By Sarah Levin
Last year, I sent my first newsletter as the founder of Secular Strategies. The subject line: “January was a doozy.”
At the time, President Trump had taken the National Prayer Breakfast—an inappropriate, if not unconstitutional gathering between religious and government leaders—and made it a celebration of his impeachment acquittal, along with a speech claiming that everyone in attendance who didn’t support him wasn’t a genuine Christian.
Few knew, of course, that January was only the start of a draining, destructive, and terrifying year for our country and every nation across the globe. Yet despite the pandemic, wall-to-wall election coverage, and the actions of our former president and his cadre of political appointees, we have a lot to be proud of.
In working with our clients throughout 2020, Secular Strategies built new connections, collaborated with organizations, advocates, and elected officials, and fought hard for the secular community at the local, state, and federal level.
Together, we’re riding a groundswell of momentum as the new administration, Congress, and state and local governments begin to craft and implement policy.
Protecting our communities online and in the real world
Throughout the year, our national discussion around social media content and how to moderate it safely has grown in intensity and urgency.
Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) made progress on that front, working with Members of Congress and Facebook to address the silencing of ex-Muslims and other atheist groups on the platform.
Effective engagement with social media companies around protections for secular communities at home and abroad will only become more high stakes moving forward, especially in nations with extreme blasphemy laws. To that end, EXMNA worked with the American Humanist Association to support anti-blasphemy resolutions that passed in both the House and the Senate.
EXMNA also worked with Mashal Naseem—daughter of Tahir Naseem, who was murdered in Pakistan while on trial for blasphemy—to get her Illinois representatives, Rep. Casten and Sens. Duckworth and Durbin, to send a letter to the State Department urging justice for Tahir.
Coupled with additional advocacy, messaging, and fundraising efforts for EXMNA, Center for Freethought Equality, SMART Recovery, and Jews for a Secular Democracy, Secular Strategies has been building and strengthening political infrastructure for key nonreligious organizations across the country.
Electoral Influence
We also know that the majority of the secular community votes for Democrats. To develop that unity into political power, we’ve been working diligently to ensure the Democratic Party understands how critical secular voters will be to their future.
Building off a DNC resolution recognizing the values and importance of the religiously unaffiliated and electing an atheist to the DNC Interfaith Council, Secular Democrats of America made substantial progress in growing their electoral influence.
That work included:
- Gaining recognition by the DNC as a partner organization and holding an event in conjunction with the DNC convention;
- Ensuring that humanists were prominently featured on the DNC Interfaith Council’s programming, which tens of thousands of Americans tuned into;
- Launching Humanists for Biden, building secular support for the President’s successful campaign;
- Continuing to facilitate state-level political organizing, including helping to establish a new Secular Democrats of Florida;
- Successfully pushing for an acknowledgment in the DNC Platform of the nonreligious and the “paramount importance of maintaining the separation between church and state”;
- Hosting more than a dozen phonebanks for Sens. Ossoff and Warnock during the Georgia runoff; and
- Raising thousands from the secular community for Stacey Abrams’ organization, Fair Fight PAC.
Future-oriented
Our work with Secular Democrats of America also included spearheading production of their blueprint for the future, “Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House,” which was developed in collaboration with Representatives Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin, co-chairs of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, caucus member Rep. Jerry McNerney, and a number of leaders in the secular movement.
The report calls out President Trump for advancing a right-wing Christian nationalist agenda and offers a path for the Biden-Harris administration to restore the secular government envisioned by our nation’s founders.
The document has drawn the ire of Glenn Beck, the Family Research Council, and others across the Religious Right—for good reason. It is a detailed, research-driven guide that we hope will drive the religious freedom policies of both the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress throughout the next four years.
We’ve already see the document pay dividends. The President’s statement on Religious Freedom Day mirrored calls in the document for the inclusion of nonreligious Americans, as did his reversal of the Muslim Ban, which stated that the ban was “inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.”
I’ll be sharing more details about the report moving forward as we work to advocate for adoption of its policies throughout the year.
Well-wishes
As the pandemic continues to impact every aspect of our lives, I hope this message finds you, your families, and your friends safe and healthy.
Thank you for your support of Secular Strategies and your advocacy on behalf of the secular community at home and abroad.
While 2020 as a whole was indeed a doozy, it was also deeply successful—the groundwork we laid is a strong foundation for our efforts to make real change through the new administration.
I look forward to connecting with you throughout the year as we continue that challenging, rewarding work. Together, we can fight to establish a government that truly reflects the secular vision established in our nation’s Constitution.
