u/FreethoughtChris

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has convinced the Muskogee Public Schools system in Oklahoma to cancel a proposed prayer walk at a district middle school.

A concerned parent had informed the state/church watchdog that on Aug. 12, Muskogee 6th and 7th Grade Academy was planning to host a school-sponsored “prayer walk.” The academy distributed a flyer to parents promoting the event and inviting the community to gather at the school at 11 a.m. on that day for the prayer walk. An academy employee also sent parents an official message inviting them to “join us as we pray for our students, staff and families for what we know will be an amazing school year!”

FFRF insisted the district investigate the situation and ensure that the school refrained from organizing and promoting religious events going forward. 

“Here, the academy is displaying blatant favoritism toward religion over nonreligion by organizing, promoting and encouraging student and family attendance at an on-campus prayer walk,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote.

The school district serves a diverse population that includes not only religious students, families, and employees, but nonreligious people and members of minority faiths. When Muskogee 6th and 7th Grade Academy organizes, promotes, and invites students and parents to “pray for our students and staff” at a school-sponsored prayer event, it sends an exclusionary message to students who are not religious as well as those who do not believe in the dominant religion. More than one-fourth of Oklahomans identify as religiously unaffiliated. 

Thankfully, the district listened to FFRF’s reasoning and changed course.

Superintendent Jarod Mendenhall responded via email confirming that the district took corrective action. 

“After reviewing the circumstances, the district has directed that the prayer walk be canceled immediately,” he wrote. “We have also directed that any social media posts promoting the event be removed and that the school communicate with parents regarding the cancellation.” 

Mendenhall also verified that future school-sponsored activities would remain in compliance with the First Amendment and that the district would not organize or promote religious activities.

“It is encouraging to see a school district respond quickly when constitutional concerns are brought to its attention,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “The district made the right choice in canceling this school-sponsored prayer event. Students deserve to start the year off on the right foot.”

The FFRF Action Fund is naming Oklahoma superintendent candidate James Taylor its “Theocrat of the Week” for his Christian nationalist views. 

Taylor, a Republican candidate in the Aug. 25 runoff for Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction, is a longtime pastor who currently teaches U.S. history and government at Little Axe High School. The runoff winner will face Democrat Jennettie Marshall in November.

Taylor has declared that Christianity belongs in public schools, promoted Christian nationalist-aligned revisionist history and argued that women should live under male authority. Taylor’s campaign promises “faith, family, and leadership for Oklahoma schools.” His own writings reveal just how literally he means the “faith” part.

In his self-published book, “It’s Biblical, Not Political! How to Line Candidates Up Biblically,” Taylor argues that America was founded as a Christian nation, laments the end of school-sponsored prayer and bible reading and attacks Supreme Court decisions protecting the separation between state and church. He writes that it was once “not possible to separate Christianity from the classroom” and complains that today “every effort is made to make sure Christianity stays out of the classroom.” He blames the removal of the Ten Commandments from public schools for social ills ranging from shootings and theft to promiscuity and disrespect for authority.

His conclusion about Supreme Court decisions restricting government-sponsored religion is even more revealing: “As a believer in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, it is obvious that our Supreme Court is actually fighting against God.” “I read the back of the book,” Taylor adds, “and we win, and the United States Supreme Court will lose.” That is an alarming worldview for someone seeking to become the chief official overseeing Oklahoma’s public schools.

Taylor also publicly supported previous Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters’ efforts to inject biblical content into the state’s social studies standards. Oklahoma Voice reported after the June primary that Taylor supported Walters’ pro-bible standards, which have since been discarded and rewritten.

Taylor has defended emphasizing the bible in public schools by claiming America’s laws and founding came from “Judeo-Christian principles.” He has also complained that schools supposedly favor Islam over Christianity: “The students are encouraged to wear Muslim clothing and to write a prayer to Allah under the guise of teaching religious tolerance. Yet the same school will not allow a Christmas tree or Nativity scene in that same classroom.”

Taylor’s theocratic views extend well beyond public education.

In his book, Taylor argues that women require male authority to fulfill God’s purposes for their lives. God never intended a woman to be without “a male supervisor that is directly God or God’s vice president, man,” Taylor has written.

“She must be under some male pattern authority in order for her to achieve all of God’s purposes for her life,” he adds. “When you have dominion, you have to have hierarchy.”

Taylor’s book also condemns abortion and same-sex marriage, and tells Christians that God will hold them accountable for their political choices. He writes that “God is paying attention to what we support” and offers his book as a guide for evaluating political candidates by biblical standards. The cover makes the message difficult to miss: It features an American flag, a bible and rifle ammunition.

Taylor was fired by Oklahoma City Public Schools in 2021 after refusing to comply with the district’s mask requirement during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oklahoma public education has only recently emerged from the tenure of Ryan Walters, whose administration repeatedly attempted to use public schools to advance Christian nationalist policies. Taylor’s rhetoric threatens a return to the same fundamental mistake: treating public schools as instruments for advancing one religious worldview.

The Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction leads the state Department of Education and chairs the State Board of Education, giving the office enormous influence over curriculum, academic standards and the education of hundreds of thousands of public school students. Those students include Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and students from countless other religious and nonreligious backgrounds. Their public schools belong equally to all of them. The Constitution, not Taylor’s bible, governs those schools.

For his insistence that Christianity belongs in public school classrooms, his attacks on Supreme Court decisions protecting church-state separation, his declaration that women require male authority, and his vision of politics and education as subordinate to biblical dictates, the FFRF Action Fund names James Taylor its “Theocrat of the Week.”

The FFRF Action Fund is naming Tennessee congressional candidate and secular content creator Kristi Burke its “Secularist of the Week” for her laudable journey out of evangelical Christianity. 

Burke, better known online as “Jezebel Vibes,” recently wonthe Democratic nomination for Tennessee’s 1st Congressional District and will face incumbent Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who once asked for God to get rid of everyone in politics who doesn’t share her faith, in the Nov. 3 general election. 

Long before becoming a candidate for Congress, Burke built an online community around something deeply familiar to many nonreligious Americans: questioning the beliefs she had been taught and finding a way forward after leaving them behind. She has used this to engage in highly compelling advocacy for critical thinking, secular government and resistance to Christian nationalism.

Burke, who describes herself as an “ex-Christian/agnostic atheist,” began questioning her evangelical faith at 19. As “Jezebel Vibes,” she has created videos aimed at supporting people questioning or deconstructing Christianity, approaching religious claims with critical thinking, empathy and, as she puts it, “a little snark.” But as Christian nationalism has become increasingly intertwined with American politics, Burke’s focus has expanded beyond deconstruction. 

“Authoritarianism isn’t just a church problem, it’s a political one,” she writes. “We’re watching authoritarianism rise, democracy weaken, and fundamentalist ideology shape our laws.”

Her response has been to encourage her audience not simply to recognize those forces, but to get involved in resisting them.

In 2025, Burke attended a town hall held by Harshbarger intending to ask the congresswoman about Medicaid cuts. Security removed Burke from the event as she attempted to question the member of Congress. Friends and neighbors subsequently encouraged Burke to run herself.

“I said no, I was not interested — I would rally behind anyone who ran,” Burke later recalled. “The deadline got closer and closer, and finally I said let’s do it. I jumped right into it. It was a very last minute decision.”

Burke has framed the decision as an extension of the same questions that have animated her secular activism: Who holds power, how is that power used and what can ordinary people do when institutions fail to represent them? 

“The system was designed so your pissed-off neighbor could go into Congress and write legislation,” Burke has said. “It was not designed on corporate checks or special interests.”

Burke’s candidacy is particularly noteworthy for the secular community because openly atheist and agnostic Americans remain dramatically underrepresented in elected office. Burke is running in a heavily Republican region. Still, regardless of the election outcome, her candidacy adds a nonreligious voice to a political system in which such perspectives have historically been scarce.

Burke’s evolution from “Jezebel Vibes” to congressional candidate illustrates why secularism matters far beyond debates about theology. Deconstruction begins with permission to ask questions. Secular democracy depends on the same principle. “Let’s ask the hard questions,” Burke says, “and fight for something better — together.”

For building a community that empowers people to question religious dogma, speaking frankly about her own journey out of evangelical Christianity, confronting the political threat posed by Christian nationalism and bringing a freethinking worldview into the race for Congress, the FFRF Action Fund names Kristi Burke, aka Jezebel Vibes, its “Secularist of the Week.”

As roughly two dozen Texas families fight to keep the Ten Commandments off public school walls, one Austin-area mom is making no apologies for wanting them in her kindergartner's classroom.

Brittany McFarland, a Christian mother whose 5-year-old daughter attends public school in Texas, told Fox News Digital she was "pleasantly surprised" by the new classroom displays and said the fierce backlash over them reflects a much bigger battle over faith, values and religious liberty in America's public schools.

"I feel like our country, we've been kind of forced to erase religion and discussion of religion in schools in general," McFarland said. "Almost to the point where the topic is taboo, and our children are afraid and uncomfortable to mention their faith or talk anything about it."

McFarland said she and her husband had weighed whether public school was still the right choice for their daughter, but said learning about the Ten Commandments law gave her a "sense of hope" about the direction of public education.

"It gave me a renewed sense of hope in our school systems," she said.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is announcing a new show focusing on the experiences of Gen-Z and millennial atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious folks.

The show features casual discussion of the specific nonreligious beliefs and experiences of invited guests. Season One covers topics such as: creating your own traditions to replace religious ones, the intersection of atheism and sex education, atheist views on the concepts of good and evil, finding nonreligious community, leaving “reddit atheism” — and more!

FFRF’s Digital Media Manager Rowan Hahn hosts the show that focuses on the lives and opinions of everyday people, and of course, some of FFRF’s staff.

The first two episodes are available now on FFRF’s YouTube. The show is also available on FFRF’s app, FreethoughtTV. The first features Daniel, FFRF’s legal intake assistant, who talks about swapping traditions from his evangelical church with nonreligious ones, such as replacing prayer with meditation. The second episode features Key, who grew up in a small Texas town, and whose atheist beliefs and experiences there led to their strong support of comprehensive sex education.

Subsequent episodes will be premiering every other Wednesday.

Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman has represented California’s second congressional district since 2013 and serves as the ranking member on the Committee on Natural Resources and on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He is also the only member of Congress to openly and fully identify as a humanist. 

Huffman co-founded and co-chairs the Congressional Freethought Caucus, along with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to advocate for the separation of church and state and to promote public policy based on reason, science, and moral values.

In his new book, “No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism” — which publishes Tuesday (Aug. 18), and full disclosure, I’ve endorsed — he exposes the threat the Christian nationalism movement poses and lays out a plan to save American democracy.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s YouTube series “Secular Spotlight” enlightens the audience in its latest episode about a forgotten champion of freethought.

FFRF’s Dan Barker and Scott Knickelbine explore the remarkable legacy of Robert G. Ingersoll with Vanderbilt Professor Paul Stob, examining the 19th-century orator’s advocacy for freethought, church-state separation, science, morality and individual liberty. They also discuss why Ingersoll became one of America’s most popular lecturers — and why his ideas remain relevant today.

“Ingersoll knows that what he’s doing is not just speaking to people who are part of a freethought movement, but he’s talking to religious believers, he’s talking to people who Saturday night will go to the Ingersoll lecture, and Sunday morning they’re going to go to church,” Stob explains. “He has less to do with assaulting people’s individual religious beliefs, and a lot more to do with sort of critiquing and assaulting the power structures that define modern life, including the religious power structure.”

You can catch this episode of “Secular Spotlight” on FFRF’s YouTube channel, as well as by watching on your smart TV after downloading FFRF’s free app, Freethought TV, which also highlights FFRF’s other video programming. Our previous episodes include a discussion with Uncloseted Media editor-in-chief Spencer Macnaughton about his revealing interview with Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, and psychologist and author Mary L. Trump, who provides a firsthand account of a recent gathering of nonreligious congressional members. Make sure you’re subscribed to FFRF’s YouTube channel for all the latest updates!

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has made certain that future staff events in the Douglas County School System in Douglasville, Ga., will not be treated like church.

FFRF received reports from numerous school district employees regarding proselytizing that took place at the mandatory July 28 convocation. Reports, photographs and a video provided to FFRF show Superintendent Trent North sermonizing employees in his official capacity throughout the convocation. FFRF was told that during the multihour event, North made “numerous remarks about God” and said that he believes God sent him to “save Douglas County Schools.” He reportedly preached to staff, quoted bible verses, told employees that “[you] need to learn to trust the Lord,” and that “We don’t need church just on a Sunday, we need to teach our students to worship any day of the week.” 

Gospel singers also performed religious songs throughout the convocation that were reportedly explicitly Christian. FFRF’s complainants stated that North would sermonize between gospel songs to emphasize the religious points being made. The event lasted roughly 190 minutes, with about two hours devoted to gospel music and sermons. 

One employee stated that as the convocation progressed, it “became increasingly more Christian and religious” and that North’s remarks over the course of the event reminded them of a pastor. They “tried to tune it out” but “became increasingly more uncomfortable.” They further explained:
I felt like I wasn’t free to get up and leave because every person in the district was there, and I would look rude or bad to them. I felt my employment was in jeopardy if I didn’t comply because my school’s principal told me that morning that it was a district mandated event, and that I would not be paid if I didn’t attend.

Another employee stated that they felt “like the odd ball out because I didn’t conform to [the superintendent’s] narrative of religion,” while a third stated that they “felt heavily coerced to participate in a religious service as a condition of [their] employment.” 

FFRF wrote to the district asking it to put a stop to the proselytizing and religious coercion of employees.

“In this case, [North], and thus DCSS, displayed clear favoritism toward religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over all other faiths, by preaching to employees in [North’s] official capacity during the convocation,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to North.

It is unconstitutional for a public school district to require employees to observe, listen to and reflect upon religious music and messaging as part of an official district event, FFRF stressed in its letter. Requiring employees who are nonreligious or members of minority faiths to make a public showing of their lack of religious belief by not participating in a prayer or else display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating. The religious performances needlessly marginalized employees who are nonreligious or members of minority faiths. Up to 26 percent of Georgians are nonreligious, and by keeping employee events secular, the district excludes no one and welcomes everyone. 

FFRF is pleased to report that the district has changed course to be more inclusive.

“I discussed and explained with the superintendent the principle of separation of church and state specifically addressing the First Amendment as it relates to Free Exercise Clause and the perception of promoting or inhibiting a particular religion during staff meetings,” the district’s legal representative responded. “I am confident that the superintendent is now cognizant of this matter and has assured me this will not occur again.” 

FFRF is glad to see its advocacy having a positive impact.

“District employees should not be made to feel like outsiders at mandatory work events,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor states. “Keeping events free from religious coercion is a constitutional requirement for all public school districts. While this never should have happened in the first place, FFRF is glad to know it won’t happen again.”

Becket filed a federal lawsuit yesterday on behalf of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), challenging a New Jersey school district’s ban on outside volunteer mentors for all religious clubs while freely allowing them at every other student club. In Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. Board of Education of the Hopewell Valley Regional School District, FCA and two student-led FCA clubs at local schools are asking the court to end the district’s volunteer ban and restore equal treatment for religious clubs.

“As an inaugural member of FCA at Hopewell Valley’s Central High School, I know firsthand how much mentors mean to students,” said Carolyn McDonough, FCA New Jersey Area Director and Hopewell Valley Central High School alumna. “They helped me grow in my relationship with Jesus and live out my faith through sports. Now I have the privilege of doing the same for today’s students. I pray the court will let me continue that ministry.” 

Founded in 1954, FCA is a religious ministry that supports student-athletes committed to living out their Christian faith on and off the playing field. FCA helps form student-led clubs, called “Huddles,” on college, high school, and middle school campuses, where students gather for fellowship, prayer, Bible study, games, and the occasional pizza. In the Hopewell Valley school district, Huddles at Central High School and Timberlane Middle School met for years without incident, with FCA staff and volunteers attending as mentors, just like adult volunteers and mentors routinely attend events held by other clubs across the district.

But in March 2025, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter to the school district complaining about outside volunteers attending FCA Huddles. FFRF demanded that the district investigate and prevent these volunteers from attending or participating in religious student clubs. Within days, the district caved. Before the 2025-26 school year began, it announced a new policy barring outside individuals from attending any meetings of religious clubs, claiming the law required it—yet never identifying which law supposedly did so. 

“An atheist advocacy group didn’t like that Christian kids were choosing to learn about faith, life, and sports from trusted mentors,” said Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and lead attorney for FCA. “And after years of a great relationship with FCA clubs, the school district regrettably gave the advocacy group its way. Fortunately, the Constitution forbids religious discrimination. We’re confident the court will restore equal access for all student groups.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says a federal lawsuit distorts its endeavors to ensure that religious clubs in a New Jersey public school district remain student-led as per federal law.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, filed suit Aug. 11 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey against the Hopewell Valley Regional School District and New Jersey education officials. The lawsuit challenges restrictions the district recently imposed on outside adults attending religious student clubs.

Becket, a law firm named for a Catholic saint that demonstrates hostility to the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, has publicly blamed FFRF for the dispute. It claims that “an atheist advocacy group didn’t like that Christian kids were choosing to learn about faith, life and sports from trusted mentors.”

“That’s a convenient culture war trope, but it isn’t what happened,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “FFRF has never sought to prevent Christian students from forming their own religious clubs in compliance with the federal Equal Access Act.” 

This law requires public schools that permit noncurriculum student clubs to allow student clubs on religion or politics, with the stipulation that they must be student initiated and run. It expressly provides that “nonschool persons may not direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend activities of student groups.” 

“We’re defending the crucial distinction between students exercising their own constitutional rights and an outside religious ministry seeking regular access to public schoolchildren,” Gaylor says. “Public schools aren’t mission fields for outside religious organizations.”

FFRF’s letter of March 13, 2025, asked the district to investigate reports that outside adults were regularly attending and participating in meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes club at Timberlane Middle School and to ensure that the club remained student-initiated and student-led.

The fellowship’s own lawsuit acknowledges that FFRF asked the district to make certain that outside adults did not “regularly lead, attend or participate” in religious student clubs. It further acknowledges that the district subsequently “went even further than FFRF demanded” by allegedly prohibiting all outside individuals from attending religious club meetings.

“Becket is trying to turn a straightforward request that a public school follow federal law into a story about atheists attacking Christian students,” adds FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler. “There is an important legal distinction between students exercising their own religious freedom and representatives of an outside Christian ministry regularly leading public school students in religious activities.”

In its legal complaint, the Christian group describes its “huddle ministry” as a critical component of its religious mission and states that its presence on public school campuses is “essential” because schools provide the platform through which the Christian fellowship reaches student-athletes. It says that these huddle activities include “prayer, religious teaching, religious counseling” and “ministry outreach to share the Gospel with other students.”

According to its complaint, Fellowship of Christian Athletes Area Director Carolyn McDonough and another volunteer attended huddle meetings and moved among small group discussions that students were holding, “sometimes participating” in those conversations. They answered questions from students about “life, faith or sports” and mentored student leaders, providing feedback.

Elsewhere, the fellowship says its adult volunteers provide students with “spiritual guidance,” mentor students in being bold in their faith and, when asked, pray for students.

“The Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ own allegations show that its adult ministry representatives were regularly present on a public school campus to improperly lead religious discussions and provide spiritual guidance as part of its broader religious mission,” says FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott. 

FFRF notes an obvious distinction between an occasional guest speaker invited to give a presentation to a student club and representatives of an outside religious ministry regularly attending its affiliated club to participate in religious discussions and rites.

Even though the Equal Access Act provides that school employees may be present at religious or political clubs only in a “nonparticipatory capacity,” the Christian fellowship specifically challenges the district’s requirement that employees attend such meetings in a custodial role. It asks the court to declare that district employees, who wield tremendous authority and influence over students, nevertheless have a right to participate in student bible study, prayer and other religious discussion in their purported personal capacities.

“The fundamental principle here is simple,” Elliott concludes. “An outside ministry cannot convert student rights into a right for its adult representatives to regularly conduct a ministry among children inside a public school, contrary to the safeguards of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and those that Congress expressly enacted.”

FFRF will continue to defend students’ freedom of conscience, including the rights of religious and nonreligious students alike while working to ensure that public schools remain neutral toward religion and comply with the safeguards imposed by federal law.

More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a state law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

The nonreligious, Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Baha’i families challenging the Texas law attend 22 school districts across the state and are represented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The request, filed today, urges the court to protect students’ and parents’ religious freedom by blocking Texas Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), ensuring that families — not politicians — have the right to decide what role religion plays in their lives. Today’s petition seeks review of lower court rulings in two separate but similar cases: Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District.

Under SB 10, Texas public schools must permanently display a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments, drawn from the Protestant King James Bible, in a “conspicuous” place in each classroom, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The families challenging SB 10 object to the law because the displays will pressure children to conform to the state’s favored religious beliefs and interfere with parents’ right to guide their children’s religious instruction.

Today’s Supreme Court filing, a joint petition for a writ of certiorari in both cases, follows an April decision by the en banc 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the state-selected version of the Ten Commandments to go up in the plaintiffs’ classrooms. By a narrowly decided vote, the 5th Circuit ruled that SB 10 does not violate either the Establishment or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment — despite a 1980 Supreme Court case striking down a nearly identical Kentucky law.

“By requiring displays of religious doctrine in every classroom, the state is interfering with our family’s decisions about how our children engage with religion,” says plaintiff Nichole Manning (she/her), a Dallas-area atheist who is raising her children in a nonreligious tradition that gives them the space and autonomy to develop their own beliefs about religion. “As a parent, I intentionally choose to have my children attend public school because I prefer an educational environment without any religious affiliation. In a diverse public school environment, all students should be treated with equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof.”

“As a rabbi and parent, forcing a Christian version of the Ten Commandments on children in every classroom is particularly upsetting,” says plaintiff Rabbi Joshua Fixler (he/him) of Houston. “I am not only worried about my own kids, but I’m deeply concerned about all the children in my congregation. These displays put children in the position of having to defend themselves and their families’ religious beliefs against a government mandate that makes them feel different and separate from their classmates.”

“Texas politicians shouldn’t have a seat at the table in deciding how our children receive their religious education. That decision belongs to our family,” say plaintiffs Rebekah (she/her) and Ted Lowe (he/him), an Austin-based interfaith couple who are raising their children in the Christian and Jewish traditions. “This law puts one version of religious beliefs above all others in our public schools and sends a message to our children that what we teach them about religion at home is somehow wrong.”

“The First Commandment, dictating which god must be worshipped, is the antithesis of our First Amendment,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor (she/her), co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “It is not the government’s role to daily expose young children to a coercive display of one religion’s set of religious edicts in our public schools. Our public schools exist to educate, not to proselytize.”

“The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected this kind of government-imposed religion before, and it should do so again,” says Chloe Kempf (she/her), attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “Having these posters in Texas classrooms puts students at risk of bullying, stigmatization, and religious coercion. Our nation’s bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities — not politicians — get to decide what role religion plays in children’s lives. Texas students deserve public schools that welcome them for who they are, respect their religious or nonreligious backgrounds, and give them the high-quality education they need to build their futures.”

“Fifty years ago, the ACLU won a Supreme Court victory against a nearly identical Kentucky law — and we aim to do it again,” says Cecillia Wang (she/her), national legal director of the ACLU. “In our country, no legislature can force its preferred scripture on public school students and families.”

“Families – not politicians or public school officials – get to decide how, if, and when children engage with religion,” says Rachel Laser (she/her), president and CEO of Americans United. “We urge the Supreme Court to make clear that these Ten Commandments mandates violate students’ and families’ religious freedom as promised by the U.S. Constitution. With ever more states attempting to force one version of religion into public school classrooms, our nation must recommit to our foundational promise of church-state separation, the linchpin of religious liberty.”

“This case concerns decisions about personal belief and religious instruction, and whether under our Constitution they remain with families and faith communities or are commandeered by the state,” says Jon Youngwood (he/him), global co-chair of the Litigation Department at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. “The First Amendment has long protected the freedom of individuals to determine for themselves how they engage with spirituality and religion. Those protections are especially important in the public-school setting.”

The Lowe and Fixler families share more about how they will be impacted by these Ten Commandments displays and why they oppose them in newly released, heartfelt videos that can be viewed here; transcripts are available here.

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 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the state Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.

Founded in 1947, Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a religious freedom advocacy organization that educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP (www.simpsonthacher.com) is one of the world’s leading international law firms. The firm was established in 1884 and has approximately 2,000 lawyers. Headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Palo Alto, San Francisco, São Paulo, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., the firm provides coordinated legal advice and transactional capability to clients around the globe.

The FFRF Action Fund awards the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County its “Secularist of the Week” plaudit for recently hosting a panel discussion on the threat of Christian nationalism. 

As part of the League of Women Voters’ nationwide day of civic action on Aug. 8, in honor of the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Tarrant County League, based in Fort Worth, Texas, facilitated a panel discussion with faith leaders, election experts and free-speech advocates on Christian nationalism. The panel, billed as a discussion on “faith, freedom and democracy,” centered on issues of state and church, religious influence in our government and the rise of religious nationalism. 

The panel included Perry Crenshaw, spiritual director of the NAACP’s Arlington chapter, Chris and Mendi Tackett, founders of the website See it. Name it. Fight it., which aims to help people understand Christian nationalism, and Laney Hawes, the co-director of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, which advocates against theocratic book bans in Texas. The League partnered with the NAACP’s Fort Worth and Arlington chapters, March to the Polls, the Faith and Justice Coalition of Tarrant County, Pastors for Texas Children and Texans Defending Democracy to host the event. 

The League of Women Voters of Tarrant County president, Janet Mattern, told the Fort Worth Report that the League planned the event to educate locals about what it sees as an attack on democracy. Mattern said the League is concerned about “the gutting of voting rights,” the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other local government policy changes rooted in a common movement. 

“That movement is the Christian nationalist movement, and they have been working towards undermining our democracy,” Mattern said. “In the League of Women Voters, we have as part of our mission to defend democracy … and so we thought it was very necessary to educate ourselves and to educate the community about what Christian nationalism is.” 

Mattern shared that, at the group’s annual convention in June, members approved a measure reaffirming that the League stands for “the separation of church and state and religious freedom founded upon individual conscience, free of social or political influence by any state or religious body.”

The Tarrant County League reflected on the panel in a Facebook post, writing, “It was great to learn more about Christian nationalism, but much more importantly it was great to be with great organizations and people who put faith, community, democracy, freedom of and from religion and the power of love first.” 

The League of Women Voters of Tarrant County is a nonpartisan, grassroots civic organization that encourages informed participation in government and conducts education and advocacy work for major public policy issues. Membership is open to all people 16 and older who support the League’s mission and policies. 

The FFRF Action Fund sincerely thanks the League for championing sound governance and confronting the threat Christian nationalism poses to secular democracy. Through its stellar panel discussion, the group conducted much-needed grassroots education on Christian nationalism — and its effects on public policy and local government.

The FFRF Action Fund names Rep. Nancy Mace its “Theocrat of the Week” for her anti-Muslim attacks on social media. 

Mace started her anti-Muslim rant on X last week, seemingly responding to U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic primary victory in Michigan, writing, “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic. We refuse to be silent.”

Mace is an unapologetic Christian nationalist; her dangerous rhetoric is bigotry that targets all Muslim Americans and is not a fair critique of religion’s entanglement with government. 

Congressional Freethought Caucus member Rep. Pramila Jayapal responded to Mace with a post asserting, “This is absolutely disgusting and dangerous. Republicans must denounce this blatant Islamophobia. To Muslim communities across America: I will always stand with you.” 

Mace reposted Jayapal message a day later, doubling down on her anti-Muslim remarks: “She’s right. I don’t want to get stabbed or blown up by a suicide bomber — nor do I want to hear the call to prayer five times a day in the United States of America. Total Islamaphobe [sic] here.” 

Mace wrote another post the same day, “You cannot pledge allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and Sharia Law at the same time. One is a roadmap for freedom, the other is a blueprint for tyranny. Islam has no place in Western society.” She attached a CNN clip to the post, showcasing Mace clashing with CNN’s Omar Jimenez. In the clip, when Jimenez asked the congresswoman, “Are you saying that anyone who is Muslim is a threat to this country?” Mace tried to walk back her remarks, saying she was referring only to “Muslim elected officials.” 

“They’re trying to push these people out and our values out,” Mace professed, seemingly referring to Muslims working to “push” out white Christian Americans. “I don’t want to hear the call to prayer five times a day in an American city.”

Jimenez cited the First Amendment and its protections for religious freedom, responding, “Well, if you don’t want to hear it, that’s OK. The First Amendment protects [the] freedom of religion. … If that is how they worship, even if I don’t want to hear it, that is their right to hear.” 

“I don’t want this seeping into American culture. We have Christian foundations as a nation,” Mace replied, turning to her Christian nationalist playbook. 

“That’s your opinion,” Jimenez said. “The First Amendment disagrees that it needs to stay that. If someone wants to express their religion, it’s right there; it’s number one in terms of the Constitution.” 

“Then go back to that country, is all I have to say,” Mace countered. “Go back to that country of origin. It doesn’t need to be here.” 

In the original CNN interview, Mace signed off by saying, “I think we should ban all immigrants from those countries, thank you,” but she did not include that tidbit in her social media post.

Mace previously received our “Theocrat” designation in December after centering her South Carolina gubernatorial campaign on Christian nationalism. In one campaign email, she intoned, “The Left is trying to erase Christ from every part of American life.” Having chosen to run for governor rather than seek reelection, her term in Congress will conclude in January, following her loss in June’s Republican primary, where she garnered 12.1 percent of the vote.

Mace has espoused Christian nationalism for years. Her remarks are not rooted in a genuine concern for preserving state/church separation; the congresswoman is attacking Muslim Americans under the guise of defending America’s purported Christian heritage. Mace’s discriminatory comments directly defy our democracy — rooted in freedom of and from religion. She amply deserves her second “Theocrat” designation.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on North Carolina officials to reverse course on a planned monument of the controversial religious figure Rev. Billy Graham Jr.
The North Carolina General Assembly passed a state budget bill that included funding for a monument honoring Graham. There was no chance for public input or debate about the monument.

Currently, the North Carolina Capitol grounds feature monuments relating to the world wars, the Vietnam War, prominent presidents or those from the state and governors of North Carolina — all included for secular reasons. A statue of Billy Graham can have no secular purpose and should not be placed at the seat of state government, FFRF emphasizes. The state/church watchdog is therefore asking that the Legislative Services Office use its discretion to refrain from using official government resources to promote a divisive religious figure and honor a single faith’s leader.

“Although remarks by those who proposed the monument say that this monument would be to ‘honor those people who have done great things for the people of this state,’ the fact is that Graham lived his life in service to his evangelical Christian religion and the bible that he believed was an infallible reference manual,” FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker write.

The question is not whether Graham was influential. He plainly was. The question is whether the seat of North Carolina government should permanently honor a figure whose influence was overwhelmingly religious and sectarian in nature, and whose public record included disparaging atheists, opposing LGBTQ+ equality, making antisemitic remarks and working to inject his evangelical beliefs into government.

Graham had a checkered history that included antisemitism, disdain for atheists and other alienating and divisive views. A released Watergate tape from 1972 caught Graham telling President Nixon that Jews had a “stranglehold” on the news. His career was additionally devoted to revivals, Christian conversions, hellfire preaching and the insertion of his brand of religion into what is supposed to be a secular country governed by a godless Constitution barring establishment of religion or governmental preference for religion.

Graham also notably lobbied Congress to pass a law declaring an annual National Day of Prayer, saying he wanted to “see the leaders of our country kneeling before almighty God in prayer.” Unfortunately, Congress, in 1952 (with a minor amendment in 1988), did his bidding. This law enacted at Graham’s behest has entangled religion and government, spawned countless inappropriate prayer breakfasts, prayerful governmental events and prayer resolutions at all levels of government, sending for generations a message that evangelical Christians are “insiders” and non-Christians and the nonreligious are “outsiders.”

FFRF’s freethinking North Carolina membership has been feeling estranged that the leaders of the state have chosen this outsized honor for Graham, especially given his years of advice columns deriding the nonreligious. In a column published on Aug. 7, 2010, by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, Graham opined that “a true atheist has no real reason to believe in right and wrong, or to behave sacrificially toward others.”

Graham vociferously opposed gay rights and marriage equality, saying that “we traffic in homosexuality at the peril of our spiritual welfare.” Even in 1993, Graham’s views offended public opinion so much that, after once suggesting that AIDS could be a “judgment” from God, he was forced to withdraw the remarks. He belonged to a denomination that refused to ordain women, including his own daughter, who defied the convention against preaching. The “Billy Graham” rule directing a man not to be alone with a woman other than his wife continues to influence evangelicals.

Billy Graham believed fervently in Christianity and people listened to him. But that is not worthy of a spot on the North Carolina Capitol grounds, which must serve and welcome all citizens, whether Christian, non-Christian, atheist or LGBTQ+. Graham sought to undo the only sure way to guarantee freedom of religion: a government free from religion. Giving him this unearned honor excludes those among the 31 percent of North Carolinians who are non-Christians, including the 26 percent of adult North Carolinians who are atheists, agnostics or religiously unaffiliated.

“North Carolinians are free to admire Billy Graham, and churches and religious organizations are free to build as many monuments to him as they wish,” Gaylor and Barker state. “But the state Capitol is different. It should be a civic space that welcomes everyone, not a platform for the government to elevate an evangelical preacher whose life’s work and public positions excluded and demeaned many of the people the state represents.” 

As a former public school teacher and a father of elementary-age children in a red state, I share James Traub’s concern in the New York Times about declining literacy. I want my kids to read books that challenge them, to learn about history, and to engage with big ideas.

None of that requires official promotion of Christianity.

This summer, the Texas State Board of Education approved a reading list that public schools must begin using by 2030. The list includes a range of writings from Aesop’s Fables and Langston Hughes to Shakespeare and Dante, along with bible stories or passages required in every grade from first through 12th. 

In his essay “The Most Radical Thing About Texas’ Book List Isn’t the Bible,” Traub argues that the real story is not the bible being included in the readings but Texas’ embrace of a rigorous, content-rich curriculum built around classic literature and cultural knowledge. He dismisses objections from us here at the Freedom From Religion Foundation to the bible inclusion as a “wild overreaction” to what he calls “a tiny fraction of the required readings.” 

Constitutional violations are not measured by page count. Imagine if Texas required Quranic passages in every grade. Would he still dismiss the resulting outcry as a “wild overreaction” because the Quran made up only a “tiny fraction” of the syllabus?

There’s another problem with Traub’s “tiny fraction” argument. Texas is going far beyond offering the bible in a high school literature or comparative religion course. Bible stories appear on the required reading list from first grade through 12th grade.

Think about how unusual that is. From first grade through 12th grade, Texas has decided that biblical stories and passages deserve recurring, mandatory exposure at every grade level. What other religious text or book receives that kind of special treatment throughout a child’s entire public school education?

Traub notes that “almost all of the reaction to the list, pro and con, has centered on the bible.” He fails to see what’s right in front of him. 

That is what makes Texas’ approach a biblical Trojan horse. Behind the promise of classic literature, historical knowledge, rigor and higher standards is a broader strategy to infuse Christianity into public school classrooms. 

Over the past few years, Texas has passed legislation authorizing public school chaplains, mandated Ten Commandments posters in every classroom, designated time for school-day prayer, required schools to accommodate released time for religious instruction, and introduced Bluebonnet Learning, a state-developed elementary curriculum infused with biblical lessons.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has made clear that he wants religion to play a larger role in public life, declaring that “there is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution.” In late July, he directed a newly created Senate Religious Liberty Committee to study ways to further infuse religion “in all settings, including, but not limited to: education, workplace, government, and health care.”

Viewed in isolation, any one of these examples can be minimized. Viewed together, the pattern becomes difficult to ignore. 

That’s why Traub’s “tiny fraction” argument doesn’t hold up. 

There is a glaring contradiction in crowning Texas as a beacon for literary culture. During the 2024–25 school year, PEN America recorded 1,781 instances of book bans in Texas public schools, the second-highest total in the nation behind Florida. While state leaders mandate bible stories for students to read, those same officials are restricting access to books, ideas and perspectives they disagree with.

That is a strange model of intellectual rigor.

It is equally hard to square Traub’s suggestion that conservatives have become the guardians of academic rigor with legislation that outlaws how educators can teach difficult parts of American history.

Traub also argues that “it is better to read a classic than a relatable contemporary story” because “one is beautiful and the other is not.”

Beauty is subjective and a book is not educationally valuable simply because it’s old. Shakespeare and Dante can belong in a demanding curriculum alongside contemporary writers whose work is equally serious and highly relatable. 

More troubling is the political frame Traub places around literature itself. He acknowledges that “those choices reflect Texas’ conservatism,” then challenges blue states to “show the world that academic rigor is not just for conservatives.” In doing so, he falls into the same narrow culture-war thinking he criticizes, treating literature as if certain books naturally belong to one political party or the other.

Why should the bible or any other book be branded as Republican or Democrat? We teach students literature to help them understand perspectives and ideas outside their own worldview, not to turn it into another battlefield for partisan identity.

Every state should demand stronger literacy and challenging coursework. Texas may even have some ideas worth borrowing about how to accomplish those goals.

But one thing’s for certain: Academic achievement must never become a Trojan horse for religious favoritism.

Two FFRF Action Fund-endorsed candidates have obtained key Democratic nominations in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary.

Alder Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford defeated four opponents for the Democratic slot in the State Assembly District 76 election and Alder JoCasta Zamarripa advanced uncontested in the secretary of state race. Both candidates will safeguard the separation between state and church if elected in November. 

Martinez-Rutherford, if prevailing as expected in solidly blue District 76 in the November election, will become Wisconsin’s first transgender state legislator. She also made history in 2023 as the first transgender woman elected to the Madison Common Council. She is running in the state assembly district that is home to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s headquarters. Martinez-Rutherford identifies as part of the freethought community and will safeguard state/church separation. She pledges to fully fund public schools and eliminate state voucher schemes, to maintain Wisconsin’s ban on conversion therapy and to protect bodily autonomy for women and the transgender community. 

Zamarripa will face off in the secretary of state race against Republican Jay Schroeder and Wisconsin Green Party candidate Pete Karas in November. Schroeder, a businessman, has denied the results of the 2020 presidential election and has called for the dismantling of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

Zamarripa secured the Democratic nomination for secretary of state, which administers oaths of office for all officials and serves on the board of public lands. The office also allocates public school funding, and she has pledged to maintain the office’s state/church boundary and to ensure that public funds remain in secular public schools.

Zamarripa is firmly committed to the boundary between state and church; she pushed back against religious exemptions for Covid-19 mask mandates and routinely stood with science and the Milwaukee Health Department while serving on the Milwaukee Common Council. She asserts that religion should not be used as a weapon.

The FFRF Action Fund salutes both candidates for their primary wins as we look to gain a Democratic trifecta in our home state in November.

President Trump’s recent executive order to space out the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine may sound benign at first glance. But it is only his latest interference with medical vaccination policies that will gravely harm public health.

First of all, mumps, measles and rubella aren’t even currently available as individual shots. But even if Trump’s interfering recommendations could be followed, they would require three different shots and appointments (that’s six once you include the second dose required before entering kindergarten), inevitably meaning many children would not receive all vaccinations and boosters at the appropriate times. The vaccines were combined because, according to Associated Press, studies have shown that combining the shots increases the likelihood of completing all the recommended inoculations by age 2. This makes sense given the difficulty of scheduling so many doctors’ appointments, particularly for families without ready access to transportation and sick leave. Even for parents who have the time and transportation to follow through on three times as many appointments, the excess appointments will burden physicians and clinics at a time when the United States is experiencing a severe pediatric care shortage.

Measles is one of the most infectious of the communicable diseases, lingering in the air for up to two hours and leaving a trail of severe complications up to and including death. Trump’s decision to risk the health of children is inexcusable. So is his rationale, which is to repeat the disproven allegation that the number and timing of vaccines can contribute to autism, even though scientific consensus and decades of studies have shown there is no link.

Meanwhile, only an appealed court order is currently blocking implementation of the Trump administration’s reckless and irresponsible move to reduce recommended vaccinations (meaning that they won’t necessarily be covered by many health insurance plans, including Medicaid). Trump’s new executive order reiterates that reduction. The scorned vaccines include those to prevent the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of deadly meningitis and RSV, a major filler of pediatric hospital beds. 

The administration is practicing its speciality — death by a thousand cuts — with its endless attacks on vaccines, by its stacking of the vaccine advisory committee and by “Health” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relentless and discredited defamations of the science of vaccines. The harm is not just directly to individual and public health but to future development of more and better vaccinations. 

A year ago, the Department of Health and Human Services unforgivably deep-sixed 22 mRNA vaccine development projects. Jeff Coller, a professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University who worked on messenger RNA for more than three decades, points out: “The mRNA Covid vaccine is an American government success story. Moderna’s vaccine was designed with the National Institutes of Health and paid for by the same department that killed the platform last August. It reached arms in 11 months under Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump still calls one of the great achievements of his first term. He is right about that. Published analyses credit Covid vaccination with preventing more than 3 million American deaths in its first two years. That achievement was delivered by mRNA. You cannot celebrate the miracle and defund the machinery that produced it.”

Coller adds that the fix is easy: Congress must restore the canceled contracts and “require that any decision to fund or defund an entire medical platform go through scientific review rather than a press release.”

Amen to that! 

Only those who repudiate reason could, after reaping the benefits of mRNA research during the Covid-19 pandemic, contrive to turn vaccinations into the villain instead of the savior. The true villains are Trump, Kennedy and the host of Christian nationalist nutjobs running our federal government.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is demanding that the Battle Creek Police Department in Michigan take down a Christian bible verse in large lettering from its public waiting room.

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. — Matthew 5:9,” the display reads.

A concerned Battle Creek resident recently alerted the state/church watchdog to the display, explaining that encountering an explicitly Christian message inside a government law enforcement facility made them feel like an outsider.

“As an atheist . . . I was offended by witnessing a violation of the separation of church and state in the city of Battle Creek Michigan Police Department waiting room,” the resident reported to FFRF. “I personally felt discriminated against when observing the bible verse on display in a government building, concerned for the bias towards atheists and those of non-Judeo-Christian faith.”

FFRF has sent a missive to the Police Department point out the constitutional transgression.

“Posting a bible quote on government property fails to respect this constitutional mandate of neutrality,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude writes to Police Chief Shannon Bagley. “This posting promotes religion over nonreligion and Christianity over all other faiths.”

People interact with and rely on law enforcement officers during some of the most urgent and vulnerable times of their lives, FFRF reminds the police chief. Battle Creek residents belonging to minority religions or with no religion at all, such as FFRF’s complainant, should not be made to feel excluded because the local Police Department promotes a particular religious group’s beliefs, implying official support for Christianity. Sectarian Christian displays marginalize community members among the 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christians, including the 31 percent of Michigan residents who are religiously unaffiliated.

“Imagine the outcry were a Quranic verse about peace posted at this police department. When a police department prominently displays New Testament Scripture, it sends a troubling message about whose beliefs are favored by those entrusted to safeguard citizens and enforce the law,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Every Battle Creek resident, Christian or non-Christian, religious or nonreligious, should be able to walk into their police department confident that they will be treated equally and will not be confronted with bible verses.”

The FFRF Action Fund is sounding the alarm over legislation that would dramatically expand the power and legal protections of military chaplains.

Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have introduced the Military Chaplains Modernization Act of 2026, with Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., as co-sponsors. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, is leading companion legislation in the House, and the proposal has been included in the House-passed Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. 

The legislation is being promoted as a measure to clarify the role of military chaplains and protect their religious freedom. In reality, it would go much further, granting sweeping statutory protections to government-employed clergy while failing to provide comparable safeguards for service members subjected to unwanted religious activity. And it could potentially subject service members to prosecution for restricting a chaplain’s religious actions.

The legislation would guarantee chaplains the right to conduct public worship, counsel, teach, preach, minister and pray according to their “sincerely held” religious beliefs and the tenets of their endorsing religious organizations while prohibiting commanders from requiring chaplains to perform any rights “task or action” contrary to the chaplain’s beliefs or tenets. A chaplain could potentially invoke the provision to refuse certain counseling involving a same-sex couple, religious-accommodation duties involving another faith, or other assigned counseling, training or support responsibilities that the chaplain claims conflict with personal religious beliefs or the doctrines of the chaplain’s endorsing organization.

Alarmingly, the bill would prohibit any member of the Armed Forces from preventing a chaplain from engaging in those protected activities, declaring that they must be “free from censorship, undue restriction, or fear of retribution.”

“Military chaplains exist to protect the religious freedom of service members, not the other way around,” says FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “This bill turns that principle on its head. It would elevate the personal religious beliefs of government-employed clergy above the rights of the service members they are supposed to serve.”

Those provisions could create serious problems when military commanders need to prevent coercive religious activity, inappropriate proselytizing or religious conduct that interferes with military responsibilities. A member of the Armed Forces who violates the bill’s protections for chaplains would be subject to criminal prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and could even potentially face a court martial. That is an extraordinary enforcement mechanism for protecting the religious exercise of government-employed clergy, particularly when the bill contains no equally explicit protection against chaplains using their government positions to impose religion on unwilling or subordinate service members.

The legislation would give chaplains a powerful institutional role in military religious-freedom decisions, making chaplains principal advisers to commanders on “all issues” involving religious practices, “spiritual readiness,” spiritual care and religion’s influence on military operations. They would also advise commanders on all religious accommodation requests and oversee education and training concerning religious accommodations. The bill goes so far as to declare that military chaplaincies shall have a “primary role” in providing for the free exercise of religion.

The bill’s congressional findings reveal an equally disturbing view of the relationship between religion and government. Congress would formally declare: “Religion and religious liberty have always served an essential role in society, culture, and military service, making them necessary for good democratic governance and a strong military.”

Adds Gaylor, “Congress has no business declaring religion ‘necessary’ for good democratic governance or a strong military.” 

The measure is particularly concerning given that half of active military members are either atheist/agnostic (at 18 percent) or otherwise have no religious affiliation (32 percent), according to researcher Ryan Burge. (That is a far greater percentage of nonreligious than the U.S. adult population generally, at 29 percent.)

The findings selectively invoke George Washington, the Continental Congress, John Adams and Franklin Roosevelt and a misleading analysis of a recent Supreme Court case to try to establish a Christian nationalist historical narrative about the importance of religion to American military service.

The FFRF Action Fund recognizes the legitimate role of military chaplains. Service members can be stationed in circumstances where they cannot independently access religious services, and the military may therefore need to accommodate their voluntary religious exercise because it corrects a government-imposed harm. But accommodating service members’ religious exercise is fundamentally different from insulating chaplain conduct from ordinary command authority and threatening service members’ rights of conscience.

The First Amendment already protects the religious and nonreligious alike. Congress should reject the Military Chaplains Modernization Act and ensure that the military chaplaincy remains focused on serving the constitutional rights and diverse beliefs of all service members, rather than elevating the religious prerogatives of chaplains above those they are commissioned to serve.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says the Trump administration’s announcement that it will direct almost $2 billion in global funding toward faith-based organizations is outrageous.

The State Department is touting the initiative as the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to faith-based groups in more than 20 years, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars for some of the world’s largest evangelical Christian ministries. The administration announced $1.4 billion for health services delivered through faith-based and community hospitals and clinics plus $538 million in humanitarian assistance involving Samaritan’s Purse, and a consortium led by World Vision and Compassion International.

“The administration is openly restructuring American foreign assistance around religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Humanitarian aid should be based on humanitarian need and the ability to provide effective, secular services, not on whether an organization puts ‘faith in action.’ Taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll an administration’s campaign to elevate and subsidize religion.”

The administration’s own language makes its religious favoritism impossible to miss. It celebrates the funding as a “historic” investment in faith-based groups and repeatedly identifies the religious character of recipients as a virtue. The government may contract with religiously affiliated organizations to provide secular services under appropriate safeguards. Still, it may not use public money to advance religion, subsidize evangelism or deliberately privilege religious organizations because they are religious.

The inclusion of Samaritan’s Purse, a pervasively sectarian religious outfit headed by zealous evangelist Franklin Graham, is particularly alarming.

Samaritan’s Purse is not just any old charity. It explicitly identifies itself as an evangelical Christian organization whose mission combines aid with spreading Christianity. Its own mission statement says it assists “with the purpose of sharing God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ” and “serves the Church worldwide to promote the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The group says its mission is to help people in need while “proclaiming the hope of the Gospel.”

Those are constitutionally significant facts when the federal government proposes directing enormous amounts of taxpayer money through the organization.

Samaritan’s Purse also requires employees to affirm and adhere to its Statement of Faith, such as that the bible is “inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” Its employment website describes working for the group as a “calling” and “ministry,” and states that its religious beliefs determine employment eligibility.

The organization has attracted particular controversy for its anti-LGBTQ+ religious requirements. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Samaritan’s Purse faced widespread criticism when workers at its emergency field hospital in New York were required to subscribe to a statement of faith containing its religious teachings about marriage. Samaritan’s Purse defended its practice of requiring paid staff to subscribe to that statement. Graham himself has publicly attacked marriage equality and insisted that marriage is defined by “God’s laws.”

It is untenable that theTrump administration now proposes making Samaritan’s Purse one of its favored conduits for American humanitarian assistance.

“Feeding hungry people and providing medical treatment are worthy public purposes,” says Gaylor. “Preaching the gospel is not a government purpose. When an organization expressly combines humanitarian assistance with an evangelical mission, the government has a heightened obligation to ensure that not one taxpayer dollar subsidizes religious activity, proselytizing or religious discrimination.”

FFRF emphasizes that the constitutional problem is not simply that religious organizations may participate in otherwise neutral government programs. The problem is that the administration is proposing to funnel extraordinary sums of public money through ministries because those missions advance Christianity.

The danger is especially acute overseas, where recipients of American assistance may be experiencing war, famine, disease, displacement or natural disaster. People in desperate circumstances should never have to encounter government-subsidized evangelism alongside food, medicine or shelter. U.S. foreign assistance must serve people regardless of their religion or nonreligion, without using their vulnerability as an opportunity for religious outreach. Making the allocations all the more concerning is the inhumane destruction of USAID under DOGE cuts, which have already cost as many as 750,000 lives worldwide. Lancet estimates the aid defunding will take as many as 9.4 million lives by 2030.

FFRF is urging the administration to disclose the terms of every award, the safeguards separating publicly funded services from religious activities, the rules governing employment and subcontracting with federal funds, and the mechanisms that will ensure beneficiaries are never subjected to proselytizing or religious discrimination. The state/church watchdog will be filing a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department seeking records related to these awards, including grant agreements and funding terms, communications concerning the selection of faith-based recipients and documents detailing safeguards intended to prevent taxpayer funds from being used for religious activities, proselytizing or religious discrimination.

FFRF is also calling on Congress to investigate these awards and demand strict accounting for every taxpayer dollar. The American public deserves to know why these organizations were selected, how federal funds will be used and what protections are in place to ensure that humanitarian assistance does not become taxpayer-funded evangelism.

The United States can and should provide lifesaving assistance around the world. It does not need to finance the spread of Christianity to do so.