Insight on Secular Coalition for America’s meeting with White House officials
Secular Coalition for America (SCA) and member organizations met with officials of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on May 14, 2021, to discuss their priorities for the Biden administration.
The meeting consisted of representatives of SCA, American Humanist Association, American Atheists, Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
This was the first time secular organizations met with the White House office since 2010.
A number of our members questioned why SCA had not clued Republican Atheists (RA) in about this meeting with the White House, since we are an organization representing a growing faction of atheists in the United States. Additionally, this could have been a great opportunity to showcase not only to the White House, but also to the public, a wider diversity of atheists and counter the common perception that “all atheists are Democrats” (a perception that is very harmful to atheists in the United States).
After communicating with SCA, we learned that the organizations involved are paying member organizations of SCA. RA is not a paying member, therefore we were not involved in any communication or invited to the meeting.
While SCA can conduct business how it chooses, we find this to be an unfavorable way of representing atheists to the White House and public, considering it is essentially only representing organizations that are willing to align with SCA and pay up.
RA has had issues with SCA in the past, primarily when we were told SCA would publish a blog written by us but never did despite RA’s president spending hours writing a piece and making edits per their request (here is the blog that was rejected). Instead of making amends and offering an alternative, SCA stopped responding to our emails completely. The staff member we worked with at that time went on to become very involved with the organization Secular Democrats of America. In 2020, SCA promoted the organization Secular Democrats of America, while still having not mentioned RA to its following. To the point, we have had no reason to become a member with an organization clearly showing partisanship (while claiming to be non-partisan).
Further, we are often at odds with a number of its member organizations. For example, American Atheists was a partner with Women’s March, an organization that was clearly established to oppose Trump under the guise of “women’s rights,” and was headed by controversial figures, such as notorious Linda Sarsour, who eventually had to step down from their positions for anti-Semitism and friendship with recognized anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, leader of Nation of Islam. Many of our supporters have become disenfranchised with American Atheists.
American Humanist Association is undoubtedly one of the most controversial organizations SCA has as a member organization, often claiming to represent “atheists” to the public and entangling the US atheist community into its bizarre humanist ideology. To be so closely affiliated to these organizations would be detrimental to RA’s reputation and work against our efforts of building a platform for atheist Republicans.
So at this point Republican Atheists will stand as a lone organization. We plan to send a letter to the White House office officials to inform them about Republican Atheists and the values of our members based on a survey that was conducted in late 2020 by our Board Member and Arizona Correspondent, Scott Root. We will be publishing this letter to the public in the near future.
Photo credit: Lauren Ell
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