Friend,

We’re exposing the billion-dollar shadow network that is undermining the separation of church and state. Under our microscope this month is a group that AU tangled with extensively at the Supreme Court this year: First Liberty Institute.

AU is fighting back against this wealthy network, but we need your help. Help us expose this shadow network and block its Christian nationalist agenda with a contribution today: [link removed]

First Liberty Institute is the Christian Nationalist legal outfit that litigated and spun the “deceitful narrative” in the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case, where a public high school football coach demanded the right to pray with students at the 50-yard line after games.

AU defended the school district in that case and also clashed with the Institute in another Supreme Court case last term: Carson v. Makin, the case out of Maine that forced taxpayers to fund religious education and indoctrination. In 2019, the Institute fought to keep the massive concrete Christian cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, on government property and fully fund its repairs with your tax dollars—and the Supreme Court agreed. The Institute is currently urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case of Oregon bakers who discriminated against a same-sex couple.

The Institute has been working to erode the church-state wall for decades. AU’s own Andrew L. Seidel explains the group’s goal in his new book, American Crusade:

"The Institute wants Christian supremacy. It fought to keep evolution out of public schools; and bible classes, Jesus portraits, and school-imposed prayer in public schools. Like other Crusaders, the Institute wraps this supremacy in religious freedom, which the average American understands as equality."

“To build the perception that it’s fighting for equality rather than supremacy, the Institute seeks stories that it can blow out of proportion and bend into the Christian persecution narrative,” Andrew adds. That narrative is why the Institute took up Kennedy’s cause in 2015. Trump and the Federalist Society hadn’t yet packed the Supreme Court, and the law was clearly and uniformly against it: public school officials couldn’t use their power and position to impose their personal religion on other people’s children.

The Institute ignored the law, perhaps because they saw a cash cow: football, the name Kennedy, a military veteran, and Christian prayer. And it raked in the cash. Before Kennedy, the Institute brought in about $8 million per year; by June 2020 that was up to nearly $15 million.

We’ve got truth, the Constitution, and the majority of Americans – you! – on our side. But we don’t have First Liberty’s war chest. Help us fight back with a gift today.

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Like the rest of this shadowy network, the Institute has political influence and access. The Institute hired a Breitbart editor as senior counsel, who then joined the Trump administration; the January 6th Committee subpoenaed him. Trump nominated another former Institute lawyer for a federal judgeship, but his anti-LGBTQ bigotry was so extreme (for instance, he referred to LGBTQ rights as part of “Satan’s plan”) that the nomination failed. That lawyer is now back with the Institute and helped spin the “deceitful narrative” in the Bremerton case.

Kelly Shackleford has run First Liberty Institute for decades and his tentacles reach right up to our highest court. Shackelford’s ties to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, were exposed in the New Yorker earlier this year: “when Ginni Thomas was serving as one of eight members on the C.N.P. Action board, it was chaired by Kelly Shackelford.” (C.N.P. is the Council for National Policy, perhaps the most shadowy and powerful member of this network; it’s an umbrella organization formed in 1981 by Christian Nationalist Tim LaHaye.) The Institute also challenged public health measures during the pandemic, an issue that repeatedly came before the Court, while Shackelford and Ginni Thomas were serving together on a committee that condemned Covid-19 health orders, explained the New Yorker.

The shadow network spends millions on litigation but far more on messaging, which they view as information warfare. Americans United is fighting corruption, influence, dark money, and an overfunded crusade to undermine the constitutional separation of church and state. We need your help. With your support, Americans United and our grassroots movement will never stop.

Help us in this fight with a contribution today: [link removed]

Next month, we’ll expose one of the most influential and dangerous members of the shadow network as they go before the Supreme Court yet again: the Alliance Defending Freedom.

In Solidarity,

Rachel Laser
President & CEO

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