During an election year in which faith is playing a central role in presidential politics, the fastest-growing religious group in the country isn’t getting much attention from either campaign.
So-called religious nones, people affiliated with no particular faith, represent nearly a third of the population, a rapid climb over the past decade, but the increase has not translated into a political movement. Republicans have not embraced them. And though Democrats declared nones the party’s “largest” faith group last year and featured humanist speakers at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, they have not invested in mobilizing the unchurched as much as they have reached out to those affiliated with a traditional church.
The reason for that, in large part, is because the nones have been some of the most reliable Democratic voters for decades. But as more people become irreligious, that’s changing, said Casey Brinck, a self-identifying religious none who serves as director of policy and government affairs at the Secular Coalition for America.
It’s a lesson that Hillary Clinton learned in 2016, when a lackluster showing from nones helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency. Clinton scored only 68% of secular votes, including atheists and agnostics, a critical dip from Barack Obama’s numbers. Trump, by contrast, aggressively campaigned to white evangelicals, who represent about the same amount of the population as the nonreligious, and pulled in 81% of their votes.
Part of Clinton’s failure can be explained by the fact that nones are notoriously hard to get into a voting booth, a trait they share with millennials, who are driving the nationwide rise in irreligiousness. But on top of that, Brinck said, preaching to the nonreligious on the basis of their beliefs is difficult, since their only common faith is a lack thereof.
“We have nothing to rally behind because we believe in nothing, other than that shared belief in nothing,” he said. “I think it makes it harder to say that faith is why secular voters vote. It’s certainly a lens they look through, but it may not be the first lens.”
As more people leave faith behind, the nonreligious community will have to become politically effective, the same way that anti-abortion groups harnessed the latent power in shared beliefs, Brinck added.
“The secular community needs to do a better job at coalescing behind each other as a bloc and saying, ‘We are here, we are huge, and we need to be paid attention to,’” he said.
Democrats already are making some overtures to nones. At the convention, while extolling the virtues of Joe Biden’s Catholicism, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons also included an appeal to “people of conscience who practice no particular faith.” Coons has made similar remarks at Biden campaign faith events, where organizers have included nones in the faith groups supporting Democrats.
The party’s 2020 platform also contains several favorable nods to a greater separation of church and state, including a condemnation of the Trump administration’s “use of broad religious exemptions to allow businesses, medical providers, social service agencies, and others to discriminate.” It comes on the heels of the formation of the Congressional Free Thought Caucus by nonreligious Democrats to advance the causes of secular people.
And it’s only natural that the unchurched tend naturally toward Democrats, said Hemant Mehta, an author who frequently blogs about the rise of secularity.
“Democratic policies fall right in line with what atheist organizations and humanist groups have been fighting for for a long time,” Mehta said, adding that the party’s emphasis on science, climate change, and social justice issues leaves more room for people who do not affiliate with a church to express themselves freely.
But even still, Democratic embrace of nones has been weak. Biden at the DNC focused heavily on his Catholic faith, which he says is deeply personal and guides the way he acts. The same has been true of Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, who frequently advertises her background as a black Baptist to voters.
Many nonreligious activists think that a greater push among Democrats, with direct pitches to the unbelievers, would push Democrats over the top in November. Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, said that, if organized, the biggest irreligious groups — atheists, agnostics, and nones — could exert the same force as anti-abortion and evangelical voters.
“But right now, no one is running out to say that big, scary A-word,” he said.
