News from the week Jan. 31 - Feb. 4, 2022

Friend:

This past week I had the fun of preaching the AU gospel to a brand new audience when I was a guest on the “Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang” radio program on the SiriusXM Progress channel Tuesday night. I hope jaws dropped all over America as I described the torrent of religious extremism happening right now. I did my best to personalize it by describing real people facing real consequences. I explained that if it can happen to them, it can happen to any of us.

For example, most listeners were probably shocked to hear about AU’s latest plaintiffs, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram, a married couple in Tennessee denied services by a state-funded foster-placement agency solely because they are Jewish. This is the latest example of people being harmed by religious discrimination funded by their own tax dollars: [link removed]

Stories like this are a wake-up call to new audiences, like those tuning in to “Tell Me Everything” and other programs. In fact, just about everything I talked about in terms of AU’s current work and the threats to church-state separation at every level, from state legislators to the Supreme Court, comes as news to anyone who takes our country’s promise of religious freedom for granted.

That’s why every member of the AU community should embrace our power to enlighten minds and disrupt complacency! Otherwise, we cede the debate to those banning books about the Holocaust or slavery. Or the fringe groups suing to commandeer a city-owned flagpole to fly a Christian banner over their Christian nationalist rally. Or the high-school football coach who insists he has a right to pressure public-school students into joining his public prayers on the 50-yard line after games.

This was also the week of the National Prayer Breakfast, which is sponsored by a shadowy Christian nationalist group called the Fellowship Foundation (AKA The Family). This year the breakfast took place inside the U.S. Capitol, which only makes things worse. The people’s house shouldn’t be used for what is essentially a Christian worship service: [link removed]

While we appreciate the occasional nods from President Biden and a few other speakers to acknowledge non-Christians and the non-religious, the event is overwhelmingly Christian. As I tweeted, they should just rename it the National Christian Prayer Breakfast and then deal with the consequences: [link removed]. If you are on Twitter, by the way, please follow @americansunited: [link removed] and @rachelklaser: [link removed] if you haven’t already to have the fastest access to our breaking news.

At the Prayer Breakfast, President Biden spoke of uniting around our country’s core beliefs:

“As I stand in this citadel of democracy that was attacked one year ago, the issue for us is unity... Unity doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. But unity is where enough of us, enough of us, believe in a core of basic things.”

One of those basic things, of course, is separation of church and state. What if, today, you reached out to one to three friends and told them how important it is to join Americans United? You could even forward them this email and send them to: [link removed]

Together, we will continue to fight back and fight forward. One step at a time, we will protect the religious freedom that is rightfully all of ours.

Onward,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO

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In The Future, Let’s Skip This Breakfast:
The National Prayer Breakfast is an empty exercise in 'civil religion,' which many truly devout people would say isn’t meaningful religion at all.
READ MORE » [link removed]

Christian Nationalists To America: ‘Don’t Look Up!’:
For her monthly column in Church & State magazine, CEO Rachel Laser describes the Christian nationalists who would have us look away from facts and deny them. They have a track record of doing that.
READ MORE » [link removed]

Christian Nationalists Love Misinformation—And That’s Bad For All Of Us:
The false beliefs of Christian nationalists are not harmless. We’ve all suffered because of them.
READ MORE » [link removed]

Justice Stephen Breyer: A Pragmatist Leaves The Court:
Justice Breyer, who announced his retirement last week, wasn’t a champion of strict separation of church and state. But he was with us more often than not.
READ MORE » [link removed]


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