Since they won’t be putting up Nativity scenes or atheist plaques in the Washington state Capitol Building this year, the Freedom From Religion Foundation decided to buy adspace for a few hundred of these ads on Seattle buses.
Provocative? Of course.
Accurate? Not in the least.
Atheists don’t (and shouldn’t) say, “There is no God” because it’s wrong to make such a blanket statement. (The British people knew well enough to put the word “Probably” in their bus campaign.)
Obviously, the “Yes, Virginia” reference is a play on the famous question posed by 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon in 1897 to the New York Sun newspaper: “Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
The rest is history. In an unsigned editorial, the Sun’s Francis P. Church (ouch!) wrote his “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” line, along with, “Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!”
Freethinkers and skeptics have a hard time with the belief thing, which is what’s behind the ads, said Dan Barker, Foundation co-president. “Most people think December is for Christians and view our solstice signs as an intrusion, when actually it’s the other way around,” he said. “People have been celebrating the winter solstice long before Christmas. We see Christianity as the intruder, trying to steal the natural holiday from all of us humans.”
Christians will complain this this is an attack on Christmas (which I suppose it is in a roundabout way) and atheists will complain about the statement itself. It’s another thing religious people can correctly use against us when they say we make absurd claims about the nature of God. We have to defend this by saying it’s an inaccurate statement simply designed to get attention.
Make no mistake: This isn’t a bus ad designed to reach out to other atheists. It is just a fundraising and publicity tool for FFRF. I’m sure they’ll get some good media coverage out of this.
It’s also great advertising for FFRF’s annual convention which will — not coincidentally — be held in Seattle this weekend.
The city of Lodi, California used to allow non-denominational, non-sectarian prayers before City Council meetings. That was a bad idea back in May when it was instituted.
Somehow, they’ve made it worse.
On Wednesday night, the Lodi (California) City Council voted unanimously, 5-0, to allow uncensored prayers before meetings. That is to say, you can now “pray in Jesus’ name” before council meetings.
This story is getting a lot of attention from Christians everywhere… I wonder how many of them could tell you what issues are discussed at the council meetings post-prayer. Do they know? Do they care? Doubtful. The prayer is all that’s important to them. Not anything of real substance.
With the new changes, other faiths can offer invocations, too. So can the non-religious. But I can see this easily getting out of hand. What will the reaction be when someone praises Allah pre-meeting? Can someone bring up Xenu? Thor?
Lodi and other local cities Tehachapi, Tracy and Turlock are in for a fight over this. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is just waiting to pounce, looking for the right test-case to file a lawsuit.
If you doubt how “Christian” these pre-council prayers are, FFRF has made a chart (PDF) documenting the types of prayers which have been used in the past.
* = Prayer conducted in the name of “Jesus,” “Jesus Christ,” “Christ’s name,” “Your Son’s Name,” or “Lord, in Your Holy Name”
B = Attendees requested to “bow your heads”
W = Excerpts from the Bible or references to Scripture used
G = Christian dogma or sermonizing used
Here’s just the chart from 2008-2009:
Date
Speech
Speaker
Church
01/16/08
*W
Pastor Chris Chavez
Heartland Community Church
02/06/08
G
Pastor Glen Barnes
First Baptist Church
02/20/08
*B
Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns
03/05/08
*W
Pastor Kevin Suess
Vinewood Community Church
03/19/08
*G
Barbara Taylor
Lodi Police Chaplains
04/02/08
Father Brandon Ware
St. Anne’s Catholic Church
04/16/08
Revered Dr. Alan Kimber
First United Methodist Church
05/07/08
*
Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns
05/21/08
Pastor Mark Price
St. Paul Lutheran Church
06/04/08
*
Pastor Bill Cummins
Bear Creek Community Church
06/18/08
*G
Pastor Steve Newman
First Baptist Church
07/02/08
*
Pastor Marianne Weethee
Heartland Community Church
07/16/08
*B
Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns
08/06/08
Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns — no show
08/20/08
Pastor Marianne Weethee
Heartland Community Church
09/03/08
*B
Reverend John Kah
St Peter Lutheran Church
09/17/08
Reverend Alan Kimber
First United Methodist Church
10/01/08
*
Pastor Bill Cummins
Bear Creek Community Church
10/15/08
*W
Arlene Proctor
First Reader — 1st Church of Christ, Scientist
11/05/08
*B
Pastor Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns
11/19/08
*B
Reverend David Hill
Grace Presbyterian Church
12/03/08
*
Rod Suess
Vinewood Community Church
12/17/08
*B,G
Ken Owen
Christian Community Concerns
01/07/09
*W
Pastor Bill Cummins
Bear Creek Community Church
01/21/09
Pastor Bill Johnson
First United Methodist Church
02/04/09
*
Pastor Steve Newman
First Baptist Church
02/18/09
*G
Pastor Marianne Weethee
Heartland Community Church
03/04/09
W
Arlene Proctor
First Reader Christian Science Church
03/18/09
*G
Assoc. Pastor Dwight Friesen
Vinewood Community Church
04/01/09
B,G
Rev. Alan Kimber
First United Methodist Church
04/15/09
B,G
Reverend David Hill
Grace Presbyterian Church
05/06/09
*
Pastor Matthew Duerr
Zion Reformed Church
Where are the non-Christian prayers in there? Non-existent.
I doubt that’s going to change. It’ll only get more religiously charged now.
FFRF will continue to keep an eye on the situation and they’ll file a lawsuit if needed.
It’s bad enough that the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. is engraving “In God We Trust” in a prominent place. (FFRF is suing, but they’ve had no success yet.)
Guess how conservatives are celebrating?
By premiering a movie in the building. The title: Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage, a documentary by Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista.
The film explores the role of religion in early American history and features a lineup of history experts, including Catholic author Michael Novak. “We tried to match the location of the premiere with something to do with the film, and this was just a natural fit for us,” said David Bossie, executive producer and president of Citizens United Productions.
…
Both the movie premiere and the engraving come just months after Congress passed legislation this summer ordering the words “In God We Trust” to be added to a large pillar in the complex.
…
“Our intention was never to have the center somehow Protestantized but to accurately reflect America’s godly heritage,” said Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler, who also runs Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership, an organization that brings together conservative evangelicals and Catholics.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume America’s “godly heritage” happens to be whatever the Religious Right currently believes.
Whatever our heritage was, I’m certain the ties we now have between government and faith would be shocking to our nation’s founders.
Marilyn Loeffel of the Memphis Commercial Appeal doesn’t like the fact that the Freedom From Religion Foundation is trying to stop the Memphis City Council from opening sessions with prayer.
A group in Wisconsin is interfering with our lifestyle down here in the Bible Belt. They want the Memphis City Council to discontinue opening its meetings with a prayer. If they knew how much this city needs prayer, they would stop meddling and mind their own business.
…
I say shame on believers for staying in their holy huddles and letting this intimidation happen. We have allowed the atheists to dictate where, when, how and if we pray. They got prayer out of public schools and we now reap the consequences, opening the door for more drugs, rape and school shootings. That’s why Memphians need to contact their council members and tell them to stand firm.
Wow. That’s a lot of crazy in one sentence. Atheism isn’t the cause of those problems and religion certainly isn’t the answer.
This isn’t that hard to understand, so I don’t know why Loeffel can’t wrap her mind around it.
Anyone can pray anywhere they would like. However, when the government gets involved, as it does in public schools, city council sessions, and taxpayer-funded programs, there can be no endorsement of one religion over another or religion over no religion.
If students want to pray at school, that’s fine. If teachers want to lead a public school class in prayer, that’s not fine.
If individual city council members want to pray, that’s fine. If they want to lead the entire council in prayer, that’s not fine.
Every “freethinker” in the world screams for tolerance. They want conservatives to tolerate liberals, believers to tolerate nonbelievers, right to tolerate left — never accepting the opposite to be fair. They are an example of the adage that if you tell a lie — such as the myth of “separation of church and state” — often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.
That phrase does not appear in our country’s founding documents. The First Amendment guarantees that one particular religion or denomination would not be forced upon the country, that no one would be allowed to infringe upon our rights to exercise and express our religious beliefs. It was, quite clearly, freedom for religion, not from religion. I interpret that to say that this Wisconsin group is wrong. It is their turn to tolerate us.
Also not appearing in the country’s founding documents: Jesus.
One of the commenters left a nice little message for her on the paper’s website:
Marilyn,
As a person who is religious, I do not want anyone in my child’s school teaching him how to pray. Ever.
That is my job and something I will do in the privacy of our own home. It is inappropriate for a school teacher or official to impose their religious standards, many of which are different from what I choose to teach my child.
And, Marilyn, if you allow Christian prayers in schools, then you also have to allow Muslim prayer, Buddhist prayer, Hindu prayer, Satanic invocations, etc. If you allow one, you certainly allow them all, and none of these do I wish my child to be forced to learn.
Also, I do not for one moment believe that the moment prayer was removed from schools that it was the same moment drugs, rape and shootings began. That is a result of many more elements than the lack of a prayer.
I am a religious and political conservative, Marilyn, but unlike you I do not wish to live in the America that you prescribe. I do not wish for your religion to become the governing body of our state or nation. I do not wish for other religions to do this either. If this would happen, we’d end up as a bunch of warring theocracies, no different than the middle east.
You, madam, are little more than a ranting and raving nut job, and I continue to find myself ashamed of your half-witted columns. You disgrace TRUE conservatives. I suspect that is the real reason the CA employs you.
The highlights of the video include City Council Chairman Harold Collins saying:
“I’m not sure they understand any particular concept or belief or faith.”
They understand it pretty damn well… FFRF co-president Dan Barker used to be a fundamentalist Christian himself. They know why people believe and they have the added bonus of knowing why none of it makes sense.
The money quotation, though, comes from FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor in response to Collins:
“Many of us are from a Christian background, therefore we use our faith and the lessons we have learned and been taught to make some decisions,” [says Collins.]
“That is bogus,” says Gaylor. “If you can’t make a decision about sewers and liquor licenses without ‘Divine guidance’ then what are you doing on the city council? The city is actively promoting Christianity. It’s not only favoring religion over non-religion, which is barred by our Constitution, but one religion over another.”
I’d like to know what prayer they say before issuing those liquor licenses…
Collins has said he will respond in writing by Tuesday.
People ask why they should support atheist organizations. This is why. It’s a powerful moment when a group’s staff attorney can instill the fear of no-god in a city or state government FFRF has the Constitution on its side. Memphis has a god. I’ll take FFRF every time.
Dan Barker is the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor. Even if you’ve read Dan’s book, the story of how he met Annie Laurie is unique and hilarious
It involves an almost-lost letter and Oprah Winfrey:
My favorite bit comes at the 5:20 mark (but it makes more sense in context, so no skipping to it).
Can you even imagine Oprah doing an episode on atheism these days?
Considering the city already has relatively few believers, this almost seems like overkill. But you never know who may be helped by seeing a message that meshes with their personal beliefs — perhaps the ads will let someone else know they are not alone in their atheism.
Posted in FFRF, General at 10:00 am by Hemant Mehta
Yesterday, I mentioned that the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s ad in the Unitarian Universalists’ magazine UU Worldgarnered several complaints.
Business manager Scott Ullrich even issued an apology to the magazine’s readers.
I have come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to run this particular ad. While the stated mission of the Freedom From Religion Foundation is entirely consistent with UU values, this ad seems hostile to all religion. To be more specific, I believe that I failed to help the advertiser match their message to our readers. An ad spotlighting FFRF’s purpose of “working for the separation of state and church” would have been more appropriate than one that for many appears to be condemning religion in general.
Guess how many complaints they received about the ads?
Eight.
Total.
Ullrich said as much when he informed FFRF that he had written an apology to readers because of the swift reaction from the UU blogosphere.
So how is the FFRF responding?
Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor sent the following email to Ullrich:
Dear Scott,
I guess my reaction is: 8 emails doth not a crisis make! (At FFRF we pay no attention to the nonbonafide blogosphere–I mean personal bloggers who so often engage in personal polemics, as opposed to bonafide news and opinion bloggers, such as Salon.com).
I hope you will let these e-mailers know that we are getting very good reaction from the ad. It’s too early to see whether the ad will pay for itself (always our object) but the response is healthy and we have had no nasty responses to date. We were aware of one blogger going after the ad only because a UU member (who wanted info on FFRF but is not a member) e-mailed to tell us he was responding in our favor.
My reaction is that if UU World or the UU officialdom take any further action to criticize, apologize for or officially distance itself from our ad, that we be refunded our advertising money. It simply does not seem professional to take our money, then diss our ad, however politely you are putting it.
But what truly concerns me is the lack of open-mindedness reflected. The thoughtful words of great thinkers and artists are too much for your readership? Emily Dickinson’s and Mark Twain’s genius summations about faith can’t be tolerated? The words of actresses Katharine Hepburn — “I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe that there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people” — are too hot for the UU? Being kind is controversial if someone also identifies themselves as an atheist?
You know and we know that the UUA is creedless. That means you have theists, deists — and many agnostics & atheists in your membership, including among your ministers. Two of our founding members, Jo and Charline Kotula, also founded, funded and co-directed one of the UU’s New Jersey chapters for many years; likewise our officer Blanche Fearn in the Daytona area in the 1980s, and those are but 2 examples of many. Countless FFRF members are active UUA members and vice versa. For 30 years we have received invitations to speak at UU congregations or societies around the country by people, and it has always been an amicable relationship.
While we might have been glad to work with you on a different ad, FFRF in fact has 2 joint purposes: it acts as a national membership organization for freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) AND it works to keep religion out of government. If we were not upfront about our other purpose, we could rightly be criticized by someone who joined us and felt it was false advertising not to state our clear nontheistic purpose as well.
There cannot simply be open-minded discussion of everything except atheism if UU is to consider to advise its members to “keep open minds.”
UU World is the free denominational magazine for the Unitarian Unversalist Association.
In their Fall, 2009 issue, they printed a paid ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I don’t have a scan of it at the moment, but to my understanding, it featured their six bus ads with a request for donations so FFRF could place the posters across the country.
The ad placement makes sense — a lot of atheists belong to UU congregations and would be likely donors to FFRF’s ad campaign.
But several UU readers couldn’t believe such an ad was allowed in their magazine.
I am stunned, appalled and very disappointed with the managerial decision at the UU World to publish a FULL PAGE advertisement by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the Unitarian Universalist denominational magazine. This organization is not merely atheist or agnostic — they are ANTI-religion. We have absolutely no business carrying their advertising in our denominational magazine.
I am deeply offended by the ad copy, which suggests that anyone who believes in God thinks that fairy tales are true, and that such a belief is tantamount to slavery. And furthermore, I am embarrassed that people in my congregation will see this. I have worked so hard to help my congregation claim and own their religious feelings and feel GOOD about being religious people. How can I explain this?
Of course, FFRF’s purpose is the promote church/state separation and to educate the public on non-theism. FFRF also helps atheists realize there are others out there like them, hence the ads.
Not only that, but the bus ads that FFRF places are not going after the type of community and spirituality that UU congregations tend to promote. FFRF tends to go after the Religious Right and the religious extremists who want to force their views onto everybody else.
So you would hope the UU World business manager would defend placing such an ad. Not everyone will be a fan of FFRF, but there was nothing inherently wrong in publicizing a non-theistic stance.
I have come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to run this particular ad. While the stated mission of the Freedom From Religion Foundation is entirely consistent with UU values, this ad seems hostile to all religion. To be more specific, I believe that I failed to help the advertiser match their message to our readers. An ad spotlighting FFRF’s purpose of “working for the separation of state and church” would have been more appropriate than one that for many appears to be condemning religion in general.
That’s a depressing response. The ads are not hostile to religion. They simply showcase famous people who happened to be atheists. They reach out to others who may think the same way, which do happen to be many UU folks. What look to be a few vocal opponents forced the magazine to apologize for a perfectly appropriate ad.
A while back, Cherry Creek Public Schools began promoting “40 Developmental Assets” — a program that would help students become “responsible and confident young adults.”
One of those assets was Asset Number 19. It suggested “young adults spend one or more hours per week in activities in a religious institution.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents in the district.
“Intergenerational Activities — Young person spends one or more hours per week in activities with civic, social, governmental, scientific, educational, charitable, faith based or secular (non-religious) organizations.”
That’s it. That’s the compromise. Two years.
“We would have preferred that the asset had been expunged entirely, because it’s not the business of a school to encourage students to spend an hour a week in a ‘faith-based’ pursuit. However, it’s probably a ‘first’ that a school district has ever encouraged students to spend an hour a week on pursuits including those that are ‘nonreligious,’ so we consider this a unique victory,” commented Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
I’m glad the case settled the way it did. Other than getting rid of that asset altogether, it’s the best possible outcome. However, I’m wondering if it was really worth all this time, work, and hassle.
Should atheists fight these seemingly “minor” battles? Do they have a meaningful impact?
Secular Student Alliance Member Todd Stiefel has agreed to match all donations to us by 12/21/2009 up to a total of $50,000. Double the value of your support and help us get the whole match by donating now.
FFRF has the Constitution on its side. Memphis has a god. I’ll take FFRF every time.
