If recent events have left you reeling over the radically changed political landscape and what it will mean for our cause, remember: None of us “Nones” is in it alone.
We couldn’t be directing one of the nation’s most controversial groups or working for one of the most unpopular of causes, were we not optimists.
The Religious Right never quits. Nor can we. As Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (With more than 24,000 members, FFRF isn’t all that small, but we’re still vastly outnumbered.)
It buoys us and fortifies our resolve to be in contact every day with dedicated and enthusiastic nontheists like yourself, who tell us they’ve found a home in FFRF, who care “devoutly” about protecting our nation’s secular core.
Like you, we know that the only afterlife that should concern us is leaving our descendants a pleasant future. And ensuring that — making sure political setbacks don’t undo every good thing to happen to freedom of conscience, scientific progress, personal and civil liberties in our lifetimes — is going to require all our best efforts.
On your behalf, FFRF will be fighting like hell to ensure that a fluke Christian Right victory is not allowed to trump reason and our First Amendment. We’ll be working overtime to safeguard your right, the right of every American, to be free from the imposition of religion and religious doctrines by our government. And to do this we need your help.
We’re bracing for unrelenting congressional legislative battles to turn the clock back on secular policies we thought were secure. We’re about to be swamped with new and vicious assaults against the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The vice president-elect, expected to run the new administration, has repeatedly boasted, “I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order.” As Indiana’s governor, he attacked women’s rights and signed a bill into law last year to permit business owners to discriminate against gays and others due to their religious beliefs.
As you know, President Obama was blocked from nominating a Supreme Court justice to replace the vacancy left by arch-conservative Antonin Scalia’s death this year. After a decade suffering under a 5-4 “anti” voting bloc on the Supreme Court, we’d fervently looked forward to seeing that vacancy filled by a progressive, so we could make some progress. Instead, Donald Trump has issued an official list of 21 judicial arch-conservatives drawn up with help from the Federalist Society. It’s a cruel blow to know it’ll be “déjà vu all over again” on the Supreme Court. But we can live with that. The real game-changer will be when the Religious Right packs the court if liberal justices retire. Then watch out.
Last spring when we launched a challenge grant to raise funds to send FFRF’s expert attorneys to Capitol Hill, we didn’t realized how critical such lobbying efforts would become. The president-elect campaigned on the promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment only as it applies to tax-exempt churches. That law is a safeguard barring entities from politicking and electioneering with tax-exempt dollars, something FFRF has successfully sued the IRS over to enforce. The Religious Right appears to have found a champion (or at least a pushover) in the White House for its aggressions on the wall of separation between religion and government, including for the imposition of religion under the guise of “religious liberty” or “conscience clauses.”
Since FFRF’s founding in the late 1970s, we’ve weathered many ups and downs, including painful setbacks in the battle of church and state. But we’ve also won many brave victories in which reason has prevailed, and witnessed positive changes inconceivable even a decade ago. Most heartening, we’re still witnessing the phenomenal growth in the United States of the Nones: the quarter of adults and the third of Millennials who identify as having no religion. Our secular movement cannot be denied.
It’s on your behalf, and representing your views and rights, that we work to promote freethought and to get religion out of government. So help us give the Religious Wrong “hell” in 2017!
