March 13, 2007
Stark Announces He Doesn't Believe In God
Democratic Rep. Pete Stark today became the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to declare that he did not believe in a higher being, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The California lawmaker, described as Unitarian in the 2006 edition of the Almanac of American Politics (subscription), is one of the body's more liberal members. He is also from the very liberal Bay area, so his declaration is unlikely to make waves in his district, let alone the rest of the country.
But a self-avowed atheist running for higher office would have a much harder time, polls indicate. A Gallup/USA Today survey (subscription) conducted last month showed just 45 percent of respondents saying they would vote for a "well-qualified" non-believer. And in an October survey (subscription), Gallup respondents overwhelmingly agreed Americans weren't ready to elect an atheist.
Unitarian Universalism has roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but members "believe that personal experience, conscience and reason should be the final authorities in religion, and that in the end religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but in ourselves," according to a statement on the Unitarian Universalist Association's Web site.
In a time when religious divisions are fueling many of the world's major conflicts, the description of the Unitarian church sounds like a resort by comparison. But the 76-year-old Stark has often been anything but a calming presence on the House floor. In the summer of 2003, Stark butted heads with Rep. Scott McInnis, saying to the Colorado Republican, "You little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake." Eventually, Capitol Police were summoned to quash the skirmish. Stark later denied the remarks had anything to do with homosexuality.
The episode is one among several that have made Stark a favorite target of conservative bloggers. But shortly after the "fruitcake" episode, the hardly conservative San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on the lawmaker's "buffoonery" and lambasted him as "a politician who assumes he has a job for life."
Posted at 11:48 AM
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