Commentary by Janet Marugg | FāVS News
As a Secular Humanist, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Convention was the closest thing to church I’ve experienced in a LONG time. It left rapture in my heart that I hope to keep going, do-goodery being my drug of choice.
I main-veined the four-day Do-Goodery Convention where I heard hope and joy from every speaker, and I saw hope and joy lived freely on American faces. All that talk of caring for each other, caring for human health and wellbeing, caring for our children, caring for elders, caring for all people, is talk I’m happy to let under my skin. After four days, the assignment is clear: do good in the world. So churchy. So humanitarian. No hangover.
Where the politics of gloom and grievances traffic in fear and problems, the politics of hope and joy spark my Humanism beyond the addictive dopamine. Citizens have a duty to critique their government and to expose problems, but critics are never constructive unless they also bear a possible solution or solutions. Complaining but staying the same, going in the same direction, or worse, going backward, continues the failures complained about. It’s always reasonable to go forward, to seek solutions.
DNC Convention Embraces Religious Diversity and Secular Values
Society is unity in diversity. Religiously speaking, the DNC Convention was full of the faithful, a united mix of faiths. And in this space, the unchurched and faithless were also represented and unified with the faithful.
While the nightly speakers got most media coverage, the Secular Democrats of America sponsored Tuesday afternoon’s Congressional Freethought Caucus, the discussion: The Dangers of Christian Nationalism. The panel consisted of co-founders, Reps Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Dr. Khyati Joshi, author of “White Christian Privilege” and was moderated by Katherine Stewart, author of “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.” Even in this space of an unpleasant topic, humor perked. “God,” said Rep. Cleaver, a Christian, “shall not be pimped.” Somebody make a bumper sticker.
Raskin explained that religion and politics can mix as well as ethics in politics, that faith can inspire people to pass good public policy, but the government must remain secular to allow all faiths to prosper and to allow all faiths to inspire. And it’s constitutional.
Environment, Ethics, and Shared Human Ideals
Another topic breached: our environment, one of the 10 Humanist Commitments. Christian Nationalists are mongers for culture wars including the care for our human environmental well-being. Somehow faith becomes a weapon Christian Nationalists wield against science. Life-saving science. Solution-seeking science.
The Supreme Court of the United States came up and Raskin called for ethics reform. I agree, of course, because another Humanist Commitment is ongoing Ethical Development, and I expect as much from the highest court in the land.
The Center for Freethought Equality, the political arm of the American Humanist Association, had a booth at the DNC convention to promote secular government and shared human values. I’m in the right place. All this human diversity on display and it comes down to identical human values. We all value freedom. We all value human well-being. We all value hope and joy.
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.
Thanks for this celebration of the values promoted by the Dem convention and by secular huminists….let’s hope the celebration can continue post-election. As a liberal Christian, I too found the religious diversity refreshing.
The nation has the potential to come out of the Trumpista Fear Mongering / Heritage Foundation Project 2025 fever dream / Christian Nationalist retrograde morass both stronger and with an invigorated understanding that there is more to unite us than divide us, and that those dividers, while noisy and at times way too influential insofar as they have coopted the levers of power, are and have always been only a nasty minority in the land.