Freethought-Now

With the Fourth of July now in our rearview mirror and summer hitting full stride, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is not slowing down, despite the heat. In fact, FFRF is putting the heat on those who push a Christian nationalist agenda in the public realm. Here’s a look at some of the things your favorite state/church watchdog has been up to recently.

America 250 ad campaign

As we celebrated our nation’s 250th anniversary of its founding, FFRF launched a six-city advertising blitz that included full billboards and public transit kiosks in Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The messaging highlights the constitutional principles of secular government, individual liberty and freedom of conscience.

Additional elements of the “America 250: Lighting the Way” project included digital advertising and a full-page advertisement in The New York Times Magazine on July 5. The New York Times Magazine placement was expected to reach millions of readers nationwide, while the billboard/kiosk campaign was expected to get 4 million views.

Paine Memorial legislation moves forward

FFRF this week applauded bipartisan legislation introduced by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., to secure placement of a Thomas Paine memorial in Area I of Washington’s monumental core, where some of the nation’s most significant founders and historical figures are honored.

Placement in Area I, reserved for the small number of Americans whose contributions have preeminent and lasting significance to the country, requires an act of Congress. Here’s hoping Congress can unite on this legislation and make the memorial, commissioned to renowned sculptor Zenos Frudakis, a reality.

FFRF commends Wisconsin school district
FFRF this week supported Arrowhead Union High School District in Hartland, Wis., for declining to include religious or political messages in its official graduation slideshow.

FFRF sent the support letter to the district after the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) threatened legal action against the district on behalf of a graduate whose request to include a bible verse, and later a message thanking God, in the slideshow was denied. WILL argues that the district engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by permitting secular messages while excluding religious ones. FFRF notes that the district has established neutral guidelines for the graduation slideshow before the ceremony, limiting submissions to family acknowledgments and students’ post-graduation educational or career plans.

FFRF notifies Sen. Schumer over founding myth
Earlier this week, FFRF urged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to correct the record after he attributed a fabricated quotation to the Founding Fathers in his Independence Day message.

In a July 4 post from his official Senate X account, Schumer wrote: “The Founding Fathers called America God’s noble experiment. I believe in all three words to this day: we are one nation under God, we have clung to noble ideas for longer than any other nation, and we are an experiment always changing, trying to make ourselves better.”

Historians have found no evidence that any Founder ever called the United States “God’s noble experiment.”

In a letter sent Tuesday, FFRF notes that despite Schumer having repeated the claim for more than two decades in speeches about judicial nominations, voting rights, Supreme Court confirmations and democracy itself, no contemporary source for the quotation has been identified.

Smithsonian told to preach Christian nationalism, FFRF warns

FFRF this week condemned a new White House report that seeks to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to promote a white Christian nationalist revisionist version of American history under the guise of restoring “truth and sanity.”

The 162-page report, “Saving America’s Story,” issued by the White House Domestic Policy Council pursuant to President Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” repeatedly faults the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for failing to portray Christianity as central to America’s founding and identity.

Far from offering an objective historical assessment, the report advances the same themes promoted by Christian nationalist organizations: that America’s rights derive primarily from Christianity, that museums should celebrate the nation’s “Christian roots,” and that any criticism of Christianity’s historical role constitutes ideological bias.

FFRF decries Trump’s $1.5M payout from bible licensing

Newly released financial disclosures show President Donald Trump has earned more than $1.5 million licensing his name to the “God Bless the USA Bible,” prompting renewed criticism from FFRF this week.

The expensive bible packages, which feature the “King James Bible” along with the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Pledge of Allegiance and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” blend scripture, patriotic documents and political branding into a single commercial product.

“As all things are with Trump, this has always been about money,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Trump wraps himself in Christianity, wraps the Constitution inside a bible, and is persuading supporters to finance his political brand while enriching himself to the tune of more than $1.5 million. It is a stunning example of political pandering and exploiting religious faith for personal profit.”

FFRF ends teacher-led religious club in Pennsylvania.
FFRF has persuaded the West Chester Area School District in Exton, Pa., to stop a teacher from leading a religious club and pressuring students to advance an explicitly Christian religious organization.

FFRF learned that a social studies teacher was leading a religious club for students in his classroom every Thursday morning at J.R. Fuggett Middle School.

Additionally, the teacher had run a mandatory “assembly” for all sixth-grade students, in which he promoted Pamoza International, a Christian missionary organization, under the pretext of the “Africa” curricular unit.

FFRF stood up to defend students’ rights and ensured that the district corrected this violation.

“Public school teachers may not take advantage of their positions to gather students in order to promote an evangelizing religious organization,” FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to the district.

FFRF blasts commission’s attack on state/church separation
FFRF has submitted an official public comment strongly opposing the draft report issued by the federal Religious Liberty Commission, warning that its recommendations would undermine one of the Constitution’s most fundamental protections against uniting religion and government.

In its extensive comment, FFRF argues that the commission’s report is not an objective examination of religious liberty but rather an advocacy document promoting a narrow ideological agenda that mischaracterizes the Establishment Clause while minimizing the constitutional rights of religious minorities and the growing number of nonreligious Americans.

“[The commission’s report] rests on a false premise: that the constitutional separation between religion and government is somehow hostile to religion,” says FFRF in its formal comment. “The opposite is true. The Establishment Clause protects religious liberty by ensuring that the government neither favors nor disfavors religion. This principle has safeguarded both believers and nonbelievers throughout our nation’s history and has helped foster one of the most religiously diverse societies in the world.”

Calling out Trump for his incorrect claims

FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote a column this week for the Freethought Now blog calling out President Trump for his numerous errors, mistakes and misinformation regarding religion and government in the past couple of weeks.

She writes: “Following a numbing week of speeches viciously denouncing ‘the godless,’ President Trump, during his July 4 address in the nation’s stormy capital, made the laughable mistake of mixing up the Declaration of Independence with . . . the Book of Genesis!”

“‘And as our Declaration of Independence tells us, we are all made in the image of one Almighty God,’ Trump absurdly declared,” she writes.

“No, President Trump, that religious claim is found not in the Declaration but in the bible, specifically Genesis 1:27,” Annie Laurie continued. 

“Ridiculous as Trump’s assertions about ‘the godless’ are, they are intended to scapegoat nonbelievers and muzzle or silence any criticism of religion and Christian nationalism,” she writes. “And that’s why it’s imperative to keep speaking out about the dangers of religious authoritarianism. Dumb as it was for Trump to conflate the Declaration of Independence with Genesis, his words epitomize Christian nationalism: they merge the American identity with zealous Christianity.”

An op-ed Gaylor wrote debunking Trump’s claim that the Declaration of Independence shows America is “one nation under God” ran in a number of daily newspapers via the Progressive Perspectives project in the run-up to July 4.

50ish nonreligious books to read this summer

It should come as no surprise that the people at FFRF enjoy a good book. And it shouldn’t come as a revelation that we want to amplify the voices of atheists, agnostics and everyone else under the nonreligious umbrella. So, click here for some suggestions for books that fit the categories for our summer reading challenge and relate to nonreligious values.

Freethought Radio homes in on state/church bills

After reporting a slew of Christian nationalist nonsense from pastors, government officials and our President, FFRF Action Fund’s Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne and State Policy Manager Ryan Dudley describe a slew of good and bad state/church bills in state legislatures so far this year.

American Heritage Act turns history class into propaganda
Speaking of bad bills, Tennessee signed into law on July 1 the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act, which encourages schools and universities to promote a one-sided, fictionalized narrative of religion’s “positive” influence on American history. 

FFRF Regional Governmental Affairs Manager Mickey Dollens responded with an op-ed on the FFRF Action Fund site that calls out the law for what it is: Christian nationalism disguised as history.

“The Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act advocates for teaching only the ‘positive’ aspects of religion,” Mickey writes. “Instead of encouraging students to study religion’s role in American history honestly and critically, it distorts the past and advances a government-sponsored religious narrative inside public school classrooms.”

“This law matters beyond Tennessee,” Mickey continues. “Unfortunately, bills like this are likely to keep showing up in state after state, disguised as history but used to promote a Christian nationalist agenda.”

Army vet named ‘Secularist of the Week’

The FFRF Action Fund has named Eric Peisel, an Army veteran and practicing pagan, its “Secularist of the Week” for sharing his service experiences in the wake of the Defense Department’s gutting of 180 religious identification categories from its list of recognized faiths or viewpoints for service members. Christian denominations account for the vast majority of the remaining religion categories. “Atheist” and a number of minority religious faiths were removed from the official list.

Peisel shared the letters he sent to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on social media and encouraged others to send their own.

“The Armed Forces have long recognized that service to one’s country should never require the surrender of one’s sincerely held religious beliefs,” Peisel writes. “The expansion of religious accommodation policies over the past several decades has been a reflection of our nation’s commitment to both military readiness and the constitutional principle of religious liberty. . . The First Amendment does not guarantee religious freedom only to those whose beliefs are popular, familiar, or approved of by those in positions of authority.”

We hope you have a wonderful weekend. Stay cool!

The post Weekly Wrap: FFRF keeps its cool as religious rhetoric heats up appeared first on Freethought Now.