Humanist annual report spotlights religion’s global undermining of rights

In the midst of international activism to free an atheist feminist imprisoned in Morocco for “insulting Allah” comes Humanists International’s disturbing annual report documenting the growing use of religion as a political weapon to erode fundamental rights.

The 2025 “Freedom of Thought Report” shows that attacks on freedom of conscience are no longer isolated to particular laws or regions, but are part of a broader global pattern of democratic backsliding. Across continents, governments and political movements are increasingly invoking religion — and even the language of “religious freedom” —  to justify restrictions on expression and civil rights.

Humanists International President Maggie Ardiente sets the tone in a stark preface.

“Far-right governments and populist movements are increasingly utilizing religion as a political tool to advance their ambitions and to justify curtailing freedoms, often under the guise of protecting the religious freedoms of one group at the expense of another,” she writes. “While they may present themselves as defenders of ‘traditional values,’ in practice they push religious privilege by eroding the human rights of minority groups and dismantling independent democratic institutions.”

The foreword is by Mubarak Bala, a former president of the Nigerian Humanist Association who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for “insulting religion” and who was recently released after five years following a human rights campaign to set him free. Bala received FFRF’s 2025 Avijit Roy Courage Award.

Atheists are often in the bull’s-eye, as the report documents: “In some countries, it is illegal to be, or to identify as, an atheist.” Other countries forbid leaving the state religion (“apostasy”), “blasphemy” or “insulting religion,” as in the case of Moroccan human rights activist Itbissame “Betty” Lachgar, who was sentenced to 30 months in prison for that “crime.” Lachgar is being named FFRF’s 2026 Avijit Roy Courage Award recipient.

This year’s written report highlights recent developments in 10 countries, including the United States. The report points to court decisions and policy proposals that expand what it describes as a “religious license to discriminate.” By allowing religious beliefs to override civil rights protections, these developments undermine the crucial constitutional principle of state/church separation.

The report’s country-by-country analysis, which can be viewed as an interactive map, reveals a wide spectrum of legal penalties, social hostility and outright violence faced by those who dissent from religion.

“Religious privilege is not only a form of discrimination in and of itself,” concludes the report, “but it is also a signifier of more general societal discrimination against atheists.”

This year’s report also emphasizes the role of governments in promoting religious privilege. In many countries, the state actively favors religion through laws and policies that restrict the rights of the nonreligious — from limiting access to public office to constraining education and expression.

“The countries with the worst records on freedom of thought are usually the countries with the worst records on human rights overall,” the report observes. “When thought is a crime, no other freedom can survive for long.”

FFRF continues to support international efforts to protect endangered freethinkers, including providing emergency stipends for individuals facing persecution due to blasphemy accusations or nonbelief. FFRF has also been working domestically to challenge similar threats, including through op-eds targeting dormant blasphemy laws that remain on the books in several U.S. states.

“This report makes clear that freedom of thought is under threat here and globally, and that these threats are escalating,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Blasphemy may be a victimless ‘crime,’ but laws against it create countless victims. When governments use religion to justify discrimination, everyone’s rights are at risk. The separation of religion from government remains essential to protecting the rights of all.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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March with FFRF in Madison for Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ rally

FFRF is once again a proud co-sponsor of the national No Kings day of protest taking place in more than 3,000 locations this Saturday, March 28, including in its hometown of Madison.

If you’d like to march as a group with other local FFRF members in Madison to show how much freethinkers care about the event, here’s how: Meet up on Saturday between 1:30 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. at the corner of West Washington Avenue and North Henry Street (where FFRF’s Freethought Hall office building is located). We’ll plan to march to the Capitol as a group around 1:45 p.m.

Please look for a “No Kings” FFRF banner and some of us outside the West Washington corner of Freethought Hall. The Madison gathering officially starts at 12:30 p.m. at Brittingham Park and will then walk up West Washington Avenue for a 2 p.m. rally at the Capitol. FFRF’s office building is conveniently located en route.

See you Saturday!

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FFRF awards $10,000 in prizes to 2026 law student essay winners

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proud to announce the awarding of a total of $10,000 to the three winners (and two honorable mentions) of the Diane and Stephen Uhl Memorial Essay Competition for Law Students.

Law school students were asked to write an essay on this topic: Analyze how the principle of “parental rights” has changed. In 2025, the Supreme Court extended Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), citing it repeatedly in Mahmoud v. Taylor, where the court sided with religious parents who objected on religious grounds to public school instruction that included books with LGBTQ themes or characters. Analyze how the principle of “parental rights” changes from Yoder to Mahmoud. What other constitutional or societal interests might conflict with this expanded understanding of parental rights in the First Amendment context? Discuss how the court could or should balance these competing interests in future cases.

Winners are listed below, including the law school they are attending and the award amount:
First place
Sam Foer, Washington & Lee University School of Law, $4,000.
Second place
Zoe Schacht, Brooklyn Law School, $3,000.
Third place
Ashni Verma, New York University School of Law, $2,000.
Honorable mentions ($500 each)
Wesley Michael Harris, Florida A&M College of Law.
Maya Gardner, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law.

FFRF thanks attorneys Jennifer Green, Monica Toole, Tyler Steeb and Sammi Lawrence for grading and selecting the winners. The state/church watchdog has offered essay competitions to college students since 1979, high school students since 1994, grad students since 2010, one for students of color since 2016 and a fifth contest for law students since 2019. 

“FFRF firmly believes that the backbone of our democracy is a strong judicial system — and the legal minds that ensure it runs smoothly and secularly,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is an honor to continue to support the next generation of freethinkers.” 

The major winning essays will appear in the upcoming (April) issue of FFRF’s newspaper, Freethought Today and may be read online.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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Air Force Academy Prepares Ideological Overhaul, With Erika Kirk Bringing “Bold Christian Faith”

The Intercept
By Austin Campbell

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Creationism Attempt at Charter School Illustrates Broader Antagonism Toward Science

Colorado Times Recorder
By Ari Armstrong

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Judge Blocks 10 Commandments from Being Posted in Arkansas School District

Crosswalk
By Elizabeth Delaney

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April 19, 2026 – Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Kyle Steinberg to Present at Minnesota Atheists Public Meeting (St. Paul, MN)

Kyle Steinberg, Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), will present at the Minnesota Atheists April meeting on Sunday, April 19, 2026, at the Merriam Park Library in St. Paul.

Steinberg’s presentation will focus on current trends in state/church litigation and how FFRF is actively responding to them. The talk will highlight ongoing legal challenges involving religious charter schools, legislative efforts to place the Ten Commandments in public schools, and FFRF’s increasing work in state courts.

The meeting will be held in a hybrid format, both in person and via Zoom, and is free and open to the public. The library will open at 1:00 p.m. for social time, followed by a brief business meeting from 1:30–1:50 p.m. The public presentation will begin at 2:00 p.m. and conclude at 3:30 p.m. 

The in-person event will take place at the Merriam Park Library, located at 1831 Marshall Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104. 

Attendees may also join via Zoom. Please use Meeting ID: 856 9893 7389 and Passcode: 166449.

Following the event, attendees are invited to gather for an optional dinner at Longfellow Grill in Minneapolis.

FFRF works nationwide to defend the constitutional principle of the separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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Registration opens for FFRF’s scintillating 49th annual convention

A provocative lineup of diverse activists, authors, podcasters and state/church activists will join the Freedom From Religion Foundation for its 49th annual convention being held mid-October in Milwaukee.

Registration is now open. Register online at ffrf.us/con26register or by completing the form on the back page of FFRF’s newspaper, Freethought Today, beginning in the upcoming April issue.

The conference at the Baird Convention Center opens with “early bird” workshops, registration and a complimentary reception on Thursday afternoon, Oct. 15. The formal convention program takes place over two full days, Friday, Oct. 16–Saturday, Oct. 17, and is followed by the annual membership and state representatives meetings on Sunday morning, Oct. 18, ending by noon.

FFRF is offering a discounted room block at the Hilton Milwaukee hotel, 509 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, of $229 plus taxes per night. Book online: ffrf.us/con26reservations or phone 800-774-1500 noting you’re with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and providing our group code “90N.”

Speakers include novelist Percival Everett, author of the powerful book “James,” which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and is a retelling of “Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of the enslaved James (not “Jim”). The distinguished professor of English at USC will receive FFRF’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award, reserved for public figures who make known their dissent from religion. “James” was published in March 2024 to great critical acclaim, and Everett will sign copies after his speech. “American Fiction,” the feature film based on his novel “Erasure,” was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Jennifer Welch, an atheist who co-hosts the “I’ve Had It” podcast with over 3 million listeners a month and 150 million-plus monthly views on its YouTube Channel, will speak on “I’ve had it with Christian nationalism.” Journalist Mehdi Hasan recently described Welch as “perhaps the most influential woman in the Democratic Party right now.” Welch also co-hosts the daily news series IHIP News and is the co-author of “Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches.” Welch will also receive FFRF’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award.

Jim Obergefell, who is an atheist and was the lead plaintiff in Obergefell vs. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized marriage equality, will receive FFRF’s Forward Award and statuette reserved for individuals who have moved society forward. He’ll talk about the case and sign copies of his book, “Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality.”

Other honorees will include two Texas teachers of integrity who quit their jobs rather than display Ten Commandments posters in their public school classrooms: Gigi Cervantes, a high school theatre teacher in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Johnny Cotton, a band leader and teacher for 42 years in the Carthage ISD. They will receive a “First Amendment Heroine” Award and “First Amendment Hero Award,” respectively.

The Clarence Darrow Award and statuette will go to Milwaukee’s Peter Isley, a survivor of childhood sexual assault by a Roman Catholic priest and co-founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

The Henry Zumach Freedom From Fundamentalism Religion Award, now at $75,000, will go to the Secular Coalition for America’s Education Fund and be accepted by SCA Executive Director Steven Emmert. The Zumach Award has been solely endowed by a generous Wisconsin state/church activist to recognize and further “freedom from fundamentalism.”

Maya Wiley will be presented with a “Champion of Civil Rights Award” for her work directing the Leadership Conference on Human Rights and Civil Rights, and will talk about current threats to civil rights and democracy.

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, a union with 1.8 million individuals, will be speaking and signing copies of her new book, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.” Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, worked as a lawyer on Wall Street and taught history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn. Weingarten was included in Washingtonian’s 2022 Washington’s Most Influential People. Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cardozo School of Law.

Other speakers will include Drew McCoy, creator of the “Genetically Modified Skeptic” YouTube channel, with over 850,000 subscribers. Drew was raised as an Independent Fundamental Baptist, but left religion in 2016. and has been a full-time atheist content creator and activist for the past eight years.

Forrest Valkai, a popular Oklahoma-based biologist, science educator and popular content creator known as the Renegade Science Teacher, will speak, too.

FFRF is also proud to announce it will be bestowing the $5,000 Avijit Roy Courage Award, memorializing the slain Bangladeshi-American freethought author and activist, to Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar, a Moroccan freethinker, feminist and civil libertarian whose imprisonment for “insulting Islam” is endangering her health.

The conference will end with an after-dinner keynote address by the provocative Ron Reagan, known for his fearless political commentary and his independent views, as well as his generous TV commercial endorsement of FFRF — in which he describes himself as an “unabashed atheist … not afraid of burning in hell.”

FFRF will be offering “early-bird” workshops on Thursday afternoon, including the popular “Ask an Attorney” panel where FFRF legal eagles will take your questions on state/church issues and concerns, and an interactive panel to practice lobbying with FFRF Regional Governmental Affairs Manager Mickey Dollens, who’s an expert as a seated state legislator in Oklahoma, and FFRF’s other legislative team members. In addition, leaders from FFRF’s grassroots chapter program will lead a workshop providing an overview of the benefits of starting an FFRF chapter in your area. That will be followed by a complimentary late afternoon reception.

The annual conference will include the usual executive, legal and legislative reports, student essay winners or activists, a chance to mingle at book and sales tables, the NonPrayer Breakfast (with its popular “moment of bedlam”), the drawing for “clean” (pre-”In God We Trust”) currency and several optional group meals and complimentary receptions.

Find out more and sign up today at ffrf.us/con26!

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Speaker Johnson misrepresents separation of church and state 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson for misrepresenting and denigrating the constitutional principle of separation of church and state — and for lending the prestige of his office to yet another partisan religious event.

In his remarks at the 2026 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast yesterday, Johnson contended that the “wall of separation between church and state” has been misunderstood and claimed that the Founders did not intend to keep religion from influencing government. Johnson insisted that “Jefferson clearly did not mean that wall to keep religion from influencing our government and public life. … To the contrary, the Founders wanted to protect the church and the religious practice of citizens from an encroaching state, not the other way around.” He continued, “Our Founders understood that a free society and a healthy republic depend upon religious and moral virtue [to] help prevent the abuse of power [and] make it possible to preserve our essential freedom.”

That claim is incorrect.

In reality, the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion and protects the freedom of conscience of all Americans. The famed “wall of separation,” articulated by Thomas Jefferson and repeatedly affirmed by the courts, exists to ensure that government remains neutral on matters of religion — neither favoring nor disfavoring any religious belief.

“Speaker Johnson is entitled to his personal religious beliefs,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “But he tarnishes and violates his oath of office by misusing his position to promote Christian nationalist myths and disinformation.”

The United States was not founded on the bible, Christianity or any other religion. It was founded on Enlightenment principles of individual liberty, popular sovereignty and a deliberate rejection of religious governance. The Constitution is godless by design. It bars a religious test for public office. The Founders understood the dangers of sectarian power fused with the state, which is why they adopted the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, expressly forbidding the government from endorsing, advancing or favoring religion.

FFRF has written to Johnson numerous times to correct his revisionist history and his assertions that the Constitution was designed primarily to protect religion, not to limit its influence on government. FFRF notes that history demonstrates why this principle is essential.

It is ironic that Johnson’s message was delivered at an event celebrating Catholic participation in public life. Catholics themselves faced significant discrimination in early America, including legal restrictions on holding public office and organized political movements aimed at excluding them. At New York’s 1777 Constitutional Convention, future Chief Justice John Jay proposed barring from office anyone who believed the pope could absolve sins. New Jersey’s Constitution excluded Catholics from holding office until 1844 while North Carolina limited public office to those affirming Protestant beliefs until 1835. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, officials were long required to renounce allegiance to any “foreign ecclesiastical power,” a clear swipe at Catholicism. These examples underscore why the separation of church and state was — and remains — essential to protecting religious minorities from government-imposed exclusion and prejudice.

The First Amendment is an essential safeguard protecting the freedom of conscience of all Americans of whatever religion or none at all — which should be promoted, not attacked, by the House speaker.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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Freethought Radio – March 19, 2026

After we cover state/church news in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Maryland, FFRF attorney Chris Line dissects the so-called “Religious Liberty Commission” and FFRF attorney Nancy Noet tells us about this week’s decision by an Arkansas court permanently enjoining the state from displaying the Ten Commandments in public classrooms.

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