The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its Cleveland chapter are mounting an impressive 14-by-48-foot message to the Republican National Convention: Keep church and state separate.
That message on a highway billboard comes from an unexpected source: President Ronald Reagan. "We establish no religion in this country . . . Church and state are, and must remain, separate," he said in the quote featured on the billboard.
The board is going up this week in Cleveland on Interstate Highway 71 north of 480 and will remain up for a month. FFRF is a state/church watchdog group with 24,000 nonreligious members nationwide, including more than 600 in Ohio.
Reagan made the remarks in a speech on Oct. 26, 1984, to the Temple Hillel leaders in Valley Stream, N.Y.
The quote, in full, reads:
"We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief."
FFRF, a nonpartisan nonprofit, will also be taking a message to the Democratic National Convention.
"The RNC needs to be reminded that our nation is predicated on a godless and entirely secular Constitution," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "The fate of our Establishment Clause hangs in the balance of the election. We're not voting for the next president—we're voting for the next Supreme Court justice."
Marni Huebner-Tiborsky, the director of the Northern Ohio Freethought Society, a chapter of FFRF, agrees. "This billboard couldn't be any more timely, and is definitely needed to remind our political leaders and the public that political campaigns should stick to a secular platform, where real change can happen," she says.
FFRF wishes to thank Loren Miller, a chapter member, for suggesting the Reagan quote.