Two Years Ago, a Republican Became Director of the Country’s Largest Atheist Lobbying Group.
How Is She Doing?
May 3, 2014
By Hemant Mehta
Two years ago today, the Secular Coalition for America — the largest lobbying group in Washington, D.C. representing non-religious Americans — announced that its new Executive Director would be a Republican who had worked under President George W. Bush and conservative senators Trent Lott and Jeff Sessions.
While Edwina Rogers focused on health and economic issues with those politicians, her GOP background rubbed a lot of atheist activists the wrong way. They wondered if someone who had worked for social conservatives could really be a reliable voice for Secular Americans. Rogers was optimistic that her background wouldn’t hinder her new position — in fact, she believed she could get her foot in the door in places where liberal lobbyists might have been shut out. Still, my initial interview with her provoked a lot of skeptical (and harsh) feedback from readers and other bloggers.
But that was two years ago. Has Rogers changed her mind about the Republican Party’s ability to appeal to atheists and agnostics? Has the backlash died down?
I emailed her a list of questions earlier this week and her responses are posted below. (I added links where I thought they would be helpful and made slight edits for the sake of clarity.)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/03/two-years-ago-a-republican-became-director-of-the-countrys-largest-atheist-lobbying-group-how-is-she-doing/
This one is interesting:
What doors have been opened to you as a Republican insider that might not have been opened for other secular leaders?
I think my Republican credentials have helped to get us meetings or invitations we wouldn’t have gotten previously. For example, I was personally invited to attend the CPAC conference this year and was introduced to the board members of the conservative coalition that organized the conference. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to talk to conservative leaders about their nontheistic and secular support base, who deserve to have their values represented.
Unfortunately our movement is sometimes misrepresented as partisan. As a Secular Republican leader, I have helped us overcome that misconception by building bipartisan bridges and dispelling the myths about our movement to fellow Republicans. And it’s working slowly but surely, for the first time this year on our Congressional Report Card. Although no Republicans received A’s, three Republican Senators received B’s for the first time since the Secular Coalition began compiling report cards.
= new reply since forum marked as read
