We managed to get a lot done at the Freedom From Religion Foundation during this truncated week.

By the time we returned to the office after the Martin Luther King Day long weekend, media reports had begun to surface about our recent secular advocacy.

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation alleged Coshocton City Schools (Ohio) violated the First Amendment when a teacher led a prayer during a school assembly,” the local Fox affiliate reported. “The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national organization that works to keep church and state separate. On Nov. 25, it sent a letter to Coshocton City Schools Superintendent Mark Kowalski regarding a parent complaint about the district.”

Oklahoma City paper featured us
The leading paper in Oklahoma noticed our activism, too.

“A county office was accused of coercing detention center inmates into converting to Christianity, but the sheriff in charge of the jail said there is no truth to the claims,” The Oklahoman reported. “The Freedom From Religion Foundation said it followed up on a community member’s complaint that the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office was promoting religion and the conversion of Cleveland County jail inmates to Christianity.”

Our Ten Commandments case got attention

We got busy the very day we returned to work with a key hearing before a court for a case that we have filed as part of a coalition. FFRF Senior Attorney Sam Grover was there in New Orleans to represent us in person.

“The full panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could require Louisiana public schools to feature posters with the Ten Commandments in every classroom,” stated an illuminating piece in the Louisiana Illuminator. “The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.”

‘Friendly Atheist’ focused on our recent win
Hemant Mehta’s widely read “Friendly Atheist” blog provided lengthy coverage of a recent victory of ours in Maryland.

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation soon wrote a letter to the council urging them to end the proselytizing,” Hemant writes in a piece titled “Wicomico County’s prayer ritual ended only after an over-the-top sermon and looming legal defeat.” “They had no legal right to impose their religious will while conducting government business, according to FFRF Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude, adding that legal precedent suggested the council could be sued over all this.”

Read on for more details.

We denounced a Texas Ten Commandments monument 

We strenuously objected to a newly installed Ten Commandments monument placed outside the Tarrant County (Texas) Courthouse. The monument, unveiled during a public ceremony on Jan. 16, stands alone on the courthouse grounds in Fort Worth and features the Ten Commandments rendered in the King James translation. 

“This monument has no legitimate secular purpose,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is a plainly religious display that promotes a version favored by Protestant Christians, thereby excluding not only non-Christians but Catholics, which sends a message that only certain beliefs are welcome in Tarrant County.”

We halted football devotionals
We ended pregame devotionals in a Pennsylvania school district. We’d learned that a “character coach” from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was allowed to lead devotionals and pray with students in the Davidsville, Pa., high school football program. “It is well beyond the scope of a public school system to institute a position which conflates character with Christianity, and which will inevitably involve advocating religion to students,” FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to the superintendent. As a result, the district conducted an investigation that led to kicking out the “character coach” and clearer boundaries between school athletics and coercive religious practices.

A different variety of KPOP

Our media offerings this week discussed important issues domestically and internationally.

FFRF Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne and State Policy Manager Ryan Dudley spoke with Secular Student Alliance Executive Director Kevin Bolling on FFRF’s YouTube show, “Secular Spotlight,” about a new model piece of state legislation hiply known as KPOP in homage to the global cultural phenomenon. They broke down how the “Keep Proselytizing out of Public Schools” bill would protect students from religious coercion, clarify longstanding church/state boundaries in public schools and safeguard students’ rights.

What is a ‘godman’?

On our Freethought Radio show this week, FFRF Senior Attorney Sam Grover first gave an eyewitness account of the New Orleans oral arguments over Ten Commandments-in-schools court challenges. Then, Gauhar Raza, an Indian scientist, poet and social activist, talked to Annie Laurie and me about his new book, “From Myths to Science,” and explained the “godman” phenomenon. You can listen to the audio version here and watch the video podcasts here.

We submitted testimony to the Maryland Statehouse
Our legislative policy arm was keeping busy, as well. FFRF Action Fund Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne submitted testimony to the Maryland Statehouse regarding a public school chaplain bill that would allow public school boards to “use a chaplain as a volunteer aide in schools to provide support services to students.” The committee considering the bill should show its commitment to true religious liberty by rejecting it, Ryan advised. 

A stellar secular journalist

The Action Fund is pleased to name journalist Jonathan Larsen as this week’s Secularist of the Week for his reporting on the National Prayer Breakfast and the powerful Christian nationalist networks that operate behind it. Larsen’s reporting exemplifies what secular accountability journalism should look like: skeptical, deeply sourced, historically informed — and unafraid to name the real power structures at work.

Texas theocrats ushered in Ten Commandments monument

This week’s joint Theocrats of the Week are Tarrant County (Texas) Commissioner Matt Krause and County Judge Tim O’Hare for proudly ushering the massive Ten Commandments monument onto the grounds of the county courthouse. For their zealous participation in a blatant government advancement of religion, and for treating the Constitution as an obstacle rather than an obligation, they are more than worthy of this dubious distinction.

We are able to deal even in a short week with an incredibly broad array — from domestic shenanigans to international godmen — only due to your unstinting generosity.