In the early 2010s, when I was still working at Trinity College’s Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC), the question of why the nones -then 15% of the adult population- weren’t better represented in politics was often...
Hello friends, I was traveling most of the week—apologies for the short and late entry. Instead of a longer essay or analysis, I’ll leave you with the latest episode of Beyond Atheism just released this week. From the episode summary:In thi...
Depending on the source, the “nones” (people who identify with no religion in particular) comprise between one-quarter to three in ten of the United States adult population. We know that the nones are heavily Democratic-leani...
I spent Wednesday morning at the Brookings Institution’s Falk Auditorium watching the release of the PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey. Aside from being an excellent time to catch up with old friends (I started my DC career at PRRI a d...
Two weeks ago, we looked at openly secular representation in state legislatures. Only over half of all states have at least one secular legislator, and 21 states have no openly secular legislators. In this post, I will analyze the data by C...
Most of the 72 openly secular legislators serve in state legislatures. Three legislators serve in the U.S. Congress, 54 serve in state houses (or lower chambers), and 15 serve in state senates (or upper chambers) or the unicameral Nebraska legislatur...
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 the...
When we talk about the representation of secular Americans in politics, we are talking about descriptive representation. In other words, we are trying to count how many members of the group are in some elective or appointed office. In the case of rel...
When I started this newsletter, I did it to share analyses I had been working on but not published yet and thoughts on issues I feel fall under the radar in secular spaces regarding politics. For years my commentary has focused on two aspects of secu...
In this entry, I want to introduce the Secular Legislator Dashboard. We have been working on this project, on and off, for a few years. But, finally, in the last few months, I have been able to find a format I’m comfortable with. The current ver...
