A Bright, according to the newly launched Brights website (www.the-brights.net), is “a person holding a naturalist, as distinct from a supernaturalist, view of the world”. Brights may be atheist, agnostic, scientific, baffled or merely doubting, but what unites them is a disinclination to believe in God, ghosts, reincarnation or the tooth fairy. Newly-minted Brights are the latest sociopolitical grouping to demand political attention and claim discrimination in the US. We’re Brights; we’ve got rights; get used to it.

The term Bright was coined, consciously imitating the gay rights movement, in reaction to the steady spread of religious politics under George W. Bush. Outing himself as a Bright last week, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett declared in The New York Times: “Whether we Brights are a minority or, as I am inclined to believe, a silent majority, our deepest convictions are increasingly dismissed, belittled and condemned by those in power — by politicians who go out of their way to invoke God and to stand, self-consciously preening, on what they call ‘the side of the angels’.”

Brights insist that they do not wish to thrust their own disbeliefs on others, but merely to be tolerated in the same way as believers. “Though at present they can’t admit it and get elected, the US Congress must be full of closet Brights,” wrote Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor of Public Understanding of Science and another self-professed Bright who predicts that “the more Brights come out, the easier it will be for yet more to do so”.

Inevitably, Brights have come under attack not only from the more militant Christians, but also from atheists and others who see no reason to be rebranded as Brights.

There is undoubtedly something cringingly self-satisfied and self-conscious about the term. The website urging Brights to stand up and be counted even offers handy tips on revealing your inner brightness. For example, it advises: “If someone inquires about your own religion, you can pop up with, ‘Well, actually, I am a Bright’. The other person’s curiosity will probably take hold: ‘A Bright? What is that?’ ” In fact, of course, the conversation would probably go: “What’s your religion?” “Well, actually, I’m a Bright.” The other person will immediately suspect they are in the presence of a prat. “A Bright, eh? Well, good for you ... must get on.”

Nevertheless, Brights have a point. In Bush’s Washington, “godless” is the supreme insult, for religion suffuses every aspect of this presidency. In his recent memoir, the former Bush speechwriter David Frum noted that while Bible study class was “if not compulsory,” it was “ not quite uncompulsory”. As Dennett pointed out, the anti-Bright bias is often invisible, because non-believers do not declare themselves. In large parts of the US, thanks to the atmosphere fostered by the Bush Administration, candidates for office, whether as police chief, judge or senator, are happy to declare their beliefs, while millions of Americans who don’t believe, like gays of an earlier era, are obliged to remain silent. There is nothing so overt as “Brightbashing”, yet there is an underlying assumption of shared belief, a one-nation-under-Godism that reveals itself in subtle ways. When I covered the last presidential election, I lost count of the number of times I heard a candidate thank God for the weather.

British Brights have a far easier time, of course, yet there are hints that Mr Blair, if not actually a Brightophobe, is not exactly an advocate of Bright rights either. His prewar rhetoric was awash with rectitude, giving the impression that the angels were not just on his side, but driving the tanks. A striking passage in Peter Stothard’s new account of Blair at war reveals that the Prime Minister wanted to end a broadcast with the words “God bless”, and was only dissuaded by advisers who pointed out that “people don’t want chaplains pushing stuff down their throats”. Blair called them ungodly. This week, Blair declared that history would forgive the war in Iraq. In Blair’s Manichaean world, God and history are the same.

It may be argued that a profound faith is a useful, though certainly not an essential, element of leadership, but the religious convictions of Blair and Bush are entirely their own affair, and that is what they should remain. Blair’s beliefs inform his decisions, but those of Bush do more, offering an easy shorthand for moral superiority and the assumption of a shared collective faith.

I shall not be coming out as a Bright just yet. For a start, the term “secular humanist” may be old-fashioned but it is still serviceable, and mercifully doesn’t sound like something dreamed up as an advertising gimmick. It has the added advantage that the Religious Right in America already loathes it, so it must be just fine.

The term Bright seems too all-embracing for so many shades of doubt and certainty. Why, in rejecting the extravagant claims of organised religion, would one want to be part of a group organised around the absence of religion? Almost by definition, Brights would be opposed to joining any club clamouring to have them as a member, and for that reason alone I suspect the Brights may dim pretty quickly.

Looking on the bright side, however, the Bright movement may allow us to reclaim other words too long demonised by believers. Just as the gay movement has reclaimed “queer”, so the dawn of the Brights may be an opportunity to take back words such as atheist, rationalist and freethinker. There is already a fine word that does the job of Brights, which has been horribly abused over the centuries and is just waiting to be reclaimed by non-believers worldwide. Infidel: now that is a title I would come out of the closet for.

Times Recommends

• Navigating the new global archipelago
• Comment: McCain isn't Bush and voters know it
• Religion's history of self-inflicted pain