The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the Monroe County Sheriff in Aberdeen, Miss., to stop promoting Christianity through official communication channels.
FFRF has learned that Monroe County Sheriff Kevin Crook has been publicizing his personal religious beliefs through the Sheriff Office’s official communication channels. The sheriff office’s page on the official Monroe County website includes “In God We Trust!” The official Facebook page regularly posts religious content and messages. In April 2022, the page changed its profile picture to a photo of a sheriff’s office vehicle parked behind three Christian crosses. On Aug. 3, a long rant was posted, ending with the message, “I don’t know what the answer is to Y’all, other than that we truly must find Jesus.”
FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to Crook, “It is an abuse of power for you to use your position and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office’s resources to promote your personal religious beliefs and proselytize to Monroe County’s citizens.”
Christian posts on the official Facebook page convey a message to non-Christians that they are not welcome or accepted in Monroe County, and that their sheriff is more concerned with converting them to his religion than enforcing the law, FFRF points out. People interact with and rely on law enforcement officers during some of the most urgent and vulnerable times of their lives. As sheriff, Crook serves a diverse population that consists of not only Christians, but also minority religious and nonreligious citizens. The sheriff’s office must be even-handed and avoid any appearance of bias toward some or hostility toward others. Religious statements send a message excluding those community members among the nearly 30 percent of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated, as well as the additional 6 percent of Americans adhering to non-Christian faiths — turning them into political outsiders in their own community.
FFRF reiterates that in order to avoid further Establishment Clause concerns, the posts mentioned above must be removed, and that the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office must refrain from promoting religion in the future on social media.
“Citizens need to be able to trust their law enforcement officers in times of need — and there’s nothing that can shatter that trust faster than the intrusion of religion into governmental affairs,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Law enforcers, who carry guns and have the ability to arrest citizens, have a professional obligation to separate their personal religious views from their governmental duties.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 40,000 members across the country, including members in Mississippi. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
