Can Bernie Sanders Win Without God?

Last month, during a CNN primary debate in Flint, Michigan, Democratic presidential candidate fielded a question from the audience that people in his position don't get asked very often: "Do you believe that God is relevant?"

It's pretty hard to imagine any American politician answering that question with a "no," and Sanders didn't surprise. But he also didn't respond with a personal anecdote about his own faith, as Hillary Clinton did a moment later. In fact, he didn't mention himself at all, instead waxing poetic about what the world's religions have in common.

"What we are talking about is what all religions hold dear, which is to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you," Sanders gruffly told the audience.

The moment, though largely unnoticed, was a strange one in American politics. We don't blink when Ted Cruz makes an impassioned defense for school prayer and displaying the Ten Commandments on public grounds, but it's distinctly strange to watch a presidential candidate get all hand-wavy when someone asks him about God.

And yet, the Sanders approach to religion may be part of his appeal, at least among a significant bloc of voters backing his presidential campaign. A new report published by the Pew Research Center this month shows that nearly half of Sanders's support comes from Americans who are not affiliated with any religion—a group that pollsters and election experts commonly refer to as the "nones."

"The nonreligious population is exploding in this country right now," said Greg Epstein, executive director of the Humanist Hub at Harvard University. "We're in the middle of extraordinary growth, and it makes tremendous sense that you have a major political candidate [who is] basically running on a platform of what I would call humanism."

To be clear, Sanders says he believes in God—though he has also admitted to being "not particularly religious." Aside from the Flatbush dialect he shares with Larry David, Sanders's Judaism is barely noticeable in his politics. When Sanders talks about his faith, Epstein noted, he says things like "all life is connected" and "we're all in this together"—phrases that fit nicely into the progressive secularism that characterizes humanism.

Sanders's markedly irreligious campaign comes at a time when the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans is rising fast. In 2007, Pew estimated that 36.6 million American adults identified as atheists, agnostics, or "nothing in particular." By 2014, that number was up to 55.8 million—or nearly a quarter of the US adult population. According to that survey, younger Americans—a group that has overwhelmingly supported Sanders in the Democratic primary—are more likely to fall into this category, with 35 percent identifying as "nones."

"We're seeing a trend that is not going to be letting up any time soon," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. "It's reminiscent of the 80s, when the moral majority was rising," he added. "They weren't the difference-makers, necessarily, in Ronald Reagan's election, but people thought they had a big role to play. Because of that, they were courted for the next two decades."

The analogy to the Christian right is interesting. Religious conservatives have gained such leverage over American politics, particularly on the right, that the public debate over questions of morality and faith still tends to center on flash points like gay marriage and abortion.

Of course, the "nones" remain a clear minority in the US, and as such are unlikely to swing any election, especially on a national stage. Still, Speckhardt notes the group's potential influence is sizable, especially when its numbers are set alongside those of other religious groups.

According to Pew data from 2014, less than 2 percent of the US population identifies as Jewish, around the same number that identifies as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; Catholics, by comparison, make up 21 percent of the population. That same Pew survey found that "nones" who identify as distinctly irreligious account for nearly 16 percent.

"We think of this as still a small group," Speckhardt said. "It's not, especially when you think about how politicians court other religious minorities."

Whether intentionally or not, Sanders seems to be courting these voters, even among some unlikely audiences. In a September speech at Liberty University, conservative Bible college founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the Vermont senator quickly offered a statement about the secular realm in which his moral compass lies.

"There is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little," he told students, "when the top one tenth of one percent… owns almost as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent." It's the message Sanders has been repeating for more than a year on the campaign trail, and the one he's likely to repeat again when he visits the Vatican later this month.

"A lot of people who are in the 'none' category, I think, would agree with that," said Gary Smith, a historian who has written several books about religion in American politics. "Even though they're not very religious, they're very social-justice oriented."

On the other side of the party line, the rise of a twice-divorced, abortion flip-flopper is raising questions about the power of religious voters in Republican politics. According to another Pew survey released in January, Sanders is actually second to Trump when it comes to the number of voters who see him as religious. But while the "nones" seem to be supporting Sanders en masse, just 20 percent of voters supporting Trump identify as religiously unaffiliated—far less than the 34 percent of Trump voters who identify as evangelical.

So while Trump's success may similarly reflect some kind of drop off in the influence that religion plays for American voters, Smith noted, unlike Sanders's supporters, Trump voters seem to support the reality-TV star in spite of—rather than because of—the candidate's perceived lack of faith.

"I think that people have been willing to overlook Trump's lack of religious involvement, particularly the evangelicals that voted for him, because they like other aspects of the man," Smith said.

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