The humanist and atheist community continued to see electoral gains in the 2022 election. Once the newly elected candidates are sworn into office in early 2023, there will be seventy-two elected officials who are public about their humanist, atheist, and nonreligious identity serving in Congress and state legislatures in thirty states. Prior to the 2016 election there were only five elected officials serving in state legislatures who publicly identified with the humanist and atheist community. After the 2016 election, that number grew to seventeen, forty-seven after the 2018 election, and sixty-three after the 2020 election.
The list of elected officials who identify with our community can be seen at the end of this article. These public servants use a variety of identifiers from our community including: humanist, atheist, agnostic, secular, nonreligious, culturally Jewish, secular Buddhist, religiously unaffiliated, and spiritual but not religious. All share the values of our community for a pluralist democracy, the separation of church and state, social and economic justice, and evidence-based public policy.
More than a quarter of our country’s population now identifies as religiously unaffiliated, and we are making our values known at the ballot box and are running for office. As the atheist and humanist community becomes more involved in the political and electoral arena, we will help create a safer, saner, stronger, and more secular America.