If Obama is a messiah, then he's a laughably poor and ironically transitory one---furthermore, if you think POTUS is a liberal, then you misunderstand the concept. He socially liberal, probably owing to his background in law & community planning, but he's no liberal on much else.

Secular humanism isn't a religion anymore than democratic government or existentialism or cubism in art. This is an accusation I hear all the time. It arises from the filter through which they view the world---not the reality. I think it comes from the confusion of human passion for certain ideas with the religious passion of zealots, thinking that since they both bear a committed intensity then they must be alike.
As for "much bloodshed"---it makes little sense when compared to the overwhelming majority of war waged in this world that is directly related to religious belief. What? Are you arguing that Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were secular humanists? Ridiculous. But all these side bars are irrelevant to the truth at the heart of the matter. Either there is a God or there isn't. Religious war is waged between believers in the affirmative over the details of their own faith, (usually Abrahamic),and its private revelations, now institutionalized---wherein the devil lies.
It's as clear as the nose on a human face. Religion has been giving ground for centuries and is poised to act either on malicious world destruction or enlightened capitulation---your loss of adherents is accelerating. And the great squealing protests by religious groups are nothing more than frightened victims, still locked in the mass delusional hysteria of religion, as they watch their offspring leaving the madness in droves! Religion itself is the genuine "elephant in the room" of terrorism and armed conflict that few target head-on.

<“A secular society… can’t fight a spiritual war,” Kilpatrick writes.>

Of course it can and it has been doing it since The Enlightenment. Secular humanism (regardless of what it's called at any given time) continues to gain ground inch-by-inch...closing the gaps of knowledge with science & rationality one new truth paradigm at a time.

As an atheist, already well on the road to self-acceptance and social connectedness to other atheists without Gervais, I recently commented on a Gervais-fan web site that he ought to "Shut up and go away"...that he was "embarassing us [atheists] as a group with his raucous, unsolicited antics". His fan base howled in protest and hammered me hard!
The bottom line is Ricky ought to just keep quiet and learn a bit more about the growing and life-affirming movement of atheists that already thrives globally before he steps forward to assume some unneeded leadership role. After all, I've heard it said that organizing atheists is a lot like trying to herd cats.