The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s famed Ron Reagan ad is airing this week on the “Rachel Maddow Show.”

The spot starts airing tonight, Monday, March 5, and will be running daily through Friday, March 9, on the popular talk show, which is broadcast weekdays at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
FFRF’s commercial, featuring the son of President Ronald and Nancy Reagan, says:

Hi, I’m Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist, and I’m alarmed by the intrusion of religion into our secular government. That’s why I’m asking you to support the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our Founding Fathers intended. Please support the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.

The ad has been a major fount of publicity for FFRF and has helped bring in numerous new members.

“It’s a delightful surprise how many folks we’ve been able to reach through this spot that Ron Reagan kindly recorded for us,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate. With more than 32,000 members and 20 chapters all over the country, the organization also educates the public about nontheism.

Tax-deductible gifts to FFRF’s advertising fund will ensure that FFRF can keep running this ad.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's efforts to halt an unconstitutional taxpayer grant to a North Carolina church have been successful.

The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority had awarded $72,500 to Haywood Street Congregation in Asheville, N.C., for, according to local media, "an innovative project, to artfully portray [the church's] mission and ministry through a large-scale work of art in the medium of fresco." This project was meant to decorate the church's sanctuary with a Christian religious scene of the "eight beatitudes" of Jesus delivered during the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament [Matthew 5:3–12].

The church's pastor had told the media that the project would directly promote the church's religious mission: "What it will do more than anything is theologize our deepest belief here, and that is that God blesses those who suffer the most." He also explained that it would be "a timeless witness, both visually and spiritually, to the Gospel."

It is unconstitutional for the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority to fund a religious mural, FFRF contended.

"The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from financially supporting churches," FFRF Staff Attorney Ryan Jayne wrote to Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority President & CEO Stephanie Pace Brown last November. "Buncombe County may not award grants to churches in order to decorate their sanctuaries with religious imagery." 

Any reasonable observer would understand the city's contribution of $72,000-plus as an endorsement of this church and the religious message portrayed in the project, FFRF maintained. The U.S. Constitution prohibits such endorsement regardless of whether the project attracts tourists and possibly generates revenue for the county.

FFRF's campaign has paid off.

"Asheville's Haywood Street Congregation has withdrawn its request for funding for a fresco project from the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, ending a several-months-long challenge of the grant's constitutionality," the Asheville Citizen-Times reports. 

The congregation's move was a response to the second thoughts the county had about disbursing taxpayer funds in this manner.

"Earlier this week, the Buncombe Tourism Development Authority voted to table a $72,500 grant it previously had awarded the church to install a fresco in the sanctuary of its property at 297 Haywood St.," states the Citizen-Times.

FFRF is pleased with the outcome.

"Taxpayers were being wrongly asked to hand out their money to a church," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "Would there have been the same complacency if it was a mosque involved?"

Gaylor notes that the county could fund any number of secular projects to boost tourism in ways that do not exclude nonreligious citizens.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 32,000 members and 20 chapters across the country, including 600-plus and a chapter in North Carolina. FFRF's purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

Recently discovered tapes of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt confirm what the Freedom From Religion Foundation has been asserting all along.

Recordings have surfaced of Pruitt attacking evolution, advocating for a constitutional ban on gay marriage and abortion, and claiming that Christianity is under attack in America and being driven out of the "public square."

At FFRF, we're not surprised. We know Pruitt. We dealt with him several times as Oklahoma attorney general. We tried to warn the U.S. Senate that it would be confirming an incorrigible theocrat.

Politico broke the story of the tapes on Friday, and the scandal has been snowballing. In the recordings, Pruitt can be heard saying things like, "There aren't sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution." 

He also argues that "the most grievous threat that we have today is this imperialistic judiciary, this judicial monarchy that has it wrong on what the First Amendment's about and has an objective to create religious sterility in the public square, which is wholly inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' view." Pruitt is describing a secular government, which is precisely what the Founders not only wanted, but what they actually designed in our godless Constitution.

FFRF has been on to Pruitt right from the start.

On Jan. 13, 2017, FFRF sent a series of questions to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The first group of questions fell under a heading that sums up all the problems we're seeing with Pruitt: "Conflicts between your [Pruitt's] personal religion and secular law."

We laid out the many times Pruitt has chosen his religion over his oath of office. After the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument in front of the Oklahoma Capitol was unconstitutional, Pruitt, in his official capacity as the attorney general of Oklahoma, said, "quite simply, the Oklahoma Supreme Court got it wrong," argued that the court's order was unconstitutional, and filed a new, frivolous legal action in order to defy that order.

Also as Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt sent a letter to public school superintendents defending the practice of outside adults, often part of Gideons International, entering Oklahoma public schools to proselytize students. He promised to represent any school in court should they be sued for violating students' rights of conscience, even though the illegality of proselytizing students in public schools is well established.

Pruitt also said that public high schools can organize prayer at athletic events, which conflicts with two Supreme Court opinions.

When the U.S. Supreme Court declared gay marriage a constitutional right, he claimed that the Supreme Court decision "threatens the ability of citizens to live out their faith in the public square."

Nothing about Pruitt's taped conversations is surprising. They all feature Pruitt again believing that his religion is superior to the law of the land.

We do not live in a theocracy, but that is what Pruitt would have us think. By his own admission, he is running the EPA in accordance with biblical principles. The justified fervor that the Politico tapes have generated shows the importance of FFRFs work.

Often maligned as "un-American," the Freedom From Religion Foundation defends the Constitution and one of its core principles: the separation of state and church. With Pruitt, that work is more vital than ever.

Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 2.0

The Freedom From Religion Foundation denounces various governmental efforts to venerate the late Billy Graham.

A federal order instructed that flags be lowered to half-mast today, just after Graham was "lain in honor" in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. And North Carolina is proceeding with a 2015 request to place a statue of Graham in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol.

While it would be fitting for evangelical Christian organizations to honor him, it is not appropriate for our federal and state governments to do so.

Despite supporters' insistence that Graham is a universally beloved figure, he had a checkered history, including anti-Semitism, disdain for atheists and other alienating and divisive views. Furthermore, he was a religious figure who had no redeeming secular achievements (unlike personalities such as Martin Luther King Jr.).

In 2015, FFRF's co-presidents wrote to then-N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory opposing a plan to erect a statue of Graham at the U.S. Capitol as a replacement for a statue of onetime N.C. Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock. FFRF applauded North Carolina for its decision to get rid of the Aycock statue, since he was a well-known opponent of civil rights and a proponent of discrimination.

However, switching Charles Aycock with Billy Graham only swaps one divisive figure for another. North Carolina has far more worthy candidates. FFRF has recommended longtime Winston-Salem resident and legendary litterateur Maya Angelou as a suitable replacement for Aycock (only nine of 100 statues in Statuary Hall are of women). Others have suggested figures such as African-American civil rights leader, lawyer and educator Julius Chambers.

The decision to lower flags to half-mast in honor of Billy Graham follows on the heels of Graham receiving a rare tribute of "lying in honor" in the Capitol rotunda, which FFRF has also condemned. Graham consistently found himself on the wrong side of history, opposing gay rights and marriage equality and retracting anti-Semitic statements only when it became necessary to do so.

Billy Graham stood against much of what makes this country noble. He is not worthy of governmental praise or honors.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a nationwide nonprofit educational association that on behalf of its 32,000 members nationwide works to uphold the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, and to educate the public about nontheism.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has gotten a brazenly religious work of art removed from a North Carolina courthouse.

A Cleveland County resident informed FFRF that a large painting had been installed in the main corridor of the Cleveland County Courthouse depicting a Latin cross and an ichthys, also known as the Jesus fish. The Elizabeth Baptist Church donated the piece.

The religious significance of the Latin cross is unambiguous and indisputable, FFRF reminded county officials, since an overwhelming majority of federal courts agree that the Latin cross universally represents the Christian religion — and only the Christian religion.

"The Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment 'mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion,'" FFRF Legal Fellow Chris Line wrote to Cleveland County last November. "Displaying paintings that promote Christianity fails to respect either constitutional mandate of neutrality. A majority of federal courts have held displays of Latin crosses on public property to be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion." 

Plus, this painting conveyed a message to the nearly 30 percent of Americans who are not Christian, including the 23 percent of Americans who are not religious, that they're not "favored members of the political community," to quote the U.S. Supreme Court. The cross' exclusionary effect made non-Christian and nonbelieving residents of Cleveland County political outsiders, FFRF asserted.

FFRF requested the county to immediately take down the painting from the Cleveland County Courthouse. County officials have acceded to the request.

"The large painting in the main corridor of the Cleveland County Courthouse that depicts a Latin Cross and Fish has been removed from the location inside the courthouse," the county recently replied.

FFRF is appreciative of the move.

"It's wonderful that once we enlightened Cleveland County officials, they took out such an obviously Christian artwork from a judicial building that serves a secular purpose — and the needs of a religiously diverse population," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

FFRF is a national nonprofit organization with more than 32,000 members and 20 chapters all over the country, including almost 700 members and a chapter in North Carolina. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

Where: Trego Community High School in WaKeeney.