Pete Stark. One of my “TO-DO” projects is to infer the real proportion of atheists in Congress based on demographic variables.
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Meta
This sounds like a fun project. Based on demographics, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank would make the cut.
This, of course, would be assuming that members of Congress are representative of those who have similar demographic indicators. They’re not exactly a random sample.
They’re not exactly a random sample.
right, way more educated, and way more politically polarized. my thought was to just evaluate dems and repubs separately.
How do you know Pete Stark is an atheist?
Aydin,
Stark has declared himself so.
I respect Congressman Stark. Check on youtube for his encounter with a teabagger-rightist-xtian type with a camera, when Stark nearly beat the sh**t out of the little Gary Bauer wannabe whining about a few tax increases on his daddy’s estate.
Not attending sunday school does not equal supporting Aynnie Rynd-o-nomics
Stark has the demeanor of Gulag prison camp guard. Not a good atheist role model.
Ah better old fashioned stalinist-marines than Chrissy Snitchens, or….Osiris forbid , mormonics
J-k. Stark’s not that “liberal” anyway
His overall DW-Nominate is -.575, making him the 47th most liberal-leaning legislator out of the 3,320 that have served since 1932. 47/3320. I’d say that makes him a liberal. Readers of this blog would probably be all over the guy, but for his stated secularism.
There’s an article at Wikipedia (not my favorite source) entitled “Members of the 111th United States Congress” that gives the religious demographics of the body. Ten members have not declared a religious affiliation. Stark is, on paper, a Unitarian Universalist, along with two others.
It’s rather unfortunate that atheism is all too often accompanied by the sin of leftism. I guess it makes sense though, the majority of people need some sort of utopian ideal to cling to in the end.
Approving of slightly higher tax rates or reasonable govt. programs (as Stark apparently does), and being opposed to endless warfare does not really imply “liberal”, except to the Aynnie Rynd types who have taken over many so-called secular blogs.
Since Reagan, marginal tax rates have been substantially lower than they were under Nixon (or Eisenhower for that matter),regardless of what the teabagger hysteria crew claims. This isn’t just about taxes.
Civil liberties in deep blue Maryland:
http://seasonsoftumultanddiscord.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/the-modern-police-state/#comments
Lefties will always be disappointed because their latest hero will never be able to transform the US into Sweden with more diversity.
There are probably many more Atheists in government than we know about. It’s political suicide in most districts to associate with Atheists. I’m sure many people here have read opinion polls that show Atheists to be public enemy #1 ranking less favorably than Gays, Blacks, and Gay Blacks. Many still can’t understand that someone can believe in morality but not God.
@icr
Our SWAT Teams are out of control. The problem is that we have way more than we need. I’m guessing that some Maryland politicians got some sweetheart deals with DHS and now the State of Maryland has an police force the size of a Western European military. I’ve heard horror stories from friends about armored soldiers (lets call them what they are) wielding sub-machine guns swarming people’s houses to bust them for small quantities of marijuana. PG county has serious crime problems but this is still overkill.
An example of such a poll
http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm
I have a hard time believing that most politicians worship anything other than power. But then again I’m a shameless cynic.
” I’m sure many people here have read opinion polls that show Atheists to be public enemy #1 ranking less favorably than Gays, Blacks, and Gay Blacks. Many still can’t understand that someone can believe in morality but not God.”
Just speaking as someone who is gay [lesbian] and was atheist/agnostic for most of my life, I always object when ppl make such statements. Sure, people say they don’t like atheists, but hatred against atheists manifests itself in completely different ways than hatred of other groups. You can see this when you look at FBI hate crimes data (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/data/table_01.html). Atheists/agnostics may not be trusted for public office, but they don’t appear to be targeted by hate crimes nearly to the extent as other minority groups. Yes, atheists/non-believers do face discrimination in the political arena, and it’s a shame, but lets not make statements like “they’re/we’re public enemy number 1.”
I too suspect that are lots more atheists in public office than are willing to admit it. Just like I bet that there are a lot of ppl in Congress who only openly declare their support for Israel or opposition to gay marriage for political reasons, not personal conviction.
I think the difficulty inherent in determining which politicians are atheist/agnostic/indifferent lies in the fact that very likely many, many more of them are atheists/agnostics/indifferent than would admit it, since to say you’re a non-believer is political suicide. The fact that a representative or senator publicly utters the correct pieties bears no relation to what he or she privately believes–or, more accurately, doesn’t believe. Probably in the deep south, and the rural parts of the middle west and southwest, you will find more members of Congress who not only profess belief but actually do believe. In the northwest, or northeast, or the major urban areas, there are probably many more private non-believers.
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susan, my friends & acquaintances who have worked in DC have implied that some politicians, especially democrats, don’t always mask their distaste for religion. but the information is so potentially radioactive that liberal activists and lobbyists would never talk about it openly.
Oh, it’s absolutely radioactive, Razib. I take that as a given. And it is a force to be reckoned with ever since the Christian right decided to flex its muscles. Although there was probably never a time in U.S. history when an avowed atheist could be elected to national or statewide office.
Pete Stark officially goes by Unitarian. In my experience modern Unitarianism is essentially a humanist club disguising itself as religion, so I would look at other politicians who go by the Unitarian label to find possible atheists in position of influence.
Thomas Andrews was a Unitarian member of Congress for Maine in the 90s, Bill Cohen former Senator from Maine and Secretary of Defense under Clinton is also a Unitarian. Mike Gravel, Senator from Alaska and fringe Presidential candidate is another one. The former governor of Michigan James Blanchard is a Unitarian.
I don’t know whether Unitarianism was already this far removed from being an actual religion when men like John Adams and Daniel Webster were active, so that’s a different question but current Unitarians seem to me like very likely candidates for at least agnosticism.
Aside of those guys, I’d be shocked if there weren’t a fair few agnostics at least amongst liberal Democrats who officially go by Judaism or Catholicism as their religion – especially since the views of those religions seem to often have absolutely zero impact on their personal beliefs and decisions.
“I don’t know whether Unitarianism was already this far removed from being an actual religion when men like John Adams and Daniel Webster were active”
I don’t think it was. Have you ever read the 19th century novel “Little Women”? It was written by a Unitarian author. However, the book was quite religious in many ways. The father volunteers as a chaplain in the Union army during the Civil War, and the family prays for divine intervention to save the life of one of the sisters. It’s not explicitly Christian, but it’s not humanistic, either.
The modern day Unitarian Universalist Church is like a religion for people who don’t like religion and are fairly socially liberal (hence its support for abortion/gay rights).
@muffy
I see your point about hate crimes. I was thinking more in terms of groups people distrust in positions of power.
fwiw, i’ve seen polls, 50% of unitarians are atheists & agnostics (the term “humanists” in the church), 50% other stuff. of the other stuff, a minority are unitarian christians. but this varies by region. unitarians in the northeast are much more likely to be christian, those in the west more likely to be humanist.
The most powerful atheist politician in the USA? Barack Obama, surely.
Does anyone really think there was any more to all those years of attendance at Trinity United than political expedience? For goodness’ sake. He more or less admits it straight out in his autobiography.
john, that’s a defensible assertion. but i think i would bet more money that if i could look into his brain he was some sort of agnostic/”higher power” person.
When I was in law school, in a study group studying the religion cases, a member of our group asked for a show of hands as to what we thought of religion. About half of us liked religion and the other half didn’t; ie were atheists/agnostics/humanists.
Congressmen are usually middle brow lawyers who climb the political ladder. I suspect about half are atheist/agnostic but pretend to be religious.
The DW-nominate vote view ratings are crap. I looked up the most leftwing congressmen from the 1930s, two of them probablE Communists, and their ratings were far too low (Communist John Bernard at 1142+).
They may be better for more recent periods, but that’s wildly wrong.