The Rise of the Secular Coalition for America

Over the weekend, I attended the biannual board meeting of the Secular Coalition for America.

I began working with the SCA before our first director was hired, a few years ago. It’s incredible how far we’ve come in that time.

We’re now getting one-on-one appointments with the White House staff and we’re included in White House meetings. Instead of our staff calling them, they now call us.

We’re being far more proactive than ever, speaking to members of Congress about how they should respond to certain pieces of legislation before they come up, instead of reacting after the fact. That’s a huge deal.

We have a very impressive new lobbyist, Sean Faircloth, and I’m hopeful people who meet him will like him as much as they did Lori Lipman Brown. I’m definitely optimistic that will be the case after my first meeting with him.

There are more SCA supporters now than ever before and we’re growing. We have five staff members and a new office — which we’ll probably outgrow before long. Major media has been covering the SCA and it looks like that will continue.

We’re not as influential yet as the Christian Right has been in the past, but we literally have a seat at the table now — it’s not just a metaphor.

How amazing is that?