More Professing Atheists & Humanists Legislating Morality From Public Office BY MARJORIE JACKSON via Prophecy News Watch
Atheism and humanism are on the rise, as the number of elected members filling state and federal seats who profess no belief in God increases from only five before 2016, to upward of 70 after the most recent election cycle — a sharp shift from the Judeo-Christian values that have defined America since its founding.
The Center for Freethought Equality (CFE) sees this increase as progress towards a “safer, saner, stronger, and more secular America,” celebrating “continued gains for the humanist and atheist community in the electoral arena.”
Atheism “rejects the existence of God or any gods.” Humanism “is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good,” or simply put, in the American Humanist Association’s tagline, the belief that “Good Without God,” is achievable.
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The CFE recently highlighted newly elected representatives and senators in state legislatures across the country, as well as Eric Sorensen, a “spiritual but not religious” Democrat from Illinois elected to Congress in November. On Capitol Hill, the Democratic Congressional Freethought Caucus seeks to promote secularism through their representation and legislation, touting “separation of church and state.”
By the end of the 117th Congress, 88% of members now identify as “Christians,” and 8% identify with other religions or “other,” Pew Research finds. As for the rest of America, the numbers show that more than 70% identify with the Christian faith, nearly 6% with a non-Christian faith, and a rapidly rising 22% in the “religious nones” category.
FRC’s senior fellow for the Center for Biblical Worldview Joseph Backholm argues that the increase in atheists and humanists elected to public office is nothing new. “This dramatically understates the reality,” he told The Washington Stand. “This might be a rise in people who profess to be atheists or humanists. But in reality, you’ve had thousands of state legislators and legislatures governing like atheists and humanists for a very long time.”
Despite the number of legislators that claim Christianity, Backholm says these figures are deceptive from a worldview standpoint. “The value system that atheists propose is that there is no truth outside of ourselves,” he continued to TWS. “We are left to our own minds to determine what is right and wrong and what the best thing is to do.
There are tens of millions of people in America who would check the box of being some kind of a religion, but that’s exactly how they live their life. And there are thousands who govern in precisely that way. So, I would argue that more than half of the people within a religious affiliation in Congress govern, think, and live exactly the same way that humanists do.”
