December 2020 Election Heartening for FFRF’S Work for the Freedom from Religion Paign, a D.C
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Photoshop # White Black Skeptics FFRF chapters Winners of uplift through stay engaged, student activist social justice build support awards announced PAGE 11 PAGES 16-17 PAGE 18 Vol. 37 No. 10 Published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. December 2020 Election heartening for FFRF’s work For the Freedom From Religion paign, a D.C. lobbyist, and our educa- Foundation, the results of the U.S. pres- tional efforts have played a major role idential election mean the Christian in the secular surge. We’ll continue to Nationalist takeover of the federal gov- fight and remain vigilant no matter ernment should end. The Joe Biden/ which party is in the White House or Kamala Harris administration will controls Congress. mean a renewed chance to advocate FFRF has been working with our for secularism allies to develop and a return to a common secu- rational debate. lar agenda that “We the Peo- Congress and the ple” have spoken. new administra- Unfortunately, the tion can quickly Senate is unlikely implement. We to flip (barring look forward to two positive out- repairing damage comes inGeorgia inflicted on sec- seats up for runoff elections), which ularism and its values. This will entail will complicate recovery from a Chris- repealing many Trumpian executive tian Nationalist executive. However, orders, regulations and extrajudicial the results overall look like a victory for bodies (such as the Religious Liberty science over faith, for reproductive and Task Force), but must also include ma- individual rights over theology, and for jor judicial reform. reason over ideology. Unprecedented obstructionism in After years of playing defense, FFRF the Senate blocked President Obama can now push forward. It appears there not only from nominating Merrick is a path cleared to achieving gains for Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on FFRF’s movement to keep religion out the Supreme Court, but also from fill- Religious authoritarianism of government and public policy. ing more than 100 seats on the federal Donald Trump was carried into of- bench. The Trump administration has fice on a crest of Christian Nationalism since packed the courts with more than is here to stay, unfortunately four years ago, a wave that was hostile 200 individuals handpicked by the Fed- This column first ran on Nov. 16 in The New the early signs now indicate that the move- to everything FFRF works for. We trust eralist Society, including unqualified York Times and is reprinted with permission. ment seems determined to reinterpret de- the relentless religious assault we’ve zealots who do not reflect the Ameri- feat at the top of the ticket as evidence of been beating back for four years will can people, trampling Senate rules and By Katherine Stewart persecution and of its own righteousness. diminish — and we’ll do everything in norms along the way. An illegitimate With or without Trump, they will remain our power to ensure that. process allowed Trump to make his committed to the illiberal politics that the FFRF is poised for the opportunities third Supreme Court appointment in ill President-elect Joe Biden’s president has so ably embodied. ahead. Our team of attorneys and 30- the midst of the national election — victory force America’s Christian As it did in 2016, the early analysis of some staff, and our 33,000 members, an appointment that clearly endangers Nationalists to rethink the unho- the 2020 election results often circled are the watchers on the wall separating abortion and LGBTQ rights, as well as Wly alliance that powered Donald Trump’s around the racial, urban-rural, and in- state and church. We’re the largest U.S. decades of First Amendment precedent four-year tour as one of the nation’s most come and education divides. But the re- association of freethinkers (atheists separating religion from government. dangerous presidents? Don’t count on it. ligion divide tells an equally compelling and agnostics) and the third-largest as- FFRF has a talented legal team, and The 2020 election is proof that reli- sociation of nonbelievers in the world. gious authoritarianism is here to stay, and See Nationalism on page 2 We’ve added a strategic response cam- See Election on page 6 Military atheists want to be heard by DoD FFRF’s military and systemic racism, the DoD announced around the country are either active a multistep process to address di- service members or veterans, dis- veteran members gave versity and inclusion concerns. This pelling the tired myth that there are suggestions to Pentagon included an anonymous “crowd- “no atheists in foxholes.” sourcing” brainstorm of the problem The Defense Department’s pre- By Ryan Jayne and possible solutions. FFRF invit- sumption of religiosity begins with ed its qualifying members to submit the required paperwork when in- comments — and the response was dividuals enter the armed forces: embers of the Freedom From overwhelming. “There was no box to check under Religion Foundation associ- These true “atheists in foxholes” ‘religious preference’ for ‘atheist,’” ated with the military have a provided dozens of thoughtful exam- one nonreligious veteran wrote. Mmessage for the Department of De- ples of how the military could better “Instead, I checked the box ‘None,’ Photo by Ingrid Laas fense: Acknowledge their existence accommodate and acknowledge non- which was read by the clerk as ‘None FFRF Member Joseph Cunningham stands next to and quit proselytizing. religious service members. About 20 FFRF’s “Atheists in Foxholes” monument outside its Following national protests against percent of FFRF’s 33,000 members See Military on page 19 national office in Madison, Wis. Page 2 FFRF | FREETHOUGHT TODAY | Madison, Wisconsin | December 2020 by fortune helped build the Museum of Nationalism the Bible. The movement gets another Continued from page 1 big chunk of its funding from the large mass of people who are often in the mid- story. According to preliminary exit polls dle rungs of the economic spectrum and from Edison Research (the data is neces- whose arduously cultivated resentments sarily rough at this stage), 28 percent of toward those below them have been voters identified as either white evangeli- turned into a fundraising bonanza. cal or white born-again Christian, and of The second structural reality to con- these, 76 percent voted for Trump. If the sider is that Christian Nationalism is a numbers hold, these results indicate a creation of a uniquely isolated messaging continuation of support for Trump from sphere. Many members of the rank and this group. file get their main political information The core of Trump’s voting bloc, to not just from messaging platforms that be clear, does not come from white evan- keep their audiences in a world that is gelicals as such, but from an overlapping divorced from reality, but also from dedi- group of not nec- cated religious networks and reactionary essarily evangelical, faith leaders. and not necessar- The fact that Trump was able to hold ily white, people WhiteHouse.org on to a high percentage of the vote in who identify at least President Trump, surrounded by evangelical leaders, holds up an executive order the face of such overwhelming evidence loosely with Chris- that he signed during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White of malfeasance is proof enough that the tian Nationalism: House on May 3, 2018. religious-nationalist end of the right-wing the idea that the information bubble has gotten more, not United States is and d’état.” Mat Staver, chairman and founder tion as the consequence of “the whole less, resistant over time. ought to be a Chris- of Liberty Counsel, added, “What we are godless ideology that’s wanted to swallow The third critical factor is a political tian nation governed witnessing only happens in communist or our homes, destroy our marriages, throw system that gives disproportionate power Katherine Stewart under a reactionary repressive regimes. We must not allow this our children into rivers of confusion.” to an immensely organized, engaged and understanding of Christian values. Unfor- fraud to happen in America.” Jim Garlow, an evangelical pastor whose loyal minority. One of the most reliable tunately, data on that cohort is harder to Even as prominent Republican figures Well Versed Ministry has as its stated goal, strategies for producing that unshakable find except in deeply researched work by like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney “Bringing biblical principles of gover- cohort has been to get them to agree that sociologists like Andrew Whitehead and slowly tried to nudge Trump toward the nance to governmental leaders,” asserted abortion is the easy answer to every dif- Samuel Perry. exit, leaders of the Religious Right con- that Biden and Harris are at the helm of ficult political policy question. Recently, Most pollsters shoehorn complex re- tinued to man the barricades. The conser- an “ideology” that is “anti-Christ, anti-bib- Religious Right leaders have shifted their ligious identities into necessarily broad vative speaker and Falkirk Center fellow lical to its core.” focus more to a specious understanding labels, so they fail to separate out the dif- David Harris Jr. put it this way: of what they call “religious freedom” or ferent strands of Trump’s support. There “If you’re a believer, and you believe A political movement “religious liberty,” but the underlying are indications that the president in fact God appointed Donald J. Trump to run The comments pouring in from these strategy is the same: make individuals expanded his appeal among nonwhite this country, to lead this country, and you and other figures may be forgotten when see their partisan vote as the primary way evangelical and born-again Christians of believe as I do that he will be re-elected Biden takes office.