I was struck by the bald attack on non-believers:
“Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.”
He went beyond assailing “secularism” (though he did that too), to specifically give non-believers a lower status. Politicians have long decried “secularism,” a vague all-purpose enemy. And of course they invariably implicitly treat non-believers as second-class citizens by relentlessly celebrating the value of religion. But Romney went a step farther, saying he would not be a “friend” or “ally” of the non-believer.
About three percent of the population are atheists or agnostics, according to a study by the Pew Religious Forum. Another 7.5% are “secularists” who have no religious affiliation and few or no religious beliefs or practices.
That means there are four or five times as many non-believers as there are Mormons.
I can’t quite remember a candidate declaring his distaste for a particular demographic group quite this way. Non-believers and secularists may not be a big voting bloc in the Republican primaries, but 10.5% is roughly 22 million people.
Romney had a difficult task. He wanted to be very pro-religion to appeal to religious conservative voters. At the same time, he needed a philosophical formulation that would assuage Christians about his Mormonism. What he came up with was a formula that rallied all people of faith against a common enemy: secularism and secularists.
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Diana Butler Bass is a religion scholar and author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith. She blogs at 
Tony Campolo is Professor Emeritus at Eastern University and author of The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice, with Mary Darling. He blogs at 
Rod Dreher is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News and author of Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots. He blogs at 
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Dr. Richard Land is president of The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Divided States of America? What Liberals AND Conservatives are missing in the God-and-country shouting match!
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“Any believer in secular freedom, any person who has stood up to myths and dogma, has a friend and ally in me.”
Religion is a festering cancer on our planet and pity the ignorant.
Atheism forever.
i do not believe mormons discriminate against any other religious or non-religious groups of any kind they believe we are all sons and daughters of our heavenly father.
Why do atheists claim to have no religion when they follow a religious philosophy and advocate a dogma, same as everybody else?
Why do atheists criticize religion as divisive and discriminatory when they preach against those who do not share their doctrine?
Atheists want a Religious advocate to include them in a statement on their religion??? How "Alice in Wonderland" that desire is. Of course Atheists have only rotten tomatoes to throw a those of religion. Mitt said nothing against Atheists but look at the comments such as "Atheism forever." What does that have to do with Mitt's monologue?
As a man who travels by himself I find that many "families" are training themselves and their children to belittle strangers. Call them drug addicts, drug dealers, non believers. Today a young child asked her parent why we talk this way about people. The young mother said "we don't
want those people around us you never know when they will go crazy and hit us."
We talk this way because they don't know Jesus. We say these things because they eventually throw a fit and we win. The child said "win what Mommie." The mother said we hire them for jobs but we don't pay them because they don't believe. They are just beasts we use to further the glory thats is Christs love.
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