A Democrat Sounds the Alarm on Christian Nationalism in Congress

Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, thought he was going to make himself a political pariah when he announced publicly that he did not believe in God.

Mr. Huffman, the only self-declared “humanist” in Congress, found that constituents in his mostly liberal Northern California district were unfazed.

Now Mr. Huffman has written a book in which he takes on how religion influences politics in America, in which he argues that extreme Christian nationalism, embraced and enabled by influential Republicans, is the country’s most dangerous political movement. He also accuses many of his own Democratic colleagues of being “incapable” of naming and confronting the threat.

In “No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy From Christian Nationalism,” which is to be published this month, Mr. Huffman, who grew up in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of Mormonism, argues that the rise of Christian nationalism in American politics is openly targeting democracy, church-state separation and pluralism...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/us/politics/democrat-huffman-humanist-religion-christianity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Alan Lightman’s spiritual materialism

…I call myself a spiritual materialist. By “materialist,” I mean that I believe the world is made of material stuff, and nothing more, and that material obeys rules and laws. Almost all scientists have such a belief. At the same time, like many of us, I have “spiritual” experiences: feelings of connection to other human beings and to the larger cosmos, moments of communion with wild animals, the appreciation of beauty, wonder. Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. We human beings stand in awe of those phenomena. That’s my view of spirituality... https://open.substack.com/pub/alanlightman1/p/the-miraculous-from-the-material?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’

Dreher: Well, Friedrich Nietzsche famously said in the late 19th century, “God is dead and we have killed him.” Nietzsche didn’t believe in God. He was talking about the idea of the Christian God in Western civilization. Nietzsche was not a romantic about this. He saw that it would be very dark and difficult for humanity to find some sense of meaning if God were dead.

And he was right. We can’t make our own meaning. Nietzsche was not a Nazi, but the ideological convulsions that came in the 20th century with Soviet Communism, with Nazism in Germany, and so forth, all of them are products of the death of God... [or maybe just good?]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/opinion/america-politics-weimar-rod-dreher.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Happy credo

If It’s not the only good, it’s still one of the better ones. “While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. The creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.” — Robert Ingersoll Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought

Does U.F.O. Disclosure Threaten Faith?

Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” is a movie in which characters argue about whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be a threat to religion, something that a great many people have decided to argue about since the Pentagon started releasing tranches of U.F.O.-related files.

The film’s formal perspective, not surprisingly given that Spielberg has always been both alien-obsessed and friendly to religious ideas and motifs, is that extraterrestrial encounters need not be a threat to faith in God. A nun who asks why a divinity would “make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us” seems to be speaking for the film itself.

But the story also illustrates why one of the popular conceptions of extraterrestrial encounters is a potential challenge to organized religion, with aliens stepping into the role that’s traditionally occupied by popes and prophets and mystics, angelic messengers or the Holy Spirit…

Ross Douthat 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/opinion/disclosure-day-ufo-religion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share