The Freedom From Religion Foundation is running a full-page ad in the national news section of today’s New York Times calling the storming of the Capitol a “faith-based initiative.”
The ad features a large photograph of Jan. 6 insurgents in prayer before a wooden cross at the U.S. Capitol. FFRF warns that the assault is what “One Nation, Under God” looks like and urges a return to “E Pluribus Unum” and “One Nation, Indivisible.”
The ad documents the Christian nationalist nature of the mob attack. “This political identity movement, embraced by a number of public officials who insist ‘America is a Christian nation,’ poses a continuing threat to civil liberties and our secular republic,” warns FFRF.
The ad concludes, “Freedom depends on freethinkers. Join FFRF in our essential work so that reason and our secular Constitution will prevail.”
“I truly believe that ‘E Pluribus Unum’ is the answer to Jan. 6,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “‘From many, [come] one’ encapsulates the ideal that diverse citizens and states can embrace our differences while coming together as ‘We the People’: one people and one nation under a secular Constitution.”
The ad language plays on the Pledge of Allegiance, which originally ended, “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” until a McCarthy-era Congress tampered with it by inserting the words “under God.”
A similar full-page ad appears today in the Wisconsin State Journal.
The educational ad was made possible thanks to the generosity of FFRF members donating to FFRF’s Advertising Fund.
