The Democratic National Committee (DNC) unanimously passed a resolution August 24 that embraced “religiously unaffiliated” voters and belittled Americans of faith.
The resolution proclaimed that 70 percent of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans share the values of the Democrat Party.
‘The religiously unaffiliated demographic represents the largest religious group within the Democratic Party, growing from 19% in 2007 to one in three today,” stated the resolution, passed during the DNC’s summer meeting in San Francisco.
In a reach for secularists or the nonreligious, the Democrats pointed out “religiously unaffiliated Americans overwhelmingly share the Democratic Party’s values, with 70% voting for Democrats in 2018, 80% supporting same-sex marriage, and 61% saying immigrants make American society stronger.”
The DNC further embraced and defended the nonreligious, asserting they “have often been subjected to unfair bias and exclusion in American society, particularly in the areas of politics and policymaking where assumptions of religiosity have long predominated.”
The Democrats continued by demeaning Americans of faith, referring to them as “those most loudly claiming that morals, values, and patriotism must be defined by their religious views.” Further, the DNC said religious Americans have “used those religious views with misplaced claims of ‘religious liberty,’ to justify public policy that has threatened the civil rights and liberties of many Americans, including but not limited to the LGBT community, women” and others.
The Democrats concluded that since “nonreligious Americans made up 17% of the electorate in 2018,” they also “have the potential to deliver millions more votes for Democrats in 2020 with targeted outreach to further increase turnout of nonreligious voters.”
As Fox News reported, the resolution was backed by the Secular Coalition of America, a group that lobbies on behalf of atheists, agnostics, and humanists on public policy. The group celebrated the DNC’s resolution as the first time a major party “embraced American nonbelievers.”
Ron Millar, coordinator of the Freethought Equality Fund PAC, which promotes the election of humanists and atheists at all levels of government, said:
We have seen record numbers of nonreligious candidates running for office. Hopefully, the DNC’s recognition of nonreligious voters will lead to more representation in elected offices, so that America’s lawmaking bodies more accurately reflect the growing number of nonbelievers in our great country.
Similarly, Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, referred to the DNC’s resolution as a “political landmark” that is “long overdue.”
However, Michael Wear, who served as a faith adviser to former President Barack Obama, called the DNC’s resolution “stupid on a fundamental level that transcends electoral politics.”
Wear, the author of Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America, told Fox News a couple of weeks ago the Democrats had an opportunity to pull religious Americans into their tent because “President Trump has lowered the bar to reach conservative religious voters to an extent that we haven’t seen in this century.”
However, on Friday, Wear, still reacting to the DNC’s resolution, tweeted, “Trump is absolutely going to run this into the ground, and not just with white evangelicals.”