FFRF halts teacher-led Christian club at Indiana high school

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has made certain that the Mooresville Schools system in Indiana has ended an instructor-led religious club known as “BetterMan.”

A concerned member of the community informed FFRF that the school’s choir director had started a “BetterMan study” for Mooresville High School students. According to its website, BetterMan is “a Christian organization” that provides “an 11-week group study on the essentials of biblical manhood and how men can live it out at home, at work, with friends and with God.” The group’s guide for leaders makes clear the program is intended to convert participants to Christianity: “True transformation will come from God working in men’s lives. The Gospel will be clearly shared after Session 6 and that is a great opportunity to make sure you know where each guy in your group is with Jesus. Call any man who lacks faith to believe in Him!” 

FFRF communicated with the school district asking for an investigation and to ensure that none of its staff members were unconstitutionally sponsoring religious activities in its schools. “To avoid encouraging or coercing students into participating in a religious club, the district may not allow staff to be involved in student religious clubs beyond a supervisory capacity,” FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to Superintendent Jake Allen.

It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district to allow staff-led religious clubs, FFRF emphasized in its letter. Public schools may not show favoritism toward, or coerce belief in or participation in, religion. It is both inappropriate and unconstitutional for public school teachers to promote, lead and organize a religious club for students and use their position at a public school to attempt to convert their students to their personal religion. This not only violates the First Amendment rights of students, but it also needlessly alienates all students and families who do not subscribe to Christianity, including the more than half of Generation Z members (those born after 1996) who are non-Christian, including the 43 percent who are nonreligious.

Allen emailed FFRF back with a positive response after the district conducted a review of the matter to bring itself back into alignment with the First Amendment. 

“As part of that review, district administration met with the staff member referenced in your correspondence and provided clear direction regarding the constitutional and legal limitations applicable to employee involvement in student religious activities,” Allen wrote. “Specifically, staff members were reminded that any student religious organizations or gatherings on school grounds must be student-initiated and student-led, and that employees may only be present in a nonparticipator supervisory capacity consistent with federal law and district expectations.”

FFRF is pleased to see its dedication to students’ rights pay off once again.

“We firmly believe that students do not need biblical teaching to make them ‘better’ people,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “But students who desire such instruction are free to seek it from their families and churches. What students need in our public schools is a learning environment free from preaching and welcoming to all, religious and nonreligious alike.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members across the country, including more than 600 members in Indiana. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post FFRF halts teacher-led Christian club at Indiana high school appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

FFRF demands removal of Texas courthouse Ten Commandments monument 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on Rockwall County, Texas, to remove a newly installed Ten Commandments monument from the grounds of the county courthouse.

FFRF’s letter to the Rockwall County Commissioners Court details how the county unanimously approved the monument in May before unveiling it during a public ceremony featuring Christian prayers and speeches from religious and political figures. The monument, rendered in the King James Bible translation, prominently displays explicitly religious commandments, including directives to worship the biblical god exclusively, avoid “graven images” and observe the Sabbath.

“Courthouses are supposed to symbolize equal justice under secular law for all citizens, regardless of religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Installing sectarian scripture at the seat of county government sends the message that Christians are favored insiders while non-Christians and nonreligious residents are outsiders.”

The monument’s design and presentation make clear that it is intended to promote Christianity rather than educate the public about history.

“Far from serving a neutral historical purpose, the monument’s approval, presentation and unveiling demonstrate a coordinated governmental effort to promote a particular religious viewpoint,” FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line writes in the letter.

FFRF notes that the unveiling ceremony itself underscored the monument’s religious nature. The event opened and closed with Christian prayer, featured a representative from First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian nationalist legal organization, and included remarks from County Judge Frank New encouraging attendees to “embrace God’s love.”

The monument was reportedly donated by the American History & Heritage Foundation, founded by Christian nationalist activist Jason Rapert, who also founded the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.

FFRF argues that the county cannot shield the display from constitutional scrutiny merely by claiming it has historical significance.

“Claims that the Ten Commandments reflect the historical foundations of American law are historically inaccurate,” Line writes. “The United States was founded on secular legal principles derived primarily from English common law, Enlightenment philosophy and classical sources, not biblical mandates.”

FFRF points out that many of the displayed commandments, including “prohibitions on worshiping other gods” and “commands to observe the Sabbath,” are purely religious directives with no basis in American law.

FFRF’s letter distinguishes the Rockwall monument from the Ten Commandments display upheld by the Supreme Court in Van Orden v. Perry. Unlike the decades-old Texas Capitol monument at issue in that case, the Rockwall display is a newly installed, stand-alone religious monument placed at a courthouse in an overtly religious context.

FFRF is urging the county to remove the display immediately out of respect for the First Amendment and the rights of conscience of all Rockwall County residents.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 42,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including more than 1,700 members and a chapter in Texas. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post FFRF demands removal of Texas courthouse Ten Commandments monument  appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Caller who can’t read insists God never had David’s wives punished

The Catholic Church protected a predator priest. The courts punished the whistleblower.

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A lawyer who was punished for alerting a Catholic school that they had an alleged predator on staff is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that decision. New details show that other people, not just him, were aware of the predator’s history and alerted the school about it.

It’s a complicated story but one that will rightly infuriate you.

In December of 2021, attorney Richard Trahant discovered that a chaplain at a private Catholic school—Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana—had previously been accused of sexual misconduct.

Trahant contacted the school and informed them of what he had just learned. Within days, that chaplain, Paul Hart, announced his “retirement.” He and the archdiocese both announced that he was stepping down because of cancer.

And then that lawyer was fined $400,000 for warning people about the predator priest.

I repeat: The attorney—not the priest and not the school and not the Catholic Church—was fined $400,000 for alerting people about Hart’s past actions.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld that decision to punish the whistleblower.

The allegations against Rev. Paul Hart

Paul Hart began working for the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 1989. At some point during his tenure there, when he was in his late 30s, he met a 17-year-old girl who attended Mount Carmel Academy and was a member of a youth group at his church. Things took a disturbing turn after that:

By 1990, he was allegedly spending his personal time with the student, and began kissing her, groping her chest, and at least once engaging in what church investigators described a “dry sex”—which involves people simulating intercourse with their clothes on—while in the rectory, the sources said.

As criminal as that was, the girl didn’t tell anyone what happened at that time. She later said she didn’t understand just how inappropriate his actions were.

By 2012, however, that same girl had grown up and had children of her own. She even sent them to a Catholic school in the same archdiocese. But she soon found out that Paul Hart, who had moved around quite a bit during his career, was now back at their church and in close proximity to her kids. Knowing now how egregious Hart’s behavior had been, she told the archdiocese what happened to her years earlier.

The woman filed a complaint with the archdiocese, accusing Hart of grooming her before pursuing sexual contact she now realized was inappropriate. In a church investigation, Hart denied initiating what happened but admitted contact, which he could not say did not cause him to ejaculate.

The Church’s investigation didn’t go anywhere. They said Hart broke the Catholic Church’s rules about celibacy, as if that was the real issue, but didn’t commit child sexual abuse because canon law at the time said the age of adulthood was 16. (That was raised to 18 in 2002, but investigators were going by Church rules that were in place in the 1990s.)

The end result was that Hart remained a priest within the diocese. He wasn’t fired. He wasn’t even seriously in trouble. Because he had not abused a “minor,” his name never appeared on any list of priests accused of such behavior.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for bankruptcy

In May of 2020, the Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Faced with the high costs of child sex abuse lawsuits and the huge financial hit from the pandemic, there was no other choice. The filing put a temporary stop to the lawsuits and began a process to figure out the archdiocese’s assets and liabilities. That process, however, involved sharing details about internal investigations.

That’s when attorney Richard Trahant (pronounced TRAY-hant) entered the story.

He represented some of the victims of sexual abuse and was part of a committee investigating the archdiocese. In that position, he saw the paperwork documenting the allegations against Hart. He also knew that Hart was currently working at Brother Martin High School. While that’s an all-boys school, girls are in the building for some extracurricular activities, so Trahant felt obligated to let the school know they had an alleged predator in their midst.

Trahant’s cousin also happened to be the principal of that school, which led to this exchange over text:

Trahant: Is [priest] still the chaplain at [high school]?

Principal: Yes

Trahant: You and I need to get together soon.

Principal: Sh*t

Trahant: Indeed.

Principal: You beat me to the text. That’s an ominous question coming from you.

Within days after the school learned about Hart, they released a statement announcing his sudden retirement. Both sides claimed Hart was stepping down “due to his ongoing battle with brain cancer.” Obviously the goal was to keep the allegations quiet.

But when the Times-Picayune wrote about Hart’s departure, reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas had the real scoop: Hart’s retirement was announced right after the school discovered the allegations of abuse against him.

The chaplain at Brother Martin High School abruptly left his post earlier this month, just days after the school was notified of allegations that he kissed and fondled a Mount Carmel Academy senior in 1990 while serving at another local Catholic institution, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

How was Vargas able to connect those dots?! The archdiocese clearly didn’t want anyone to know the real reason Hart was being let go, but Vargas seemed to have inside information.

Why the lawyer was fined for reporting the priest

It wasn’t until several months later when we finally learned the backstory. In a piece for the Guardian, written by none other than Ramon Antonio Vargas, he explained how he got a major tip from… attorney Richard Trahant.

It turned out that when Trahant alerted Brother Martin High School about Hart, he also emailed Vargas “advising him to ‘keep’ Hart on his ‘radar’, without saying why.”

Vargas began digging and it soon led to the scoop mentioned earlier, connecting Hart’s retirement with what seemed to be the actual reason for his departure.

When that story came out in late 2022, the judge in charge of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings, Meredith Grabill, realized that the only way a reporter could have learned any of those details was if someone working on the case leaked the information. That would have been a problem since all the documents were classified.

Grabill called for an investigation. While Vargas says he didn’t rat out his source(s), and openly told the investigators “Trahant did not provide any information in the piece,” Grabill said Trahant’s warning to the high school and his email telling Vargas to keep tabs on Hart violated the confidentiality agreement. So she punished him:

Grabill immediately removed from the clergy abuse claimants committee Trahant, two attorneys with whom he frequently collaborates and a number of clients. On Tuesday, she added the $400,000 fine against Trahant, saying the amount was derived from the cost of the leak investigation.

A $400,000 fine for warning a school about an alleged sex predator on their payroll.

Trahant said at the time he was appealing the decision. He also said in a publicly available deposition during the leak investigation that he acted like any mandated reporter: When he learned about wrongdoing, he reported it to relevant parties in order to protect potential victims.

“I don’t believe I violated the [confidentiality] order” by alerting a school about a cleric who had previously engaged in misconduct with a teen, the attorney said.

“I’m going to do something about it 10 out of 10 times.”

The bottom line is that Trahant did exactly what the Church should’ve done a long time ago. He took action when he realized there was a problem. But because his actions supposedly violated the letter of the law when it came to these bankruptcy hearings, he now faced this staggering fine.

The archdiocese practically gloated about all this:

“The wisdom of the judge’s ruling speaks for itself.”

The wisdom! You could practically feel the condescension in that statement.

Whatever the legal situation here, Trahant deserved a medal for what he did, not a fine. When the morally correct option stands in direct opposition to the law, you have to respect those who choose the former path. It may be a messed up situation, but everyone was better off because Trahant spoke up.

If the Catholic Church actually gave a damn about any of these victims, it would be first in line offering to pay Trahant’s fine on his behalf. He did them a favor by giving them information that led to the dismissal of a child sex predator.

Just because the law may have been on the Church’s side didn’t mean the Church should bask in victory. Their response showed how little they cared about the people they hurt.

That fine was later upheld

In January, Trahant’s attempt to overturn that decision failed. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision to fine him $400,000.

Trahant tried to argue he wasn’t given due process, that the bankruptcy court lacked jurisdiction over the matter, and that they abused their discretion by punishing him. The Appeals Court, for legal reasons irrelevant here, dismissed all of those arguments, finding that Trahant violated his confidentiality agreement.

Despite that, Trahant still maintained he would do it all over again to protect kids, telling reporters, “I did what I had to do to keep a child predator away from children,”

The aftermath

That brings us to where we’re at right now. Earlier this month, Trahant asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision using the same basic arguments he made to the Fifth Circuit.

But there’s another twist, and it comes from none other than reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas. When Trahant was fined $400,000, the judge who issued it, Meredith Grabill, placed nearly all the information about the fine under seal, meaning it couldn’t be accessed by the public.

Vargas was able to get his hands on all of it.

But the Guardian has now obtained the entire case file, thousands of pages long, through a public records request made with New Orleans state prosecutors who collected it while securing the guilty plea of another priest charged with rape and kidnapping.

A review of the record provides the case’s clearest view yet – and establishes that Hart’s history was more stained than previously known.

…

Trahant, meanwhile, has long argued that the information which ended Hart’s Brother Martin tenure was actually disclosed by New Orleans’ then archbishop, Gregory Aymond – since retired – and associates, all subject to the same confidentiality order Grabill says that Trahant violated.

In short, the archdiocese knew that Hart was a predator and admitted as much to various school officials, violating the same agreement that Trahant—and only Trahant—was punished for.

When the Archdiocese stationed Hart inside the Catholic school, it was only after a “board advising Aymond on clergy abuse cases recommended that the archbishop remove Hart from ministry.” But after the school’s principal got the head’s up from Trahant via text message, he and other administration members began asking archdiocese officials if they knew anything about Hart that might be problematic.

Of course they knew. More importantly, they openly admitted things that Trahant merely hinted at.

The Brother Martin officials would say in depositions that Aymond and a lay volunteer adviser, Lee Eagan, shared specifics of the 2012 complaint against Hart. One suggested the archbishop disclosed the name of the complainant, which was confidential, though the official couldn’t remember it, according to a deposition.

Another Brother Martin official described learning from Aymond of “a boundary violation … that involved a 17-year-old female. The … behavior was not appropriate in that it was something that Father Paul, as a priest, should not have done. But the archbishop made it clear to me that it was not anything that was ever criminal.”

Nonetheless, had Brother Martin known that about Hart beforehand, it would not have accepted him as chaplain, multiple school officials said while being deposed.

The school forced out Hart only because of confidential details they learned from the archdiocese. They didn’t get rid of Hart because Trahant expressed his concern. Yet only Trahant was punished for violating a confidentiality agreement.

Former Archbishop Aymond said in a deposition that he never shared confidential information with school officials. That, it turns out, was a lie.

That’s why Trahant believes he shouldn’t be punished:

[Trahant] contends, among other things, that Aymond effectively waived confidentiality about Hart when he spoke extensively to Brother Martin officials. Trahant has also said he was within his rights to tell a reporter to keep a priest on his radar without sharing anything else.

Trahant’s 6 May request for a chance to appeal to the US supreme court says he deserves to defend his “good name, reputation, honor and integrity” from “judicial action taken without notice and an opportunity to be heard”.

While all that’s happening, the archdiocese is in chaos. Aymond retired earlier this year shortly after “the archdiocese and its insurers agreed to pay about $305m to roughly 600 abuse survivors ensnared in the bankruptcy.” Dozens of those survivors are clients of Trahant.

The entire case has just been a huge series of systemic failures. The Catholic Church chose self-protection over accountability and the well-being of minors. The bankruptcy proceedings just became another tool for the Church to bury the truth and punish someone who took the moral high ground.

If there’s anything we can take away from this situation, it’s that we need more people like Richard Trahant. He did what the Church repeatedly fights against: He treated credible allegations as an urgent danger, not just some administrative inconvenience. He warned a school. He indirectly tipped off a journalist. But what we now know is that the archdiocese itself confirmed the very things Trahant alluded to. There’s no logic that says he should be punished for violating a confidentiality agreement when the Catholic Church went even further. Trahant’s moral clarity and personal courage stands in contrast to the values that the Church likes to think it instills in people but never actually does.

All of this sends a chilling message to whistleblowers: When it comes to legal priorities, a policy of secrecy always overrides the idea of child safety. The Church and the courts have made it clear that speaking up to protect kids could ruin you financially, but silence will always be rewarded.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

Blasphemers Bible – Psalm 73

“How old was Mary?”: How dozens of Oklahoma Republicans fought a bill banning child marriage

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The good news is that Oklahoma recently became the 17th state (along with Washington, D.C.) to ban child marriage.

The bad news? It wasn’t unanimous. In fact, 36 Republicans in the State House voted against the legislation, reminding everyone that they’re perfectly fine with adults forcing themselves upon children who aren’t legally old enough to make decisions for themselves.

Their excuses were downright embarrassing.

Senate Bill 504 shouldn’t have been controversial. All it did was remove the underage exceptions to the law about how marriage can only occur between legal adults. From now on, it won’t matter if your parents (or other authorities) agree to it or if you’re pregnant. No marriage until you’re 18. Simple. That’s a big deal because children are sometimes pressured by their parents to marry early or they feel forced into marriage because of teenage pregnancy. Plenty of adults enter into marriages that don’t pan out, but it’s perfectly rational to say a decision that important should only be made by adults.

Taking an impregnated middle- or high-schooler and pressuring her into getting married to her classmate—at an age when both of them barely understand how their own bodies work—isn’t a love story. It’s Purity Culture run amok. They didn’t have much of a childhood. They barely had time to develop crushes. They probably haven’t gone through a break-up. Why should we assume they have the maturity to understand their options as wedded adults?

Let’s not pretend they can easily end the marriage either. The sort of Christians who advocate for child marriage also condemn divorce regardless of the reason. So child marriage is very much about trapping people into relationships before they’re old enough to know any better.

That’s why this wasn’t merely symbolic legislation. According to the advocacy group Unchained At Last, “nearly 315,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2021—mostly girls wed to adult men.”

But that didn’t stop a number of Republican legislators from making a series of bizarre arguments against the bill.

State Rep. Justin Humphrey argued that this law was getting in the way of parental rights… and causing abortions.

Representative, you know I love ya. But you think that you know better than parents? Do you think the government should make decisions for parents over family? You think we have that authority?

… Let’s take a situation where a girl was already pregnant. She’s already done that. Do you think that that person who is pregnant, who is not allowed to get married, is much more likely to have an abortion? So if we’re worried about abortion, don’t you think we’re actually causing that?

It’s quite literally the government’s job to create and enforce sensible regulations. And considering how shitty many parents can be, some basic restrictions like not being allowed to enter your children into marriages when they’re barely old enough to think for themselves should not cramp anyone’s lifestyle.

Also, why the hell would not letting children marry lead to more abortions? Those are two separate things that don’t have anything to do with each other. If this bill preventing underage marriage leads you to have an abortion, it’s because you were going to get one regardless.

State Rep. Derrick Hildebrant argued that this bill contradicted the Bible. And we can’t have that happening, can we?! He added that this bill was destroying potential families.

Mr. Speaker, how about Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” Does “among all” mean now only those who are 18 and older? Or is marriage honorable except in every case that this bill removes?

… How about pregnancy? “Pregnancy can pressure minors into marriage!” If a young couple is expecting a child, both families support the marriage, should the law then forbid them from forming a stable home? I think not.

He got the last three words right.

Who the hell cares what the Bible says, much less a cherry picked verse? By his logic, parents should be allowed to force kids into marriage at any age. Hell, why not perform the ceremony when they’re fresh out of the womb?

And if your idea of a “stable” family involves 16-year-old children and any possible babies they’re having, probably with no direct means of support, your brain is broken. (Keep in mind many of these conservative Christians believe a same-sex couple with solid careers, nice home, and adopted children are inherently unstable.)

Humphrey, an elected representative in the government, later returned to argue that government is always the problem and no one should listen to them. And then he claimed this was about imposing Socialism upon the masses. (He also referred to himself in the third person, which is just plain weird.)

I just wanna ask everybody, What the Humphrey is this all about?! Guys, there’s one thing I know. It’s when government shows up and says they’re there to help, you know what I’m gonna do? I‘m gonna run. ‘Cause I’ll guarantee you they seldom help…

… A lot of people have said this is about pedophilia. This bill has nothing to do with pedophilia! This bill has absolutely nothing to do… because we have… we have bills that protect that. This bill has been on the books for a long long time!

… You know what Socialism looks like? It’s when the government comes in and tells you what you gonna do. Socialism is when they go after the family. That’s what we’ve seen going on in other states. That’s what we see this state trying to become. It’s an attack on the family. And guess what? I see this as an attack on the family. We are a Republican state. We’re a red state. But we’re a red state with blue regulations. It is time we shut down the blue regulations and we take it back. Right here is where we need to plant the flag. Right here is where we say government can’t come in and tell me what I can and cannot do with my family.

Leave it to Republicans to argue that government can’t help… when they’re the ones in control of the government. Ronald Reagan was wrong to say it. So is Humphrey. And if he thinks government is this useless, he should resign since he’s quite literally preventing it from helping people. You only need to look at the Democratic Socialism of Zohran Mamdani in New York City to see all the ways government can actually work for people instead of being an obstacle to everything.

State Rep. Jim Olsen then made the point that the biblical Mary was underage. (That’s it. That was his whole point.)

Let me throw another thing for us to think about: How old was Mary when she married Joseph?

… Does that mean we should normally have people getting married under 18? No. No it doesn’t. But it does point out that it might not be wise to say that there shall be no exceptions!

See?! If you prevent child marriage, you could be interfering with future imaginary virgin births! (I’m not sure referencing a non-consensual pregnancy is the mic drop moment he seems to think it is.)

It’s incredible, in a way, that most of their Republican colleagues didn’t buy these unconvincing arguments. The final vote for the bill in the House was 51-36 (after the Senate had already unanimously approved it). Governor Kevin Stitt chose not to sign it or veto it, perhaps fearing backlash from conservative Christians, but because of the overwhelming numbers here, it didn’t make a difference.

But that still led to incredible headlines like this one from Oklahoma Watch:

Great branding for Republicans, truly.

The party that doesn’t give a damn about the Epstein files doesn’t care about child marriage either, because their Christian God taught them pedophilia isn’t always a bad idea.

“I think they’re really stretching,” [Democratic Rep. Cyndi] Munson said when asked about representatives’ response to the arguments on the House floor. “Marriage should wait until adulthood. And we don’t want to exploit children, especially young girls getting married, and having parents have a say over that.”

The irony is that this bill wouldn’t have passed without the backing of the majority of Republicans in the state legislature, yet the takeaway is that dozens of conservatives wanted to protect the possibility of child rape more than they wanted to give up control of when people can get married.

The new law will go into effect on November 1.

And as the Freedom From Religion Foundation Action Fund points out, if Oklahoma can pull this off, why can’t everyone else?

There is no religious right to marry a child. There is no parental right to shackle a child into an abusive marriage. There is no judicial discretion worth preserving if the result is a child spouse who cannot enter a shelter, sign a lease, hire a lawyer, file for divorce or safely escape.

The solution is simple: Minors cannot marry, no exceptions.

Not 17 with a permission slip. Not 16 with a judge’s nod. Not younger with a pregnancy excuse. Not “emancipated” on paper while still blocked from the basic tools of escape.

If Oklahoma can do it, so can California and every other holdout.

American Atheists Files FCC Comment Opposing Politicized TV Rating System

The agency is attempting to inject religious and anti-LGBTQ viewpoints into the TV industry’s rating system

The post American Atheists Files FCC Comment Opposing Politicized TV Rating System appeared first on American Atheists.

Heretic on the Hill: A National Prayer Service in DC Gets Golden Idol-ed

You may have missed it but Jesus showed up on the National Mall last week for “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” a day-long event of Christian music and mostly evangelical Christian speakers. The stated goal was to rededicate the United States of America as ‘One Nation, Under God.” House Speaker Mike Johnson took it upon himself to say they accomplished that goal there on the Mall on Sunday. No one really explained when America was officially dedicated as One Nation Under God the first time, or when or why that dedication had worn off.

As for Jesus, he came by our counterprotest which was also on the Mall and featured an inflated Donald Trump golden calf. As a reminder, the golden calf was the idol the faithless Israelites created to worship while Moses was up in the mountains getting the Ten Commandments so they could be displayed in Texas school rooms a few thousand years later. Armed with a bullhorn and a few good jokes, Jesus spoke truth to power, meaning to our golden calf, and moved on down the Mall to the main event.

We worked with our coalition member the Freedom from Religion Foundation and with Faithful America to get the calf onto the Mall. We didn’t know for sure that we would even get a permit from the National Park Service until two days out so we didn’t have a formal program, but we all brought our own crowd of supporters. Plenty of people walking by stopped for pictures as well.

The Rededicate 250 event featured videos from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. President Trump was so invested in this event that his video was just a replay of a video he did several weeks earlier for a “people read every verse in the Bible” event. The President actually spent the afternoon playing golf at his course out in Virginia. The shepherd hit the links while his sheep, many in Trump attire, hit the Mall.

The Rededicate 250 event was part of the year-long celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The general theme among the numerous speakers was to reinforce the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. Even though no one wrote that down 250 years ago. We were happy to present the opposite view to people who dropped by the golden calf wondering what was going on.

Regular readers may have noticed that I’m a fan of historical events disproving the “founded as a Christian nation” theory. (See the Treaty of Tripoli.) The latest example I ran across comes from Ben Franklin. He was a noted deist, not a Christian. In 1787, after weeks of little progress on drafting the Constitution, Franklin suggested in a speech that the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention start opening their meetings with a prayer.

Maybe Franklin thought a prayer would motivate the Christians in the group to make some compromises and some progress. There was, however, not much support among this collection of the nation’s founders for a prayer. In his notes at the bottom of the speech he wrote, ‘The Convention, except three or four persons, thought Prayers unnecessary.’

So there you have it from the 55 most influential people in the new country who were setting up the new government; “An opening prayer? Nah, we’re good.”

The post Heretic on the Hill: A National Prayer Service in DC Gets Golden Idol-ed appeared first on Secular Coalition for America.

Don’t let Christian Nationalists control the social studies curriculum nationwide

The post Don’t let Christian Nationalists control the social studies curriculum nationwide appeared first on American Atheists.

Rockwall County courthouse in Texas unveils illegal Ten Commandments monument

Friendly Atheist
By Hemant Mehta

The post Rockwall County courthouse in Texas unveils illegal Ten Commandments monument appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.