The Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. Bellamy, the circulation manager for The Youth's Companion magazine, helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse together.
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism.
Michael Arthur Newdow is an American attorney and emergency medicine physician. He is best known for his efforts to have recitations of the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools in the United States declared unconstitutional because of its inclusion of the phrase "under God". He also filed and lost a lawsuit to stop the invocation prayer at President Bush's second inauguration and in 2009 he filed a lawsuit to prevent references to God and religion from being part of President Obama's inauguration.
The Secular Student Alliance (SSA) is an American educational nonprofit organization whose purpose is to educate high school and college students about the value of scientific reason and the intellectual basis of secularism in its atheistic and humanistic manifestations. The SSA also offers these students and their organizations a variety of resources, including leadership training and support, guest speakers, discounted literature and conference tickets, and online articles and opinions. Starting in 2024, Secular Student Alliance partnered with The Satanic Temple, another organization promoting secular values among students, in supporting After School Satan clubs in public schools which also host religious student clubs.
The Secular Coalition for America is an advocacy group located in Washington D.C. It describes itself as "protecting the equal rights of nonreligious Americans."
The National Day of Reason is a secular celebration for humanists, atheists, secularists, and freethinkers. The day is celebrated annually on the first Thursday in May, in response to the statutory observance of a National Day of Prayer in the United States, which many atheist and secular groups deem unconstitutional. The purpose of the National Day of Reason is to "celebrate reason—a concept all Americans can support—and to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship." The National Day of Reason is also meant to help build community among the non-religious in the United States.
Discrimination against atheists, sometimes called atheophobia, atheistophobia, or anti-atheism, both at present and historically, includes persecution of and discrimination against people who are identified as atheists. Discrimination against atheists may be manifested by negative attitudes, prejudice, hostility, hatred, fear, or intolerance towards atheists and atheism or even the complete denial of atheists' existence. It is often expressed in distrust regardless of its manifestation. Perceived atheist prevalence seems to be correlated with reduction in prejudice. There is global prevalence of mistrust in moral perceptions of atheists found in even secular countries and among atheists.
The European Humanist Federation, officially abbreviated as EHF-FHE, was an umbrella of more than 60 humanist and secularist organisations from 25 European countries.
Roy Speckhardt is an American writer and the Development Director for VoteRiders. He is also the former executive director of the American Humanist Association, a non-profit civil liberties organization in Washington, D.C. In April 2021, he authored Justice-Centered Humanism via Pitchstone Press and in July 2015, he authored Creating Change Through Humanism via Humanist Press.
Greg M. Epstein is an American Humanist chaplain at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is the president of the Harvard Chaplains Organization. He is an ordained Humanist rabbi, and has been influential in American humanism as a blogger, spokesperson, adviser and author of the New York Times bestsellerGood Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. Epstein was an expert on the first three seasons of the reality show "Married at First Sight."
The United Coalition of Reason, or UnitedCoR for short, is a national organization in the United States that works to raise the visibility of local groups in the community of reason. Nationally this is done by conducting campaigns that highlight the fact that nontheists live in every community across America. Locally this is done by organizing and nurturing local groups to communicate with each other and hold events and other outreach activities.
An atheist billboard is an outdoor billboard that promotes divestment or outreach to atheists, nontheists, or nonreligious individuals. Similar to the Atheist Bus Campaign first undertaken in the United Kingdom by Ariane Sherine in October 2008, atheist billboards often include messages or graphics which either assert the lack of evidence for the existence of deities or positively encourage those who are privately questioning the existence of a deity, and such advertisements have garnered controversy and negative reactions from local theists.
David Silverman is an American secular advocate.
Ronald A. Lindsay was president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and of its affiliates, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He held this position June 2008 – 2016.
Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociologist and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of eight books, including Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society (2023) What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life (2019).
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Mandisa Lateefah Thomas is the founder and president of Black Nonbelievers Inc. She has spoken at secular conferences and events, and has promoted the group's agenda in media outlets.
The first Reason Rally was a public gathering for secularism and religious skepticism held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2012. The rally was sponsored by major atheistic and secular organizations of the United States and was regarded as a "Woodstock for atheists and skeptics". A second Reason Rally was held June 4, 2016 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
