To clarify, I wouldn't say that atheism entails an affirmation of anything's sacredness. I was just pointing out that atheism is consistent with such an affirmation, so there's no need for Vervaeke's "nontheism."

Maybe atheism needs a rebranding on other grounds, and that's fine. But here we'd need to distinguish between a social movement of atheism, and atheism as a logical, philosophical position. The position itself is just the rejection of theism, so it's neutral on whether there's some kind of nontheistic sacredness, as in pantheism. Certainly, atheism alone wouldn't entail pantheism. But groups of atheists may combine the rejection of theism with other philosophies, such as materialistic or non-materialistic ones. The New Atheists were pretty scientistic and humanistic. Older-school atheists were often more pessimistic and they subscribed to darker metaphysics and ethics, sometimes influenced by Eastern philosophies.

The point is that the rejection of theism can be combined with lots of philosophies and politics, so there's bound to be a variety of atheists. The idea that atheism itself needs a rebranding may amount to the point that one atheistic tribe disagrees with another one.

But indeed, American atheism needed a rebranding after the Madalyn Murray O'Hair incident. If Western atheism becomes associated with the alt-right, it might need another rebranding, according to leftist atheists. And Christians are constantly trying to demonize atheists.

But that's a culture war issue, which differs from the philosophical content of atheism.