A truly inclusive vision of America recognizes the nonreligious, too Amid rising Christian nationalism, President Biden should reach out directly to the ânones.â By Greg M. EpsteinUpdated March 14, 2021, 3:01 a.m. Email to a Friend President Biden departs after attending Mass in Wilmington, Del., last month.Patrick Semansky/Associated Press Ryan Burge is the longtime pastor to a small church of aging Baptists in Mount Vernon, Ill., a manufacturing hub in the deindustrializing rural Midwest, where he has lived since birth. Raised an evangelical by a father who drove the church bus and a mother who taught Sunday school, he makes an unlikely champion for nonreligious Americans in US electoral politics. But Burge, also a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, has recently gained a following among atheists like me.