By Emma García
Multifaith Ambassador and Secular Student Alliance President
This post is part of our series on "Religion and Politics" Check out more by following the "Religion and Politics" tag.
I am Emma Garcia and I am a senior history and philosophy double major with a political science minor. I am the president of the Secular Student Alliance and I am also a Multifaith Ambassador. While I identify as secular, I have gone back and forth between calling myself agnostic, atheist, or sometimes secular humanist. My core values and moral principles have remained the same throughout my life. I became most interested in politics once I did identify as secular. My worldview has always impacted how I view politics, mainly because my values are based more in philosophical principles, rather than religion. I also never had a strong connection to any particular religion.
Even when I was a child and considered myself to be Catholic or non denominational Christian, I still had a firm belief that religion and government should not mix. While we do have a secular government, I still sometimes fear that certain religious values will affect important policies in a negative way. One of my biggest fears is the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Religious values and beliefs should guide your own personal moral choices, but not guide our government and policy making. The United States was founded on freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. These are key principles of liberalism dating back to John Locke. They should continue to be prioritized and valued today.
As someone who identifies as secular, a huge moment for me to watch was when Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona was sworn into Congress with a nonreligious text. She chose to use a law book that had copies of both the United States and Arizona constitutions. Sinema is also the only person in the United States Senate to claim that she is “religiously unaffiliated.” Typically when someone is sworn into the United States government, they are sworn in on a bible. The 116th Congress made history with the amount of diverse texts that were used. It was exciting to see a celebration of other worldviews and faiths that have historically not been seen in our government. In 2019, some of the texts that were being used were the Quran, Buddhist and Hindu texts, and the Constitution. As someone who has aspirations of working in government and having a political future, seeing more religious and secular diversity being embraced is extremely encouraging.
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