Secular Elected Officials Form New Organization

By now, there are various subjects that are familiar, and one is the meaning of "religion" and the need to have an inclusive view of the term. At some point, "religion" can be defined in ways that seem empty to some degree, but that is basically true with many big terms. As Justice Kagan noted in a dissent regarding invocations at town meetings:

They “speak of the depths of [one’s] life, of the source of [one’s] being, of [one’s] ultimate concern, of what [one] take[s] seriously without any reservation.”

People often have a more limited definition involving God or the supernatural, even if certain religions or at least spiritual traditions (the overlap clear to me) do not require this. I read the basic foundation beliefs of the Unitarian-Universalist Church and they appear quite similar to that of the "ten commitments" of humanism that I got on my wall. "Religion" to me suggests a certain area of human concern separate than mere political or otherwise that can be very important. I'm reminded of the meaning of "sacred" in an interesting book I have on religious beliefs on abortion.

My ultimate concern here is not "secularism" as much as freethinking, though yes, the two overlap. So, yes, the government itself should basically be secular. The exceptions to me are troubling as I have noted in the past, even if they might not be as troubling as other things in various cases. This includes use of things like "In God We Trust," which promotes the idea of a certain type of God, even if you can define the term in such a broad way to mean "good" in basically a secular way. But, that isn't the common meaning and that is unrealistic. The same applies to "under God" in the Pledge. And, to be consistent, as I feel a bit annoyingly that I have to be, "religion" also has a common meaning.

This is an extended prologue to the title of this post, which I saw at Religion Clause blog. As noted there, the organization has the purpose to: "provide support, information and a sounding board for non-religious elected officials at a time when a growing number of people choose not to affiliate with a religion." Its website itself (About Page) more broadly discusses things:

These elected officials do not hold theistic or other supernatural beliefs and seek to govern and advance public policy based on evidence, reason, and compassion. They use many identifiers, including: atheist, humanist, agnostic, skeptic, nonreligious, freethinker, nonbeliever, religiously unaffiliated, and/or spiritual but not religious. We use the word “secular” as shorthand for the wide variety of nonreligious identifiers our members choose.

Again, these terms to me cover a lot of ground. I'm not really trying to be coy here. I personally would fit here somehow though I would probably feel comfortable in a U-U congregation, at least some of them. It seems silly to me to not call oneself "religious" but belong to an organization, perhaps go to weekly meetings with others and do various things that typical religious people do, just because you do not believe or accept supernatural forces. Lots of people generally advance public policy "based on evidence, reason, and compassion" while believing in them in some nature too. Some do not have much of an opinion on the matter -- they might be open to the existence of God, but they simply don't concern themselves with it -- and might be better seen as "non-religious" than some on that list. Plus, the term "nonbeliever" is just question begging.

Again, I get the general idea, especially since the vast number of public officials here belong to some "religious" organization. Some even might be atheistic deep down, but are open to government support of their organization's beliefs or other religion organization's beliefs. This gets to why the whole thing has me in knots. The next logical statement would be some sort of freethinking, separation of church and state comment. But, the group here isn't saying they are for that. They are saying they themselves "hold" certain beliefs. Their goals very well are likely generally copacetic to me, but so would the goals of some liberal leaning religious groups.

Bottom line, there is some hazy group out there, and support is a good thing.  To be evenhanded, again, I'll be welcoming.