4th place — 2024 high school essay contest: Toby Shu
FFRF awarded Toby $2,000.
By Toby Shu
In March, I cast my first ballot in Colorado, voting in the 2024 presidential primary. And appearing on the ballot for the Republican party was Donald Trump. When I voted, the Supreme Court was considering the case of Trump v. Anderson, which was whether Trump could remain on the ballot or if he was disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for aiding an insurrection.
Shortly after I voted, the Supreme Court handed down its decision. Unsurprisingly, six Republican-appointed justices, all Christian, ruled that Trump could remain on the ballot. But they did not stop there. They went further, ruling that legislation would need to be passed to even consider his disqualification.
The same Supreme Court, two years earlier, struck down Roe while weakening the wall of separation between church and state in Carson v. Makin and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The same Supreme Court last year held that my state’s anti-discrimination law could not be applied to a religious website designer, letting her deny service to gay couples.
The common thread among all of these cases is the entanglement between Christian nationalism and conservatism. And it is no surprise that this thread exists, when Christian nationalist ideology was one of the strongest indicators for voting for Trump (PRRI, Feb. 24, 2023).
Conversely, the “Nones” make up around 30 percent of the Democratic voter base (PRRI, Feb. 24, 2023). However, the Nones, especially young Nones, vote in lower percentages than those who are religiously affiliated. In 2022, 22 percent of Nones aged 18-29 voted, much lower than the 39 percent of overall Nones who voted and 51 percent of religious people who voted (PRRI, Jan. 2024).
In other words, we, the young Nones, are not doing the bare minimum. We are not doing the bare minimum to prevent the present slide into Christian nationalism, which is working to bring back school prayer, outlaw abortion, and curtail LGBTQ rights. Christian nationalists tried to steal an election in 2020, and yet Gen Z Nones barely reacted.
To see our values enacted, we should be voting at equal rates to those who are religiously affiliated. We cannot stand idly by as our country becomes unrecognizable. We should be proud that we don’t support pseudoscience and oppressive hierarchies and are not religious. Our beliefs in following science, giving women the right to choose, and equality for all, including LGBTQ individuals, would find broader support governmentally if we actually voted.
But our involvement cannot end there. We lack representatives in the corridors of power, and we must continue fighting until we have equal representation. We must help campaigns, phone our representatives, participate in local politics, and advocate for our policies. We must fight back against the threat that is currently posed to a secular America, using social media to reach young Nones, creating engagement and reshaping the Nones into an important bloc of voters.
By organizing and showing up, we will become a constituency with voices that are taken seriously. We will be able to defend a secular America. We cannot let America become unrecognizably entangled with religion.
Toby, 18, is from Englewood, Colo., and attends Georgetown University, with plans to major in math and economics.
“[In the summer before college,] I interned at Metro Volunteer Lawyers, a group that connects indigent people to legal help,” Toby writes. “In high school, I won several awards both in math and social studies for my academics and participated in theatre tech for six shows, leading in four.”
