The American political landscape has become dangerously polarized. Most social, economic and other issues are starkly divided across the aisle — just identifying as being liberal or conservative leads to an assumption that you hold various beliefs that might have nothing to do with actual policy. While religious beliefs and identities fall prey to these generalizations, the very place of religion in politics is rarely questioned across the political spectrum. It does not matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat — in order to be a good, moral leader, the American narrative all but states that you have to be religious.
No matter how the majority tries to spin it, marginalizing the secular demographic is discrimination. Whether one is a monotheist, a polytheist or an atheist; Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Wiccan... all people, regardless of cultural identity, deserve equal thought and respect. To put it simply: religion does not belong in politics.
There is a difference between Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) going to the church of his choice any day and in any way he chooses and him uncritically proclaiming that “any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief” during his presidential campaign. The former is freedom of religion, a right fortunately guaranteed in our country. The latter is ignoring the reality of American religious diversity. Statements like these disenfranchise diverse spiritual demographics and write them off as unimportant and irrelevant.
Within the scope of national politics, Cruz is not alone in his sentiment. With politicians, religious affiliation, generally Christianity, is assumed. It is politically unsound to declare non-belief, despite the alleged separation of church and state. In the 113th Congress, only one representative identified as unaffiliated — less than .5 percent of Congress. How is that fair representation when, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, 28 percent of Americans identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated?
The problem extends far outside of national politics. Any official in a public position of authority must be aware of spiritual diversity. If a teacher wants to hold an open Bible study at her house after school, or sees his students at Mass, that is entirely within their right of religious freedom. Those actions, however, are very different from a teacher leading a class-wide prayer during school hours with students who may or may not share in their faith. In that context, they are acting as a public official and they have to remain unaffiliated in order to ensure that they demonstrate religious tolerance to all students. Likewise, when politicians such as Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee claim that “in every person’s life the only thing that makes life truly worth living the next day is knowing that that emptiness is filled by the Lord Jesus Christ,” they legitimize their religion, and their religion only.
Atheism, agnosticism or any other self-identifier of irreligion is politically unpopular for a number of reasons — just about all of which stem from a false conflation between religion and government. Religious freedom does not mean the freedom to impose a majority religion as normative and especially not as a necessary quality of a good leader. There are people all over this country who are implicitly being taught that their unique beliefs or non-belief is something wrong or abnormal. Most of those in the religious majority do not intend for this to happen and many do not realize that it does. Ignorance of a situation, however, does not negate the reality of it. Having a different belief system than the person next to you does not make either of you right or wrong. It just makes you different, a trait that should be celebrated instead of swept under the rug.
