Lori Lipman Brown is Director of the  Secular Coalition for America, where she serves as the first Congressional lobbyist representing atheists.  She is also a speaker on the SSA's Speaker's Bureau.  She writes a weekly blog for The Humanist; we reprint select articles with permission.

Lori Lipman Brown with one of the nontheists she represents; UW-Madison student Chris Hallquist, at the Freedom From Religion Foundation Conference.

October 17 – Does Size Matter?

You should have seen the U.S. Senator’s eyes widen when I told him that there was a national atheist conference with 550 participants and a waiting list of 600 in DC last month (Atheist Alliance International).  I’m often asked on lobby visits, “How many people do you represent?”  During my first two years as director of the Secular Coalition for America , there has been an incredible increase in numbers of nontheists throughout the United States who affiliate with organized groups.

The American Humanist Association and other SCA member organizations have seen tremendous growth in just the past couple of years.  Next year’s international conference (in Washington, DC on June 6-8) should be tremendous.  The SCA’s second  lobby day (the first was in conjunction with the AAI conference), Secular Activists Voices to Educate Day (SAVED) on June 9, 2008, should be just as effective as our first, but larger.  The first SAVED event brought a small, but highly motivated and influential group of citizen lobbyists into Congress.  We are still using the contacts made through those visits in our lobbying.

So, when it comes to clout in Congress, and in society … yes, size does matter.  And the active and “out” status of affiliated nontheists does matter.