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This time of year is a time when those of us who are religiously unaffiliated (i.e. atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, etc.) don’t garner a lot of attention with the plethora of religious holidays and observances like Easter, Passover, and Ramadan (just to mention the Abrahamic list), and that’s OK. We can observe spring traditions that aren’t steeped in theology or spirituality but still have cultural significance and/or personal meaning. What we as the secular and nontheist communities must not do is ignore primary elections like the one coming up in West Virginia on May 10.

To quote American Atheists President Nick Fish, “There are more than 500,000 elected positions in the United States. One-tenth of one percent of those are in Washington, D.C. Those who’ve spent the past decades focusing primarily on what’s happening in Congress or the presidency have ceded the fight in our communities to people who quite literally want to install a Christian government, relegating us to second-class citizenship and entrenching their advantage even as their numbers continue to decline.”

Local and statewide elections have been the focus of a large cohort of Christian nationalist groups and organizations for decades with an agenda centered around the dismantling of the wall of separation between church and state, and culture war. This is something the secular and nontheist community ignores at its peril.

There are episodes of extremism motivated by the forces of Christian nationalism like the events of Jan. 6, 2021, that are difficult to ignore, but the more power that those forces soak up in elections, the more likely it is that events like that insurrectionist coup attempt on Capitol Hill will only have been a prelude to the death of U.S. democracy and the dismantling of our secular constitutional democratic republic. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, in partnership with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, released a report recently that chronicled the Christian nationalist influences of the Jan. 6 events and it is alarming, to say the least. If that is what they do when they lose a major election and see their influence wane, what are they capable of in electoral victory?

It is incredibly important that the secular and nontheist community remain informed and active. One way to do that is by referencing the American Atheists State of the Secular States Report. The State of the Secular States Report “provides the most comprehensive review ever of statewide laws and policies affecting church-state separation and religious equality in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico,” according to the latest edition of the American Atheist Magazine.

Another way for the community to stay active, informed, and involved is through a new multimedia platform called OnlySky. OnlySky, a name derived from the classic John Lennon hit song Imagine, “serves 84 million religiously unaffiliated Americans through storytelling, commentary, and analysis from a secular perspective,” as Dale McGowan, chief content officer for OnlySky, told American Atheist Magazine. McGowan continued, “We take the existence of one natural world and one mortal life as a starting point, then ask: How did we get here? How should we live? Where are we headed?”

While keeping a local focus is critical, as I’ve already stated, we must at the same time hold a global perspective. American Atheists is an affiliate of the global organization Humanists International. Humanists International is “the sole democratic, representative body of the humanist movement internationally, with humanist and other secular associations (including American Atheists) in 70 countries,” as referenced again in American Atheist Magazine. You can find out more about Humanist International by visiting https://humanists.international.

We’re living in a time when women are actively losing their rights to self-determination, bodily autonomy, and personal sovereignty in reproductive healthcare and family planning to an extent unparalleled in modern history; in a time when trans persons are actively being deprived of a legal right to even exist; a time when the catch-all term “critical race theory” is being used to denigrate anything morally panicked parents and activists find threatening to a white-washed status quo. The secular and nontheist community can and must lead the way to an age of scientific, empathic, equitable, and just renewal. Together, we must do better.

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Eric Engle is assistant state director for American Atheists in Parkersburg.