The end of 2012 was challenging for secular peoples’ political representation. The lone openly atheist member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Pete Stark of California, was defeated in his re-election attempt by a fellow Democrat in the then-new California top-two primary system. Then, the one person expected to champion nonbelievers, freshman Arizona representative Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, denied being a non-theist.

A short history of nones in Congress

However, 2013 got interesting when in the summer, retired long-term Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) admitted on Bill Maher’s show that he was an atheist. Now two former members of Congress were openly atheists. Frank, who made history as the first openly gay member of Congress in the 1980s, was making history again, showing that nonbelievers were everywhere, including the halls of power.

Frank was never going to show up as a nonbeliever in those Faith on the Hill reports because, like Stark, a member of a Unitarian congregation, he was a member of a religion. Throughout his career, Frank identified as Jewish, as he still does.

Things were quiet for a few years until California Rep. Jared Huffman (D) told the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein in 2017 that he had doubts about the existence of God and had humanist views.

Today, openly humanist Rep. Huffman (D-Calif.), along with Sen. Sinema (I- Ariz.) and freshman Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), are the three members of Congress with no religious affiliation. They are joined by Jewish Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who also calls himself a humanist.

They represent the diversity of the nones and the larger secular community. There is one member of the non-theistic segment, openly humanist Rep. Huffman. There is one "spiritual but not religious” member (Rep. Sorensen). One member is openly religious (Rep. Raskin). Finally, one member is not religious but also not a nontheist (Sen. Sinema).

Secularism explodes in the population…not in Congress, though

Between Rep. Stark admitting his atheism in 2007 to the election of Rep. Sorensen last year (2022), the share of the nonreligious and nontheistic population in the U.S. has increased from about one in six to more than one in four (some other sources have to closer to three in ten). The number of openly secular members of Congress has quadrupled only because it has gone from one to four.

Secular people haven’t experienced the same growth in the halls of power as they have experienced on the streets. Why have not more members of Congress followed the late Rep. Stark’s lead, or even retired members followed Rep. Frank’s lead and admitted being nontheistic? Conversely, being a “none” is more acceptable in our society than being an atheist, so why not even the ranks of the nones have increased?

It was unrealistic to think many would follow suit

Members of Congress don’t exist in a vacuum, they come from particular communities and they have identities. Over a decade ago, when I was conducting research for my dissertation before it evolved into something completely different, I was exploring the religious identification of members of Congress, most of them coming from the Pew reports or directly looking at CQ/Roll Call responses. But to look further back, my plan was to compare the membership in the 1950s to the 2000s I looked into the Congressional Directory. The directory has a short biography of every member of Congress. It looks more like one of those Who’s Who bio books. What I always found interesting about these bios is that they are an assortment of civic associations, previous office members held, and, in most cases, religion. But in a lot of cases, it was not just their religious identity but the specific church or congregation they belonged to.

What we are dealing with is identities. Members of Congress are telling stories about themselves. That’s what the people in their communities, their constituents, expect. We shouldn’t expect someone who’s been telling a story about themselves suddenly change it and say, “hey, I’m not a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim.” Unless, of course, you’re thinking of George Santos. All jokes aside, I think Santos is going to make it harder for people in Congress to change their stories and invite further scrutiny. I think it is also likely that newcomers are going to be cavalier about lying since Santos seems to be doing just fine (at least for the next two years).

In the end, if you look at these bios, they rarely change year after year for members who have served a long time. Most members of Congress are reelected every two years, so there’s also that: vacancies don’t come often.

The current four members all have been elected in the last ten years: Rep. Huffman and Sen. Sinema in 2012, Rep. Raskin in 2016, and Rep. Sorensen in 2022. Reps. Huffman, Raskin, and Sinema were all former state legislators. Rep. Sorensen, I think, is the first secular House member with no previous political experience.

To run for office, a person needs money and networks. Churches and congregations provide networks (if not money) and a sense of grounding in a community. Of course, you can have networks that are independent of religion; that’s how we get teachers who campaign on education issues, environmental activists, and racial and economic justice activists, among others, in the halls of Congress. If you ask about their religion, they’ll give you an answer. Reps. Huffman, Raskin, and Sen. Sinema were known for their work in areas outside of secular communities. Even when friendly to those organizations, their activism didn’t center on secularism or atheism. Rep. Sorensen didn’t have previous political experience before Congress, but he was known because he was well-known in the community as a longtime TV weatherman.

To get more openly secular people elected to Congress, we need them to come from secular communities. Those communities and organizations need to encourage and their members to run for office and support them if they do. Running for office, especially in Congress, is quite expensive. Thus it is not just a matter of telling people to run for office.

Secular organizations need to develop pipelines, encouraging and supporting people in chapters and affiliates who want to run for local or state office. Organizations need to help their people with training in media, fundraising, and strategy, among other things. They shouldn’t expect people to do all of this as individuals. As long as organized secularism expects that random nonreligious people will (a) run for office on their own and (b) put their secular identity in the forefront, the ranks of secular elected officials will remain grossly underrepresented compared to their share in the population.