I agree with you entirely on Dawkins et. al.  I continue to be amazed (uh, recent events notwithstanding) at how many otherwise intelligent people can fail to realize that haranguing someone is not a great way to change his or her mind, but just makes them dislike you.

Now there will always be segments of the religious community who cannot "play well with others" but at the same time it is important not to make atheism a pre-requisite of being a progressive, IMO.

I think that's a very important point, and it's one of the reasons why, despite being non-religious myself, I joined Street Prophets as soon as it was launched, because I thought it was really important that such a venture be successful.  As someone who is not religious, who comes from a country where the dominant political discourse has become very, very religious -- and more explicitly, very, very Christian -- my view was that the only way to negate religion as a political tool is to make it basically something that doesn't give one side or the other an advantage.

That plan could, of course, backfire, and just contribute to the overall Christianization of U.S. politics, but then I don't know what to do.

I very much personally support the notion however that one thing progressives could usefully do for themselves, but also for civil society is build a social support system and set of communities that isn't based on religion but gives people a community to anchor in.

Yes, I support that too.  And in a way, that's sort of what (I feel) we're doing here at ET... sometimes more successfully than other times, but that's how things go.