55. Sarah Levin on Secular Strategies to Mobilise Coalitions Defending Church–State Separation

 “We will lose a lot before we win — that’s just the reality of starting the race 50 years behind.” — Sarah M. Levin

Sarah M. Levin - strategist, lobbyist, founder of Secular Strategies and co-founder of The Secular Vote, joins us to explore how secular voters are reshaping U.S. politics. She breaks down the real demographics behind the “nones,” why neutrality protects both believers and non-believers, and how church–state separation is at the heart of today’s fights over rights, democracy, and pluralism.

Connect with Sarah:

• Website: sarahmlevin.com
• Secular Strategies: secularstrategies.com
• The Secular Vote: hesecularvote.com
• X (Twitter): @SarahMLevin
• LinkedIn: sarahmlevin

Topics we cover

 ✔︎ Why Secular Strategies exists
 ✔︎ “Unaffiliated” vs “atheist”: what the data really shows
 ✔︎ Secularism in law and public life
 ✔︎ Media myths about religious “revivals”
 ✔︎ Connecting secular voters with messages that resonate (one life, one world)
 ✔︎ How Christian nationalism drives today’s policy rollbacks
 ✔︎ Relationship-led coalition building across deep differences
 ✔︎ Inside The Secular Vote: correcting media blind spots
 ✔︎ Debunking the “anti-Christian bias” narrative
 ✔︎ State-level wins: transparency for healthcare sharing ministries
 ✔︎ Practical ways to get involved for the long term

Resources & further reading

• “Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe,” Pew Research Center (2024) – https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/01/24/religious-nones-in-america-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/
• Presidential Action on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” – The White House (2025) – https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/eradicating-anti-christian-bias/
• Religious Liberty Commission – U.S. Department of Justice – https://www.justice.gov/religious-liberty-commission

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Sarah M. Levin And Her Mission
• 1:37 Why Secular Strategies Was Founded
• 3:41 Who Non-Religious Americans Really Are
• 10:35 Building Trust And Interfaith Coalitions
• 14:49 Strange Bedfellows And Political Wins
• 16:30 Creating The Secular Vote
• 22:45 Messages That Move Secular Voters
• 27:12 Debunking “Anti‑Christian Bias” Claims
• 35:20 Going On Offence with Freethought & Facts
• 42:51 How To Get Involved And Stay Hopeful
• 46:36 Is the US a Secular Country?
• 50:10 Changing minds on Volleyball

Transcript

James Hodgson: 0:01

Welcome to the Humanism Now Podcast. I'm your host, James Hodgson. Our guest this week is Sarah M. Levin, co-founder of the Secular Vote and founder of Secular Strategies. Secular Strategies is a consulting firm that is pioneering the mobilization of secularist voters and empowering policymakers, lawmakers, and change makers to be effective champions of secularism in the United States. Sarah is a strategist, lobbyist, and grassroots organizer who has spent over a decade advancing secular policy and mobilizing non-religious Americans. Through her work with organizations such as the Center for Free Thought Equality, Jews for Secular Democracy, and the Military Association of Atheists and Free Thinkers, she has become one of the most influential voices representing secular voices in US politics. I'm delighted that Sarah joins us today to talk about her work, current campaigns, and the history and future of secularism in the United States. Sarah Levin, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Sarah M. Levin: 1:10

Thanks for having me and staying up pretty late to interview me.

James Hodgson: 1:14

We deal with the time differences here. Fascinating to learn about secular strategies and the secular vote. Huge topic. It sounds like you're very busy with the number of different areas and campaigns that you're involved in. But take us back to the beginning. Why did you launch secular strategies and what were the main areas that you were looking to advocate for?

Sarah M. Levin: 1:36

Sure. So I launched Secular Strategies, which is a consulting firm. So we do work with secular nonprofits in the areas of advocacy and education, nonprofit work, all in the space of serving non-religious folks, people who are atheist, agnostic, humanist, non-religious, and or usually these things are connected, advocating for separation of church and state. So I worked at the Secular Coalition for America for six years and started out as an intern, worked my way up, and by the end was a director of governmental affairs and learned a lot while I was there. And the secular coalition is a coalition of the all the major national secular organizations in the United States. And so by working there, it was my job to know everybody in the space, to be pretty aware of everyone's projects. And what I was able to do when I left the secular coalition and started secular strategies was to continue the same work I'd been doing as an independent consultant, which really provides a lot of my clients an affordable option for lobbying and government relations and other projects because it's quite expensive to bring someone in full time with benefits and all of that, especially as things get more expensive in the US and everything. So I really provide an opportunity for a lot of my clients to do very distinct projects at an affordable rate with very high impact. And there's benefits and there's ups and downs with nonprofits and bureaucracy, right? When you have a massive nonprofit, there's so much more you can do if you're working with millions or hundreds of millions, but also every decision takes a lot of time to get through. You have your board of directors, you have lots of processes. We are very nimble. We can work very, very fast and adapt to different realities and fit ourselves into any of our clients' departments and teams to step in and step back whenever they need us. And so I would say I think that the motivation was really just to get the work done in the most efficient way possible and make it affordable and effective for our clients to advance secular policies.

James Hodgson: 3:40

It's often stated that the non-religious are one of the fastest growing demographics within the US. And so I wondered in your work, have you found A, is that still the case? And B, how much of do you find that support for secularism does come from the non-religious population? And actually, how much is still from those who may themselves have faith but still believe in the idea of secularism?

Sarah M. Levin: 4:00

Sure. So it is the fastest growing religious demographic. It is tapering off just a little bit, but there's good reason for that. It's not because of really a loss of momentum, so much as a few other factors. So, first of all, one thing that's really interesting, we just talked about this at the secular vote at our last event, is that there is now more, what is what does he call it? Like cradle seculars, like folks who are born to secular parents. So there's more of those. And so if you think about it, if you have this rapid growth of non-religious people, there's less religious people to pull from to become non-religious because there's more people just being born non-religious. And so that area of growth is there is a limit, right? Because there is only so many religious people to pull from. And a lot of the loss of religiosity also comes from progressive, open religions. Whereas I think just by nature of more authoritarian or more conservative or more fundamentalist religion, they have a lot in place to keep people in there because the costs of leaving is quite high, both emotionally, can be financially, losing your community when there they tend to be more about control. And so they, I think, do a better job of keeping people in. Whereas if you are a Quaker or Unitarian Universalist or part of these or religions that are more open to questioning, and then it's the cost of leaving is not very high. So we have, we are still a massive, the single largest religious demographic, I believe, in the United States. Now it used to be just a few years ago, about a quarter. Now we're at about a third of Americans are unaffiliated with religion. So it is still a huge amount, but the dynamics of because of that growth, there's less to pull from. So it's tapering off a little bit. And I mentioned that because there's a narrative, and this goes into, you know, why we started secular vote that, oh gosh, this is tapering off, and religion is coming back, and there's a revival, and all these things, like the story that often the media and society wants to tell ourselves about religion because there's still this idea that it is inherently good and better for society, that people have faith and are religious. And so there's a tendency to downplay the growth of secular folks, and there's a tendency to really blow out of proportion anecdotes that don't actually speak to a larger trend. So we've seen in the US media a lot of talk about how young men are becoming really religious and joining these conservative religions or, you know, all these different revivals, but they're all based on anecdotes. Like the research, the trends don't actually show like a major revival or major conversions to religion. So that's the landscape. But in terms of secularism, that's different, right? So I think it's important to note there's a difference between when you describe a person as secular, you're talking about them being non-religious, which by the way, doesn't even mean they are a non-theist. The one-third of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated, they're not all atheists. Some of them believe in a higher power, but they're unaffiliated with an organized religion, which is important because that does significantly influence their point of view, whether or not you are attending a church or a synagogue or a temple, whether you are praying on a regular basis, whether you're affiliated with the institution has a really big impact on your worldview and how you vote. So the unaffiliated encompasses everyone from the folks who are self-identified atheists and agnostics and humanists to folks who don't believe in gods. So by definition, they're atheists, but they won't use the label, to the spiritual but not religious folks, and the believers who do believe in gods, but they are not affiliated with religion. That's the whole bucket. And then much bigger than that is the amount of Americans who believe that religion and government should be separate, regardless of whether they believe or not. And I do believe, and based on polling that I've seen in recent years, the majority of Americans don't want government to be mixed with religion. And it does depend the way you ask the question and who you're asking. But generally, there is a lot of support for separation of religion and government. That's secularism, right? You can be a Christian, any practicing faith and be a secularist, which means you believe in that principle of separation of church and state, but you are secular as a person if you are not affiliated with religion or you're not religious. So just to get those terms straight. The problem, I think, is and the uphill battle that we have is that there is still such a, even though there's that support for separation of church and state, first of all, there's still so many taboos that prevent us from really speaking frankly about what's going on in the role of religion because there is such a hesitancy to be seen as anti-religion or anti-Christian. So we don't touch the subject directly in the way that we should. And there's just not an awareness of how there's more now in recent years. You would not see the words Christian nationalism in a lot of headlines just a few years ago. And now you're seeing it more and more. But the understanding of the connection between the white Christian nationalist movement and so many policies that people do care about, but they don't think about it from a church state lens, that is an uphill battle of connecting the dots for people. That if you care about voting rights, if you care about democracy, if you care about reproductive rights, if you care about LGBTQ rights, if you care about access to high-quality public education, and my list can go on, you should care about white Christian nationalism, right? You should care about church state separation. So getting folks to apply that lens to what is going on in our country is an uphill battle. So there's that disconnect where yes, we have the support, but also a lot of people still don't realize that we're losing church state separation. People still think like they did think about Roe. A lot of there was a lot of warnings that Roe v. Wade would be overturned. But a lot of people, including some of my own family members, I was like wringing my hands, telling them about everything going on, they really didn't believe that Roe v. Wade would be overturned until it was, and people were shocked. But that's where we are with a lot of church seed separation issues, is people really still don't get that. Yes, it's in the Constitution, but they have completely reshaped our judiciary branch to install people who have a different interpretation of the First Amendment, and they have overturned and shipped away at precedent that we have counted on for a long time. So we can't count on it just because it's in the constitution or just because it something has carried precedent for decades. Like that's been thrown out the window. So really getting folks to connect those things and to ignite the passion around the issue and making it less of a passive belief is the challenge.

James Hodgson: 10:35

Yeah, and I love you touched on that to the point that this isn't anti-religion. This is pro-freedom. This is you're advocating for religious freedom and freedom to believe in your work. And I know that coalition building is very central to your work. And so I wonder how you navigate some of those difficult conversations where, as you say, people may feel that these are uncomfortable conversations to have, or they're not familiar with perhaps the breaches of uh church state separation. And how how do you best create those interfaith allies to advocate for a secular state?

Sarah M. Levin: 11:09

Absolutely. The thing I've learned and what has worked for me in every type of coalition building, including uncomfortable conversations and conversations with folks of faith in our interfaith work, is personal relationships. At the end of the day, it is so much easier to have an uncomfortable conversation with somebody that you know and trust and that knows and trusts you. So it might sound a little cheesy or like a cop-out. It's not, it's very real. So much of success in anything, especially government relations, has to do with relationships. So if I build a personal relationship with somebody who is a faith leader or who is in the inner faith space, they know me as a person, as Sarah. We connect on a human level. It is so much easier for me to have a direct conversation about listen, this is where we agree and this is where we disagree. It's so much easier for me to ask them a stupid question, what I think is a stupid question, or vice versa, right? I've had conversations with folks of faith in inner faith spaces who have asked me, like, hey, can you explain what is humanism? Like, I don't really know what you guys stand for. Like I just, I'm just not familiar, right? Like I'm in my world of the Baptist or whatever it is, right? And I love when they ask me that question because I know that if they didn't trust me and didn't feel safe and comfortable asking me kind of something very basic like that, they just wouldn't have asked at all and maybe made some assumption. Like I might, I am often for folks who are very deeply steeped in faith work, some one of the few atheists that they know that they can talk to about this, right? It's not like they don't know any atheist, but in terms of having a close personal relationship with someone that is both personally an atheist, but can also as an expert, can ask, they can ask me, right? I'm that person. Or, hey, I get a call from somebody who's putting a panel together that's interfaith and they need a humanist. And I'm the only person they know to call to find the humanist. So that's because they know me and they know it's cool to call me at the last second, and I will find them a humanist in Maryland to be on their panel, right? So that's all based on human connection and relationships because and it's interesting because I'm on the DNC Interfaith Council, the Democratic National Committee, and we got so much outreach after October 6th, the attack by Hamas on Israel, because they had so much, they were navigating so much tension between the Muslim and Arab community and the Jewish community within their party. And unfortunately, I hate to ever be someone to say I told you so, but uh for a lot of them, I was saying, listen, if you haven't already been doing the work of building interfaith relationships, this is not the time to start. This is not a good place to be. That's why you have to have those relationships from the get-go, because if you want to have a really difficult conversation, it has to be coming from a place where of trust, right? That you know, even if you disagree or feel really uncomfortable, even if you're offended by something that somebody said, if you already know them as a person, you will give them the benefit of the doubt. You will know that they really are a good person. They respect you and they are trying to find that common ground. If you don't have a connection with somebody, there's somebody you don't know. And so all you really know about them is the differences that you have and the bias that might be built in against that particular group. It's nearly impossible. So I think coalition work is about the people who represent the organizations or the initiatives in the coalition, right? It's knowing them, having that trust so that you can have super direct and really productive, even if they're uncomfortable conversations.

James Hodgson: 14:49

Yeah, I think it's very valuable. And it seems as though we're moving away from that idea as well of building coalitions and having broad coalitions when we want to advocate for something. People mean much more focused into their sort of narrow, much narrower groups. So it's really important work.

Sarah M. Levin: 15:02

I think people see as maybe a little like dirty, but it's you know very normal for politics. Like it is super normal to be in a coalition with groups that you only agree on this one issue and you're fighting them on every other issue in another coalition, right? But when you're really upfront about that and you're transparent about that, like it works, and that's how things get done, right? There is a limit, right? Like you do have to set principles. Like I will never be in a coalition with a group that espouses white supremacist beliefs, for example. I mean, that's maybe an extreme example, but there's definitely like you have to set your principles. I've been in weird coalitions with people, you know, with groups that I'm like, man, I would never be in the same room with you on any other issue except this. But that's not a secret, right? Like that's very common in in political coalitions. And I don't think that's there's anything inherently wrong with that. But again, that's where like you're just transparent about listen, like I will see you on, I will see you in battle on all these other things in this other room, but in this room, we're united on this issue. And I think that's something that maybe people a lot of people don't like about political coalitions, but it actually is how a lot of things can get done. Like sometimes you have strange badfellows.

James Hodgson: 16:14

Yeah, absolutely. I think the other important thing to remember is that those who want to take away freedoms are very good at building coalitions on specific issues when they want to work together. So if you want to counter it, unfortunately, sometimes you may have to partner up with people that you don't agree 100% on other issues. Now, I know you also launched the secular vote. Can you tell us more about the secular vote and what you're hoping to achieve?

Sarah M. Levin: 16:41

Yeah, so my very good friend and super expert, Dr. Juhem Navarro Rivera. We go back a while and we were at a conference called Netroots in Chicago. We had just presented on how to engage and understand secular voters. And that conference, it's a lot of like activists and folks who work on political campaigns on the progressive side, a lot of like Warren and Bernie people, is to get a sense of who they were. And we were having drinks afterwards and just brainstorming, but also complaining about the state of things in terms of how secular voters were being covered by media and the lack of outreach by political campaigns to secular voters. And this is like our soapbox is like pay attention to secular voters. And we were just really frustrated with the fact that the vast majority of public understanding and media coverage of secular voters was being told through the lens of religion. And often the experts that were being called in to provide a quote or to provide commentary or to provide analysis of data around secular voters were religious people, like including like reverence, right? Like, you know, I read one of the most foremost experts that is sought out by a lot of media outlets about secular voters, is a pastor who I read his book, and his book is talking to other Christians about how to like the opportunities to convert non-religious people, right? He's a very nice guy, by the way. We've been on panels together. Like I have nothing personal against him, but that is his perspective. He is someone who has said publicly that the rise of disaffiliation from religion is bad for society, right? That is his worldview. When you dig enough, right? It's not something he'll always say up front, but it is what he has said in his book in interviews, right? So to me, anyone who says that secularization, that an increased like disaffiliation from religion in a society is bad is saying that I am a bad influence on society. That is just a fancy like way of saying that we are a net negative on society, right? Because there's no other way to read that. If you believe that is it is perfectly fine to be a non-religious person and that you can be moral and contribute to society, then you wouldn't say something like that. You'd say, like, well, things are changing and we live in a free country and some people are gonna stay with religion, some people are gonna leave. But a lot of people still, like right in front of me, will say things like that, not even realizing that they're offending me, right? That it's like, you're saying that like my community is a net negative impact on society, that this is a problem to solve, right? And so imagine that is the if that kind of person, that with that worldview, is the person who is talking to the major news outlets in the United States about and breaking down secular voters and trends and all of that kind of thing, right? I'm not saying he's like spinning data or like making up data, but it's all about how you interpret the data and how you present it, right? Like the same set of data can be presented in many different ways. And so we were really frustrated. And after a few years, we're like, we're gonna do something about this. We're gonna do something about this. We've been talking about this for years. Let's actually do something about it. So that was actually the launch of the secular vote. It was uh probably a year and a half in the making. And really the idea is we have two main audiences. It is broadly for the public, it's a free site, the secularvote.com. But our two focus points are reporters in the US and political campaigns, the politicians, the staff that work those campaigns, the political parties. And what we're trying to do with reporters is say, hey, we have a huge array of the top experts on secular voters who are actually secular themselves. They belong to the community that you are reporting about. Stop talking about us and talk to us and use us as a resource. Like we want to help you cover our community more accurately in a way that is free of bias and that is more nuanced. And here are the free resources to do. So we assembled a panel of experts. We're continuing to bring together experts in different areas of secular Americans and secularism. And they're available to reporters if they want a quote, if they want more information, if they want background. Um, so for example, we have reached out to reporters at launch and have since to say, hey, here's our newest resource. If you need anything, let us know. So we're trying to get on the radar so that we can change the discourse because a lot of times journalists are just on deadline and they've heard of this one person that they've seen quoted. And so that's the person they reach out to. So we're trying to get more variety in who they're hearing from to make sure that if you're reporting in the secular community, at least you include experts who come from the community and get a different perspective. With political campaigns, the parties, the candidates, we want them to see us as a real constituency that is worth investing in, that is worth outreach to. I think there's we're dealing with a few different points of bias. One is this idea that, gosh, they don't believe in anything. How could I appeal to them? And that's a misconception. Secular people may not believe in the supernatural, but we have very sincerely held beliefs about the world. We have very specific ideas about the world, about how we'd like to be governed, about what a just society looks like. In fact, that's the next topic next week for the secular vote. We'll be having Dr. Joe Blankholm and PhD candidate, Shakir Steven, talk about exactly that of the research we do have that explains what do secular people believe. So we have to, we're still literally like fighting for people to recognize that we are a group of people that have beliefs that could be tapped into. And then the idea that, oh gosh, where can we find them? We can't find them in churches. How do we find this nebulous group of people? First of all, there's still not a lot of folks in the political world who know that there are organized atheist, humanist, agnostic groups that do meet on a weekly and monthly basis. Some of them are congregations and some of them are meetups, right? There, there's a huge range of them. They don't know that they exist. So when they're putting together their list of like campaign stops, we're not on that list. Um, so that's one of the things that we're doing is saying, hey, these organized communities exist. Here's the list of all the national organizations that have affiliations that you can find in your state. Make them part of your outreach. The other thing is that, you know, there we're in a new digital age. There's so much you can do with outreach that is digital, and so much of our community is online. And we are organized online. We have certain pages that we follow, we have YouTube channels, like there is in a very robust community online. And so anyone who has a digital team that's doing digital outreach can incorporate that into their work. And the other aspect, connecting to beliefs, is really getting them to understand that there are messages you could use and experiment with that would specifically tap into secular belief. So, one example, I think a really good one is around climate. Climate is a top issue for secular voters. And it's not an accident that it is a top issue. I think that it has to do with our worldview because if you don't believe in an afterlife, there's one planet and there's one life and we get one shot. There's no deity that's gonna save us or save the planet. And we're also very science-minded. So the vast majority of secular folks accept that human beings are driving climate change, right? So the combination of being very pro-science and being very focused on this one world, I think makes us a community that is particularly animated. And sure, we respond to the generic kind of talking points around climate. But if you were to target secular voters with a message of one life, one world, that is a way to say, I see you, right? Like I am tapping into the why behind why you care about climate change, which is exactly what campaigns do for faith demographics, right? They reach out and they employ religious language that hits right in a different way that really appeals to the belief system and the kind of language that a Catholic voter or a Baptist voter, right, using things like witness and moral clarity. That's actually not inherently religious, but there's certain language and phrases that I've seen campaigns employ to kind of relate more and use the language of the constituency they're talking to. We're just saying, do the same with us because we have our own distinct beliefs. And there are ways that you could use language that says to us, oh, you get me, like you hear me. This is this appeals to my worldview because the idea that you can just take us for granted, the data shows even though secular voters have a very high propensity to vote for Democrats and are among the strongest cohorts of voters for Democrats. We are also have a high propensity to not be affiliated with the political parties. So the distrust of religion also translates to a distrust of like institutions like the political parties, and not an insignificant amount of secular voters voted independently in some previous elections or for third party candidates. So we can't be taken for granted. And so we're trying to convince and provide the resources to campaigns to say, hey, this is a voting constituency you should care about. Here are resources to better understand them. We are here to support you in any way. Just do the outreach, right? Consider us, put us on the table as you're doing your mapping for your outreach to voters. That's what we're all about. And it is an uphill battle because we are still fighting these biases that don't even put us on the map for or don't that we're not even up for consideration in those ways. And so that's where we're trying to both impact our politics and the discourse publicly by getting straight to the folks who are responsible for how we're covered and whether or not we make it to the list of, you know, campaign stops.

James Hodgson: 27:05

Well, speaking of biases, there has been some uh governmental actions to address some biases in faith in the US. Um what can you tell us about the Religious Liberties Commission and the presidential action on eradicating anti-Christian bias?

Sarah M. Levin: 27:23

Sure. With a lot of skepticism, right? We should approach both of those under the Trump administration because the reality is that this idea that there is like persecution of Christians in the US is a total myth. They are the dominant religion in the United States. And it is fairly obvious to religious minorities who is in charge and who has power.

James Hodgson: 27:47

Where is this sort of claimed persecution? What do they point to?

Sarah M. Levin: 27:51

So the persecution complex, right? This comes from any group that has power and privilege. When power and privilege is taken away to create an equal playing field, it feels like persecution because you're losing power. But it's not actually persecution, it's actually equality, right? Equality can feel like persecution when you lose your special privileges. And that is where the feeling of persecution comes from is it's a loss of power. It's the increased diversity in the United States and the shifting dynamics that happen when instead of white Protestants being in charge, now they have to answer to a diverse coalition of Americans who don't all believe the same as they do. And just to give you a few examples of what they consider to be religious liberty, that gives you a sense of what they mean by persecution, right? Because really by persecution, they mean not being able to maintain their status as the dominant religion. So they've gotten laws passed where foster care agencies and adoption care centers that receive government funds can also, if they are faith-based, say that they will not place children with same-sex couples, with Jews, with Catholics, with anybody that doesn't agree with their religious beliefs. Because it is not enough for them to be able to discriminate on their dime because they have lots of money. Like you can open an adoption care center or foster care center and have your own fundraising and not receive any government funds and do whatever you want as a private organization. But that is not religious liberty in their view. True religious liberty is unfettered access to government funds to then turn around and discriminate on the basis of religion, however, they want. So the idea of a secular saying actually the government has an obligation when they're looking at contracts, because a lot of social services are like public private partnerships. There's a lot of government grants that go to nonprofits that do social services. And when the government is looking at different bids for contracts with nonprofits that provide these services, I, as a secularist, say they have an obligation because. They're using taxpayer dollars that come from people of all faiths and none to make sure that they're not working with organizations that discriminate on the basis of religion because they're supposed to serve everybody. If they want to discriminate, they can do it on their dime, but not on my dime as a taxpayer. And the government has an obligation to choose the nonprofit that will not discriminate, whether it's faith-based or not, over the one that says, yeah, we don't, we're only going to adopt to people who agree with our evangelical beliefs, right? And they turn around and say that is discrimination on the basis of religion. That's a violation of their religious liberty. They call that discrimination, right? And they believe they are entitled to taxpayer dollars with no strings attached. Therefore, any attempt to actually maintain church-state separation and protect taxpayer dollars, protect people from the imposition of religion by them is persecution. That's the persecution, right? The fact that they have to accept a pluralistic society and be held accountable to non-discrimination laws, to civil rights laws, that is what they consider to be persecution. When religious liberty means really entitlement to power, then really persecution is anything that takes away from that. We still have so much baked in in our society that is clearly shows our history of being dominated by white Protestants, whether it's our school schedules, whether it's religious displays that we see, whether it's very common phrases that politicians will say that are inherently religious and Christian, whether it's the fact that we still have most state legislatures opening up with prayers, usually by a Protestant Christian, maybe mixing in a few religious minorities every now and then. There's so many aspects of our society that are still built around white Protestant Christians. And we actually have a lot more to do to kind of dismantle that to reflect the diversity of the country. But every step in that direction feels like persecution because for Christians. So this anti-Christian bias task force is really, and the Religious Liberty Commission is really in service of providing evidence, right? So-called evidence of that persecution, of ways that Christians are not able to impose their discriminatory views on others and be forced to comply with non-discrimination statutes and all the progress that we've made. So they're really looking for evidence to support this Christian persecution narrative in service of justifying a policy agenda that is going to codify their religious beliefs into law that they can then impose on everybody else. Because that's how those two things work together. The Religious Liberty Commission is we already know what they're going to put in their report at the end of their terms. Like we already know. Project 2025 told us Christian nationalists have been broadcasting to us for a while what their agenda is. This is just kind of a symbolic, like, we're going to bring together all of these experts just to look into these issues and provide recommendations. But we already know what those recommendations are going to be. They are doing that and giving this air of legitimacy to what they're doing because they're this government-appointed body that's going to deliver these expert-based conclusions. And by the way, a lot of these experts are like they are, some of them are not experts at all. They're just like Dr. Phil or a Miss America pageant winner who like went alt right. Um, you know, just and then there's experts like, you know, David Barton, who aren't on the commission, but he's involved in there quoting his work all the time. He literally makes up quotes that do not exist, like attributes quotes to founding fathers that are founding fathers that are false. And he is basically an expert in revisionist history that he invents and he distributes and the Christian nationalist movement, including Speaker Johnson, quote directly from. He has created all the expertise, right? All the research, alleged research, that backs the idea that we were always a Christian nation or founding fathers were Christians who wanted us to be a Christian nation. So they gather those types of experts to provide policy recommendations. That's what the Religious Liberty Commission is doing. And then the while the task force roots out all of these examples of Christians being persecuted, so you can have the two of them work together to say Christians are being persecuted in our country. And therefore, we need to take these actions recommended by the commission to right these wrongs and to restore true religious liberty. But their version of religious liberty is restoring power to white Protestant Christians in this country.

James Hodgson: 35:13

And how is secular strategies and other partner groups defending against this?

Sarah M. Levin: 35:17

Absolutely. On so many fronts. So I'll pick a few examples. So one of the things we're doing is we are going on offense actually with the Center for Free Thought Equality, which their policy team is excellent and they're doing a lot of defensive work as well on fighting bills that are being introduced at the state level. But we're also working with them to our team is really helping to introduce legislation that moves policy forward in the direction of secularism at the state level, because getting anything done at the federal level is nearly impossible at this point. We literally just had the longest government shutdown in US history. So, you know, you can get bills introduced, but getting them moved is when they can't even pass a budget, is not where people are focusing right now in the policy world, right? The place that you can get stuff done is at the state and local level right now in the United States. And so going on offense and bringing ideas to state legislators is one of the things that we're doing because we want to be not just constantly fighting back, right, against things that have been sort of in the works for decades. We want to be on offense. So making them spend their money, making them spend their resources, and actually getting bills introduced that move the needle. One of the things that I worked on this year was I got bills introduced in four states on behalf of the Center for Free Thought Equality that would increase transparency around healthcare sharing ministries, which are faith-based nonprofits that sell a product that looks and sounds like health insurance, but it's not. And because it's not, they're not regulated at all. They just operate in this like gray area. They use super misleading marketing. So a lot of people buy their plans thinking they just got like this awesome deal on a health insurance plan for 120 bucks a month, which I don't know if that sounds cheap in the UK, but that is really cheap. You can't find like good health insurance for 120 bucks a month here. So they think they bought a health insurance plan, but actually it's a nonprofit that doesn't have to follow the regulations of insurance companies. So they can actually deny any of your claims for any reason. And you could get hit with a massive medical bill and then call the attorney general's office, call your department of insurance, and say, My insurance company isn't paying my claim. And they'll say, you don't have insurance, and there's nothing we can do because we regulate insurance, not healthcare sharing ministries. So there's people who have been stuck with massive medical debt because they got duped into buying these plans. And the healthcare sharing ministry industry is taking advantage of the fact that they are faith-based to shield themselves from any accountability. So this is something that most legislators that I talked to had no idea they existed, had no idea that there were already a number of these things operating in their state. And when they asked me really good basic questions, like how many people in my state have these plans and how much are they paying out and how much are they denying? I would say those are great questions that I cannot answer because they don't have to report anything to your state, which is why you should introduce a transparency bill to make them start reporting some things to your state. The lobbyist for the Alliance of Healthcare Sharing Ministries is a former Trump advisor. She was a healthcare policy advisor to Trump's domestic policy council in the first term. And the Trump administration is very friendly to healthcare sharing ministries. Surprise. Any flavor of huckster seems to fall into that coalition. And we're not saying people can't buy these. We're not trying to ban them. We're just saying people should know what they're buying when they buy a healthcare sharing ministry plan. And we're in a situation now, because of what's going on at the federal level where premiums are going up, it's only becoming more expensive to have real health insurance, which has all kinds of problems on its own, but at least it's regulated. Like health insurance companies, for example, can only keep up to 80% of their profits, and at least 20% has to go out to providers and patients, which might sound too high, and you can argue that's still too high. There's no such ratio for healthcare sharing ministry. They can pocket as much as they want, they don't have to follow any of those rules. So that's just one area where we're going on offense. There's a number of others. One of my clients, Jews for a Secular Democracy, I think is doing really awesome work around mobilizing the Jewish community to advocate for church state separation and to fight back against white Christian nationalism. That's a particularly important constituency because the Jewish Americans are often, I think, co-opted and our fears are for Jewish safety and concern. You know, the Israel issue is used as a wedge. Like Christian nationalists really do invoke this term, this phrase Judeo-Christian values all the time. They don't care, I don't think, at all about like Jewish safety. Or if they care about Israel, it's either because it's politically convenient or because they actually believe that like Jews need to be there for their apocalypse story to happen, which is so crazy and so offensive to me. Not going to get into Christian Zionism, but that's a whole thing and a very big base of the Christian nationalist movement. But the vast majority of Jews are not in line with these ideas. So we are educating the Jewish community about how Christian nationalism is inherently anti-Semitic, is inherently not in our interests, and how fighting back is not just about protecting the rights of Jews in the US to practice our beliefs and to live safely as a religious minority, but for all religious minorities in the United States. A really great example that we focused on is talking about abortion rights, reproductive access. This is a great example of like by codifying their beliefs about abortion into law, Christian nationalists are imposing their beliefs not just on non-religious people, but other religious faiths that have a completely different interpretation of the same issue. The vast majority of Jewish traditions, whether it's reform, conservative, most Jewish people's interpretation of the religion, if they follow it, is that the life of the mother comes first. It is a moral obligation to protect the life of the mother. And so abortion is not prohibited, is not seen the way that it is seen by a lot of Christians. And of course, there's lots of Christians who support abortion as well and have a different interpretation. But having that voice, particularly, for better or for worse, it is very compelling, sometimes unfortunately, more compelling than hearing literally the same argument from atheists or literally the same argument from other Christians. But because of the dynamic of how Christian nationalists often like to use Jewish people in their rhetoric to make it seem like they're inclusive, to talk about Judeo-Christian values and these Judeo-Christian foundings of our country, which is all total BS, we are doing the work to run interference on that wedge and make sure that the Jewish community is aware of what Christian nationalists are doing, what they actually stand for, and for them to understand that just because they might use words like Judeo-Christian or they might say what you want to hear about Israel, this is who you're actually working with if you're in coalition with these people. And here's what it actually means for your rights as a Jewish person and as a religious minority. So I think that is really important work because politically speaking, that is an important constituency that Christian nationalists are very happy to co-opt and to use as a wedge.

James Hodgson: 42:44

And if anyone is listening and wants to get in contact with you, support your work, what's the best way to get in touch?

Sarah M. Levin: 42:51

So you can follow me at Sarah M Levin, S-A-R-A-H-M-LIN. You can follow Secular Strategies. We are on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram at all the places. So you can either go to SarahMlevin.com or secularstrategies.com and you'll find all my projects, all my links. You should also check out the secularboat.com. You can also just email me, Sarah S-A-R-A-H at secularstrategies.com. Love to hear from people. And if you're in the US and also outside, because I do some international work as well with some clients, we are I'm happy to plug you in if you want to get involved. And I would just say that I do think that as scary as the moment is right now in the US, and I am very scared about what's going to happen with our midterms and making sure that they're not raked by new electoral maps that Republicans are changing. It's a whole nother topic. But I have always approached this work with the idea and the understanding that our opposition started decades ago. So we are like 50, 60 years behind. And I don't say that to be negative, I say that to manage expectations, right? Because that mindset for me, I am always thinking about how is what I'm doing today going to build toward what we will accomplish in the next 30, 40, 50 years. And I got time. I'm 34 this year. I share that with people because not be to be negative, but to remind you that we will lose a lot before we win. It is just part of the dynamic of the fact that we are starting now to build this movement, or it's not like it's a new movement, but in terms of the amount of money and strategy that went behind what Christian nationalists figured out a few decades ago, and now they're reaping the benefits of what they built toward. We are doing that now. But we have certain advantages that they don't. First of all, we're right and our ideas are more popular. No one wants to live in the handmaid's tale. Like the actual vision that Christian nationalists have is so out of touch and so unpopular. That's why they've gone so anti-democratic because they realize they can't win. Their ideas are unpopular. And so that's why they are with a movement that is inherently trying to undermine our democracy, because they know they cannot win on the ideas alone. Also, their demographic base is shrinking, and our diverse coalition of both secular and religious folks who believe in pluralism, who believe in democracy is much bigger and it's getting bigger. That's why they feel so persecuted. So I think keeping in mind that we do actually have some advantages and the overall arc of history is in our favor. We also have to keep in mind that in the short term, yes, there will be a lot of losses because they started a long time ago. But that doesn't mean that we can't win. I just want to remind people that don't get too, I mean, this is how I like survive on a daily basis with the news cycle in the United States, is that I maintain that I am thinking forward decades and everything we do now matters. And even if we lose in the next few years, in the next decade, we still have the tides on our side as long as we are really smart, we are really focused, and we are really forward thinking about what it could look like to actually have robust separation of churches state in this incredibly diverse pluralistic experiment 30, 40 years from now.

James Hodgson: 46:15

I think it's inspiring and uplifting and don't expect everything immediately. I hope we can attract more people to the cause. I wanted to ask for your elevator pitch for secularism, but I feel like you've just given it to us there. So thank you very much for that. Maybe just before we go, do you think the US is still a secular country and do you think it is going to remain so?

Sarah M. Levin: 46:34

That's a really interesting question. I'll put it this way I think that our country was founded with really revolutionary ideas about freedom and equality that we never lived up to. Like literally, we had our founders who were slaveholders writing about, you know, freedom and liberty for all, right? You know, and and women did not have access to vote. It was really white male landowners, right? We're still practicing slavery. And that continued for a long time, despite the fact that those are these founding principles. And so the way I think about the United States is we have these really incredible ideals in our constitution that we have never lived up to, but because they are there and because ideas are there, we have advanced, we have progressed, we have amended that constitution to actually fulfill it. And we are still not there. And that idea of a more perfect union is only possible when you have the vision. Even if you never fulfilled the vision fully, that's still very important to have it because until you speak into existence what can be, you can't work toward it. And so I don't think we actually were ever a perfectly secularist nation because we have always had church-state separation issues. And that was very early on, the colonies and even before there was religious persecution. But then that led to these revolutions, you know, the creation of Rhode Island, but where this Baptist minister who has persecuted another colony had this crazy idea of separation of church and state, protecting religious freedom for all, right? So there are many examples of where we have taken steps forward, taking steps back, not been perfect. But that doesn't take away the fact that we have this constitution, the First Amendment, that lays that groundwork for separation of church and state. And so I feel like we were never perfect in any aspect of freedom and liberty and equality in this country from the beginning. But the ideas, like the bones are there and the ideal and getting closer to and reaching that ideal is so worth it. Even if we never quite got there from the beginning, that doesn't mean that it's not worth working towards. So I think we still have the bones there, not just the words and the constitution, but I think the American kind of concept of individualism really lends itself to this idea of like, do you really want the government telling you what religion you should practice and how you should, you know, what you should teach your kids? Like I think fundamentally most Americans do not want the government involved in their personal lives like that. They want the government to provide basic public goods like health and education and public safety and roads, right? They don't want the government telling them what to believe and how to pray and what the right way to live your life is. And that is very core to American identity. And I think that is still there to tap into. But no, like we're obviously moving farther and farther away from that constitutional principle. It's very like red alarm with what's going on with these court cases, the kind of legislation we're seeing. But also we were never quite where we needed to be. So I'm very much, yes, this will be a secular country the way that it needs to be, with the right focus, with passionate people working on that. But we have to recognize not just in terms of secularism, but in so many aspects, we have we still have a lot to live up to, but I believe in it.

James Hodgson: 50:02

Finally, before we go, our standard closing question, what's something which you've changed your mind on?

Sarah M. Levin: 50:07

I so want to give you a deep one, but I can only think of a really silly one. So I'm really not that into sports. And I recently started playing volleyball, and I used to think that it was like, first of all, like way too hard to ever try, but also just like way overrated. Volleyball is awesome. I have been converted to volleyball. Like, I don't know if it's just like easier than other sports or if I'm actually just good at it, but I was like, am I good at sports? I thought I was bad at sports. So my mind has been changed about volleyball. I am now pro-volleyball, and I never thought I would say that a few years ago. I'm sorry, I don't have something deeper, but I have been changed about volleyball.

James Hodgson: 50:49

It's an uplifting and positive way to end. Sarah Levin, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Humanise Live: 50:56

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening to Humanism Now. If you like the show, please leave us a review. It helps more people find us. Support us from just five pounds a month for exclusive content and to shape future episodes, and we'll plant a tree each month in your name. Follow us on all socials at HumanismNow Pod and help spread curiosity, compassion, and human progress. Humanism Now is produced by Humanize Live, creating world-class podcasts, videos, and events for purpose-led individuals and organizations. Learn more at humanize.