The only openly non-theist was defeated ... by a fellow Democrat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Stark




And now roughly 1/5 of the country has nobody with their religious alignment in the whole of Congress.

So you're anti-religious, not non-religious.

(11-07-2012 04:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  So you're anti-religious, not non-religious.

I'd say if you invert that you'd have an outright majority of Americans.

I don't think Barney Frank and some others are waving a lot of Bibles around Capitol Hill. If anything, most Dems are protective of church/state separation & non-theocracy, which is what we want/need.

(11-07-2012 04:40 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(11-07-2012 04:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  So you're anti-religious, not non-religious.

I'd say if you invert that you'd have an outright majority of Americans.

That's not the question here. You made the complaint, not your alleged majority of Americans.

Not to mention you ignore decades of US history to create some dramatic moment.

(11-07-2012 10:10 PM)Zipfanatik Wrote:  I don't think Barney Frank and some others are waving a lot of Bibles around Capitol Hill. If anything, most Dems are protective of church/state separation & non-theocracy, which is what we want/need.

Yeah, I'm an atheist and I don't care what anyone's religious affiliation is. Plenty of people in my party support secular government and the doctrine of religious freedom for all, and if they happen to be Christian then god bless 'em.

(11-08-2012 08:46 AM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(11-07-2012 04:40 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(11-07-2012 04:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  So you're anti-religious, not non-religious.

I'd say if you invert that you'd have an outright majority of Americans.

That's not the question here. You made the complaint, not your alleged majority of Americans.

Not to mention you ignore decades of US history to create some dramatic moment.

It isn't a complaint, it is an observation. About 1/5 the country is agnostic or atheist. Zero in Congress are the same.

(11-08-2012 01:34 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(11-08-2012 08:46 AM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(11-07-2012 04:40 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(11-07-2012 04:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  So you're anti-religious, not non-religious.

I'd say if you invert that you'd have an outright majority of Americans.

That's not the question here. You made the complaint, not your alleged majority of Americans.

Not to mention you ignore decades of US history to create some dramatic moment.

It isn't a complaint, it is an observation. About 1/5 the country is agnostic or atheist. Zero in Congress are the same.

Several are, they just aren't vocally anti-religious (although many are craftily anti-religious).

(11-08-2012 01:38 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Several are, they just aren't vocally anti-religious (although many are craftily anti-religious).

None that are publicly so. If they are, they're in the closet on it.

Your day is coming GTS. Change is slow.

I think quite a few members of Congress are privately non-believers. But the culture is still not quite to the point where most people still feel comfortable voting for someone like that. Unquestionably things are moving in that direction, however.

I don't claim there is any link between religious belief or non-belief and personality. But for whatever reason, Pete Stark was one of the biggest jerks in Congress. It is really heartening to see him lose. I have no reaso to doubt that Swalwell is a 100%, down-the-line leftist. But if he will simply express his views with some minimal courtesy and respect for other people, he will be a huge improvement over the a$$hole Pete Stark. Good riddance and may we not see his like again.

By the way, does anyone really think that Barney Frank (Mass/4th) believes in God? Or that John Olver (Mass/1st) does? Both of them are leaving Congress along with Stark. I know for a fact that Olver has been listed as having "no religious affiliation" by some public references. But that could have been an error or omission by the editors. I don't know.

Jim McDermott (Wash/7th) was re-elected and I would wager he is an agnostic/atheist/whatever, too, although he has been publicly listed as Episcopalian by some sources. I will always enjoy the memory of McDermott being legally required to pay John Boehner more than a million dollars in legal fees (about $1.1m total) after an 11-year-feud/lawsuit that arose out of the liberals' anti-Gingrich jihad of the mid-90s. McDermott is not a personally rich man (as members of Congress go), so he had to hold several fundraisers to pay off the judgment, even though Boehner had previously offered to let him off the hook if he would simply admit he was wrong and donate some $$$ (a lot less than $1.1m) to a charity of Boehner's choosing. Quite a jewel there for the people of Washington State.

Some of the founding fathers of our country were troubled with their own beliefs. George Washington preferred to use the word Providence in place of God. He along with Jefferson were part of a movement that was called Deism.
From Wikipedia:
Deism holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way, allowing it to run according to the laws of nature that he configured when he created all things. God is thus conceived to be wholly transcendent and never immanent. For Deists, human beings can only know God via reason and the observation of nature, but not by revelation or supernatural manifestations (such as miracles) – phenomena which Deists regard with caution if not skepticism.....,following. Deism does not ascribe any specific qualities to a deity beyond non-intervention. Deism is related to naturalism because it credits the formation of life and the universe to a higher power, using only natural processes. Deism may also include a spiritual element, involving experiences of God and nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

Washington and Jefferson both wrote a lot of things about religious subjects, much of it contradictory to other things they wrote at other points in their life. Some of their writings were firmly and clearly rooted in "orthodox" (note the lower-case) Christianity, and other of their writings were not.