On March 19, the mayor of Sumter, South Carolina, held a “Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer” as a way to promote unity while our nation fights the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. In times of crisis, everyone finds peace and tries to help in different ways: It’s no secret Christians often pray in distress.
Most people would be content to either partake or just ignore such an event, especially in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. The atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation instead sent out a press release “castigating” and “chastising” the mayor for outlining “an official prayer proclamation that appears to be a misbegotten response to the coronavirus outbreak.”
FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor said in a statement and letter to the mayor:
The press release goes on to describe that the “separation between state and church is among one of the most fundamental principles of our system of government.”
Jeremy Dys, with First Liberty, a First Amendment legal organization in Texas, pointed out several things that are wrong with this picture.
“In a time of global pandemic, some still find time to complain about people praying,” he told me. “This mayor stands in a long line of leaders leading all the way back to George Washington who have called upon the nation to pray in times of challenge or crisis. There is no reason why this — or any — organization should be critical of a mayor’s efforts to calm the hearts and minds of his constituents by encouraging them to do what Americans have done since our founding: pray.”
This isn’t the only time Freedom From Religion Foundation has gotten up in arms during the last few weeks of the pandemic.
Since their Sumter press release came out on March 23, the group has also issued rebukes of the Republican governors of Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah for asking people to pray. They also admonished the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for a proclamation about a day of prayer and said MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell “misappropriated a White House coronavirus event” for asking people to reconnect with their Christian faith.
The separation of church and state is a concept that many organizations, especially Freedom From Religion Foundation, have misinterpreted in order to spread their obvious hatred of religion. It’s not about trying to honor the First Amendment clause that Congress cannot force the state, or anyone, to establish a religion. It’s clear that atheist groups will take any opportunity they have, even in the middle of a pandemic, to show how much they loathe religion.
It’s one thing to be an atheist organization, and it’s quite another thing to be so rabidly atheist that your hatred of religion has become your religion. How unfortunate that anyone would rather waste their time and resources lambasting prayer or God than actually try to help hurting people in the middle of a crisis.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
