New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently spoke at an interfaith prayer breakfast, and his remarks were shockingly ignorant and hostile to the constitutional separation between state and church. Please take a moment to contact Mayor Adams and tell him that you, as a New Yorker, want him to rethink his position on this crucial issue.
Adams stated that when he puts policies in place he does so “with a God-like approach to them.” He continued by proclaiming that “the mayor of New York is a servant of God.” He even threw in a long-debunked Christian nationalist talking point: “when we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
FFRF wrote to Mayor Adams earlier this week to educate him on this issue. As an elected official, Adams should be proud that the United States was first among nations to separate religion from government. The Constitution’s only references to religion are exclusionary, such as barring any religious test for public office. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause separates church from state at the federal level, extended to state citizens by the 14th Amendment.
We also pointed out that lower religiosity has been shown to correlate with higher societal well-being, both within the United States and globally. The notion that inserting state-sponsored religion into public education would help to address school shootings is totally unsupported by evidence.
Please click the “Take Action” button to be directed to the mayor’s contact form, where you can contact Mayor Adams directly, or call the mayor’s office at 212-788-3000. We have included talking points below, which you may customize as you see fit.
Suggested talking points:
Dear Mayor Adams,
As a New Yorker, I was disappointed to see your recent comments about our constitutional separation between state and church. I urge you to educate yourself on the importance of this foundational principle, which was seen as essential to the framers and is just as important today.
In fact, our secular government is under serious threat from Christian nationalists who are attempting to gaslight Americans on our own history, claiming that the United States is a Christian nation and denying the existence of state/church separation. These same Christian nationalists also love to make the unfounded claim that school violence stems from the removal of state-sponsored prayers from public schools. When you repeat these false claims, you are empowering these dangerous fanatics by giving their debunked claims an air of legitimacy.
You were elected to serve We The People, not to use your government position to advance your personal religious beliefs or your personal god. Please reflect on the importance of this fundamentally American principle and correct your recent misstatements as soon as possible. Thank you.
