Does “faith-based” include people without a religious faith? The Biden administration thinks so. In May, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships met with secular groups to discuss the needs of nonreligious Americans of various stripes. The meeting is a historic, but not unexpected, sign of secular Americans’ growing voice in politics. Secularists strongly identify with the Democratic Party and are increasingly active in Democratic Party politics.
During the past two decades, secular lobbying organizations and activists have been organizing, both to influence policymakers and to mobilize votes for secular candidates. For instance, the Secular Coalition for America — a coalition of 20 groups identifying variously as atheists, secularists, humanists, and so on — works on registering voters, coordinating grass-roots activism, holding public events, and organizing secular caucuses at political party conventions.
In 2016, the Secular Coalition presented at the secular caucus at the Texas Democratic Party convention, and hosted a welcoming event at the National Democratic Party Convention. Since 2016, secular groups have established secular caucuses in several states, a strong sign of their influence in the Democratic Party.
According to Pew Research Center, 26 percent of the U.S. population identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” However, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is the only member of Congress who identifies as nonreligious. Could secular groups enlist a larger number of Americans to vote for openly nonreligious candidates and to pressure policymakers on issues like abortion rights, separation of church and state, and science-based public policy?
How I did my research
To investigate the links among secularist activists, organized secular interest groups like the Secular Coalition, and candidates, I did two things. In one part of my research, I examined the 2016 State Convention Delegates Study, a survey of delegates to state political party conventions in 2016, which included questions about politics, issues, and religion and secularism. Delegates to state political party conventions matter because they end up donating time and money to campaigns; shape party platforms, which set the agenda for what issues the party will focus on; and elect national convention delegates, who nominate the party’s candidate for president. Out of that survey, I examined the answers from 2,837 delegates to Democratic Party conventions in Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Washington, chosen because they are four very different states.
In another part of my research, I took advantage of an opportunity for a natural experiment. In 2016, the Secular Democrats of Texas held a secular caucus — an organized gathering of any delegate at the convention interested in secularism — at the state convention that included a presentation by the Secular Coalition for America, urging delegates to promote secularist candidates and to get involved in repealing a Texas constitutional requirement that elected officials believe in God.
While the requirement has never been enforced, and there is no formal religious test of candidates, the requirement may discourage secularist candidates from running for office. Of course, Texas is one of the most religious states in the country, and so organizers, expecting a modest turnout, booked a room for a few hundred people. But the room filled so quickly that, with no seats or standing room left, many attendees were turned away at the door.
I used this opportunity to run a natural experiment that was as close as possible to a randomized control trial. Because both those who filled the room and those who turned away were interested in attending the caucus, I surveyed both groups about whether they would be likely to support a secularist candidate. Those who were turned away at the door were the control group; I compared their answers with answers from those who did get in and heard the presentation to find out how effectively the presentation aroused support for secularist candidates.
The meeting was very effective. Those who attended the presentation were more likely to say that they would vote for a secularist candidate than those who did not attend. Of delegates who attended the presentation, 67 percent said they would be “more likely” (as opposed to “less likely”) to vote for such a candidate, while only 50 percent of those who were turned away said so. That’s the equivalent of gaining one full delegate’s support for a secularist candidate. This test suggests they can successfully increase support for their cause.
Would Democrats support a secularist candidate?
But would Democrats support an actual secularist candidate? To find out, I also administered a survey experiment embedded in the main survey to all the delegates in each of the four states. In this portion of the general survey, I asked delegates to read about a hypothetical candidate for Congress, and then asked how likely they would be to vote for the candidate, donate to the candidate’s campaign or work on the campaign.
Delegates were randomly assigned to read about one of three candidates, who varied in just one way. The control group read nothing about the candidate’s religion. Other groups read either about a candidate who was expressly agnostic or who said they supported rational decision-making over religious dogma. I compared levels of support for the non-secularist candidate and the two openly secularist candidates, comparing support from delegates who themselves identified as secularist and the others.
Secularist delegates are more likely to support a secularist candidate than one who does not identify a stance about religion by about 7 percentage points. The non-secularist delegates are roughly equally willing to support either a secularist candidate or a candidate with no position on religion. In other words, it appears that a secularist candidate could mobilize additional support from secularists without risking alienating other Democrats.
Of course, this study has limitations; it doesn't take into account how a religious incumbent might respond to a secularist challenger. But it’s a promising sign for future secularist candidates.
What does this mean for the Democratic Party?
In 2019, the Democratic Party passed a resolution recognizing the growing importance of religiously unaffiliated Americans. Since secularists have begun mobilizing sympathetic voters to get their interests represented in government, expect to see more openly secularist candidates and more attention to secularist voters in the Democratic Party.
Mark Brockway is a faculty fellow in religion and political science at Syracuse University.
