Two more House Democrats have (quietly) joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus

Reps. Kevin Mullin and Jan Schakowsky are the newest members of the secular caucus

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The Congressional Freethought Caucus has grown two members larger: Democratic Reps. Kevin Mullin (CA-15) and Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) have been added to the ever-expanding CFC roster, which now sits at 17 people.

Mullin is a former California state lawmaker who first got elected to Congress in 2022. Schakowsky has been in office since 1999 and serves in House leadership as a Chief Deputy Whip. Both are running for re-election.

Reps. Kevin Mullin and Jan Schakowsky

Like most of their colleagues in the Caucus, both Mullin and Schakowsky are religious. The Pew Research Center, in their 2023 roundup, listed Mullin as Catholic and Schakowsky as Jewish.

Mullin’s membership was first announced in February by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It’s not exactly clear when Schakowsky joined the Caucus, though a check of the Internet Archive suggests both names were only added sometime in the past three weeks. Neither the candidates nor the CFC have made any public announcements about the affiliation. Schakowsky’s House website does not yet list her CFC membership. In an email, the CFC confirmed their additions to the group.

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

It now has a total of 17 members, including co-chair Huffman. All of them are Democrats. The others are:

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Also a co-chair)
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) (Also a 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)

(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 this 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.

Maybe the most shocking thing about these recent additions to the list? Based on the total lack of media interest, no one seems to care… which is to say, no one, not even 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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