and religious fundamentalists who take particular affront to someone who is not a believer in their God.

Fox News pundit Dana Perino said she’s “tired” of atheists attempting to remove the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, adding, “if these people really don’t like it, they don’t have to live here.”  That’s about as harsh as it gets when a group of American citizens merely want to express their freedom of speech as guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

One of the most interesting dynamics in religion is the large number of people who become dissatisfied with their religion and then stay with their religion anyway, sometimes trying to change it.  Others find another religion that suits them.  The remaining individuals drop out of the religious “universe” or become atheists or agnostics.

Many Catholics have a difficult time disengaging from their religion.  Because there are so many rules and regulations in the church that are hundreds or thousands of years old, modern Catholics have a huge range of issues that they’d like re-examined.  These include priesthood for women, equal rights for those in the LGBT community, accepting pre-marital sex, and removing the vows of abstinence for priests and nuns.  Most “lapsed Catholics” say that these rules just don’t make sense in the modern world.  However many prefer to fight from within to get the rules changed rather than just putting the church behind them and entering another church, becoming non-affiliated, or becoming an atheist or agnostic.

Moving away from the church is also happening in the far-right fundamentalist churches.  In a recent article on CNN on-line, Rachel Held Evans discusses many of the modern but largely unsuccessful ways of bringing young people back into the fundamentalist churches.  She says:

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

Discussing Millenials and herself, Ms. Evans says:

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

Many secular humanists tend to believe that it’s either religion or their way.  That’s because seculars tend to believe that all religions share many of the same flaw: incomprehensible stories, rules, and regulations.  Why wouldn’t someone want to leave an organized religion for the freedom of being unaffiliated?  The fact is that most who leave a religion find another one to their liking.  It is indeed a very special person who chooses to be unaffiliated, an atheist, or an agnostic.

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Long after Barney Frank came out of the closet [in 1987] to become the first openly gay U.S. Congressman, he outed himself again–this time as an atheist– on Aug. 2, 2013, in a post-show interview with Bill Maher. Here’s the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmtIIzWUbDc

Transcript:

Bill Maher: … you were in a fairly safe district. You were not one of those Congresspeople who have to worry about every little thing. You could come on this show, and sit next to a pot-smoking atheist, and it wouldn’t bother you…

Barney Frank: [Pointing back and forth to himself and Maher] Which pot-smoking atheist were you talking about?

[Laughter]

Bill Maher: Ooh, you are liberated!

Frank also told Maher that had he been appointed to the open Senate seat in Massachusetts he would have had his husband Jim “hold the Constitution, not the Bible, and affirm, not swear, that I was gonna be a wonderful Senator.”

Clearly, Frank thought it was more politically acceptable to come out as gay—which he did while serving in Congress—than it would have been to announce that he was an atheist. Gay is, at long last, okay.  Atheism is not.  In fact, seven states currently ban atheists from holding office.

Some observers were shocked that someone who previously identified himself as Jewish would declare that he’s an atheist. I don’t find that so strange: There are a lot of us who have cultural Jewish identities while not accepting the concept of a supreme being. Or, to paraphrase –for myself–Barney Frank’s own coming-out statement, [pointing back and forth between me and you],  “Which Jewish atheist are you talking about?”

One thing that is surprising, though: On its 2011 scorecard, the Secular Coalition of America gave then-Congressman Frank a grade of C [57%] on religion-related issues.

The only U.S. Congressman who was openly atheist during his term in office was Pete Stark (D-CA), who served from 1973 to 2013. Stark acknowledged his atheism in response to questionnaire sent by the Secular Coalition of America to public officials in January 2007.

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So, you think there are “no atheists in foxholes?” By the same logic, there would be no atheists in tornadoes, either, right? At least that’s the meme the media would have us  believe in the aftermath of natural disasters, when reporters look for miracles in the form of churches, bibles, and religious artifacts and icons that somehow survive the devastation around them.

Today, however, that meme was upended by one courageous survivor of the huge tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma yesterday [May 20, 2012].  Watch the video clip, as Wolf Blitzer tries to cajole a woman into thanking god for her survival. She hesitates and then–pow!–she tells Blitzer that she’s an atheist. In my book, that statement makes her a hero.

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Non-believers need not apply. According to AlterNet, in seven U.S. states, if you don’t recognize the existence of a supreme being, you are banned from holding public office.  This is for real. Here are the statutes that officially disqualify atheists from exercising their civil right to run for office, or to be appointed:

The Arkansas State Constitution was drawn up in 1874. Article 19, Section 1 states “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.”

[It’s bad enough that if you are an unbeliever in Arkansas, you could, under the state constitution, forfeit a basic democratic right. But if you’re not willing to say, “so help me God,” you can’t even testify at a trial.]

Maryland, article 37, says, “That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God.” 

Similarly:

Texas’ State Constitution, Article 1, Section 4: “RELIGIOUS TESTS.  No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall anyone be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

[Let me see if I understand this one: In Maryland and Texas, following either of the two religions most reviled by religious bigots—Mormonism and Islam—can’t keep you from holding office, but not believing can. I guess those religions are much less awful than no religion at all.]

Mississippi, Article M, Section 265 :  “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.”

Pennsylvania, Article I, Section 4: “No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.”

[So, in Pennsylvania, you’re also out of luck if you don’t accept the existence of a heaven or a hell.]

South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4 “No person who denies the existence of the Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.”

[However, it’s probably okay in South Carolina if you “deny the existence” of climate change, racial prejudice or religious bigotry.]

Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.”

[“Imagine there’s no heaven…” and then imagine the door slamming on your chance to hold office in Tennessee.]

Of course, these statutes are essentially unenforceable, for obvious reasons. But the fact that we don’t currently have thought police, or mind-reading software, or an Inquisition, doesn’t give me much comfort. In a time when radical, fundamentalist religious zealotry is on the rise, it’s downright scary to read these constitutional statutes that disenfranchise people whose beliefs aren’t religiously pure–or even just religious.

And sure, you can argue that these statutes are relics of the past—just quaint laws, like  the City of Boston’s Ordinance 16-15.3, which makes it illegal to drive a horse-drawn carriage through the snow or ice with fewer than three bells attached

But, wait: A lot of old issues that we thought were settled—things like the right to privacy, the right to collectively bargain, and the right to vote—are under fire by corporate interests, Bible-thumpers and anti-woman warriors.  Is it that hard to imagine some sanctimonious, right-wing state legislator in one of the seven previously mentioned states standing up, Bible in one hand, state constitution in the other, railing against the rights of the godless in his or her state?  That’s something that this non-believer believes is possible.

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