The Latinx Culture War

Last week I wrote about some things left unsaid about the recent Pew report showing how much the nonreligious Latinx population has grown in recent years. I did not write about some of the political data points mentioned in the report on pu...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
The Attack of the (Latinx) Nones

Hello! I’m back from vacation and initially wanted to write about my trip. However, yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a report about Latinx religion identification. Hemant wrote about it in his newsletter with a guest appearance by you...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
The Boundaries of Secularity II

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
Can a True Atheist?

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
The Boundaries of Secularity

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
Secular State Legislators by the Numbers (Part 2)

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
Secular State Legislators by the Numbers (Part 1)

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
You Can Count them with One Hand

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025
Counting the Elected Nones

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...

Read More
Feb 27, 2025