No Such Thing As An "Atheist Politician"

The Inaugural Speech


On January 20, 2009, in his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama became the first President ever to acknowledge the existence of non-believers. He said, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.”

We are growing in numbers - according to the Pew Centre study, as much as 16.1% of Americans are not affiliated to any faith and that is approximately 48 million people.

Hip hip...hooray! One step at a time....it starts now!

My thought: All politicians are supposed to be believers. Majority of the population is stil theists. If a politician even mentions that he is a nonbeliever or an Atheist it would mean a career killer. So there's no such thing as an Atheist politician (about 0.001%? Sure!)

According to Jon Rice, as posted on Democrats and Liberal Archives, "I am most positive that there are a lot of politicians that are non-believers. But every one of the Republican and Democratic contenders for the White House is, naturally, religious – and their piety is evidently increasing daily, as exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s revelation (pun intended) that only her ‘faith’ got her through her marriage difficulties, and the almost daily proclamations of religious fervor by every major candidate. We are presented every election with a choice: the religious candidate, or the religious candidate. At the Federal level, there is one atheist to represent the views of my 15 million fellow non-believers. There are virtually no atheists at the state level, either – no great surprise, since Arkansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas all include language in their constitutions proclaiming that an official may be "excluded from holding office" if she/he does not "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being”.

However, In time, when Atheism is more understood and embraced by a lot more people, I'm sure they'd come out of the closet. This much is certian, there are "Atheist Politicians" hiding in the closet. I betcha!