Reps. Becca Balint and Eric Swalwell have joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus

The group, which champions reason-based policies and opposes discrimination against atheists, now stands at 22 members

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The Congressional Freethought Caucus has just added two more members: Reps. Becca Balint (D-VT) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA).

Balint was first elected as Vermont’s sole member of Congress in 2022, after serving eight years in the State Senate. Back in November, she became the first Jewish congressperson to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War.

Swalwell was elected in 2012 and became a regular fixture on MSNBC during the Trump era. He also served as a prosecutor during Trump’s second impeachment and used that as a launching pad to run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020. That campaign fizzled out fairly quickly.

Ironically, Swalwell entered office by defeating four-decade incumbent Pete Stark, who at the time was the first (and only) member of Congress to openly announce that he was a non-theist. (I wrote at the time about how Swalwell was unfairly using Stark’s opposition to what we would now call Christian Nationalism against him. Since then, however, he’s been much better about church/state issues.)

The caucus now includes 22 members, all of whom are Democrats.

Like most of their colleagues in the CFC, both Balint and Swalwell are religious. The Pew Research Center, in their 2023 roundup, listed them as Jewish and Protestant, respectively. That doesn’t prevent them, of course, from supporting church/state separation and protecting freedom of religion for everyone (including the non-religious).

Neither member has made any public announcements about their affiliation just yet. Still, the CFC’s website now lists both as members.

In case you need a refresher, the CFC was first announced in 2018 by Rep. Jared Huffman, a Humanist (and fellow Californian) and currently the only openly non-religious member of Congress.

The 22 members now include:

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) (Co-chair)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Co-chair)
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI)
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA)
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL)
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA)
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA)
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX)
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT)
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA)

(Jerry McNerney, a former co-chair of the group, chose not to run for re-election in 2022. Another former member, Carolyn Maloney, lost her primary to another Democrat after their congressional districts in New York were redrawn last cycle.)

To be clear, this isn't an “atheist club” for Congress, as some critics have suggested. This is just a group of lawmakers dedicated to promoting reason-based public policy, keeping church and state separate, opposing discrimination against non-religious people, and championing freedom of thought around the world. There’s really no reason anyone should be against this. That’s why there’s nothing hypocritical about the fact that nearly every member of the Caucus is religious.

The hope is that the membership continues growing—making the Caucus more influential—while the stigma of being an atheist (or even being associated with non-religiosity) decreases across the country. Those two things are more closely linked than we might imagine. Keep in mind that the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which typically promotes a version of conservative Christianity, is much larger and has members from both major parties. By that metric, the Freethought Caucus has a long way to go.

As I’ve said before, perhaps the most shocking thing about the Caucus is that, based on the relative lack of media interest, people don’t seem to care who the members are… which is to say, no one—not even in right-wing media—thinks it’s a big deal for sitting House members to align with a group defending atheists.

That also means none of these lawmakers believes joining the Caucus will be a concern for them heading into the 2024 elections, which may come as a shock to anyone who remembers a time when aligning with atheism was considered one of the biggest taboos in politics.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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