National Day of Prayer News Release: ADF Sponges Off FFRF’S Lawsuit

Statement by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor (Jan 19, 2010) - The Alliance Defense Fund, an extremely wealthy Christian right legal group, sent out a four-page fundraising letter this month to its supporters begging for money to fight Freedom From Religion Foundation's important federal lawsuit challenging the National Day of Prayer.

The Alliance Defense Fund letter was written by its CEO, Alan E. Sears, who was executive director of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography under the Reagan Administration and has produced work such as "The Homosexual Agenda."

According to Charity Navigator's most recent entry, Sears' salary and compensation in 2008 was more than $300,000! It's a lucrative business to attack the Establishment Clause. Net assets for ADF two years ago were nearly $32 million! ADF also heavily weighs in against the right to medically legal (and safe) abortion, gay rights and marriage equality.

Sears' fundraising letter on behalf of ADF warns: "A radical atheist group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a lawsuit to abolish the National Day of Prayer…" and points out that our lawsuit claims that government promotion of religion "creates a hostile environment."

Apparently, after a man received the letter or a similar ADF online action alert, he sent this e-mail a week ago to our office (warning: highly offensive and obscene):

"So you think the National Day of Prayer creates a hostile environment. try this, if I ever catch one of you Mother Fuckers I'll cut your head off and skull fuck you. How about that, that's what i call sexual freedom." (This e-mail was forwarded to police. The sender was arrogant enough to sign his name.)

It reveals a lot that most of the thousands upon thousands of crank mail and e-mail and phone calls the Foundation receives every year, much of it obscene or hostile, is precipitated not by our freethought outreach, but by our work to keep state and church separate.

ADF's founders include the "usual suspects": James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministry's D. James Kennedy. An interesting aside: Bill Bright's wife, who cofounded Campus Crusade for Christ, was instrumental in lobbying to make the National Day of Prayer a fixed date in 1988 under Reagan. Conservative Christian groups openly lobbied for a fixed date for what had been a floating Day of Prayer because it would make it easier for them to organize over the governmental National Day of Prayer. (Now that's a secular purpose!)

The National Day of Prayer Task Force since that change has muscled its way into dominating National Day of Prayer activities, and bullying the President and all governors with their 40,000 coordinators around the country into issuing the proclamations, feeding them wording including scripture verses and themes.

Foundation research has uncovered the fact that the National Day of Prayer law passed in 1952 at the direct instigation of Rev. Billy Graham. The Committee on the Judiciary said the law would encourage Americans to reaffirm "in a dramatic manner that deep religious conviction which has prevailed throughout the history of the United States." The Committee's report promotes the myth that the founders at the Constitutional Convention prayed during the proceedings. (Untrue. The religious right is mixing up the Constitutional Convention with the earlier proceedings of the Continental Congress, which produced the dismal failure of the Articles of Confederation.) The Foundation discovered that about a fifth of the presidential proclamation repeats this historic myth, and many promote other religious-right myths about American history, such as the bogus claim that General Washington publicly prayed at Valley Forge.

The ADF undoubtedly raises more funds attacking Foundation legal work than we raise to support it! With comical alacrity, ADF posts entries about Foundation news and state/church complaints on its "Alliance Alerts" website. Perhaps the Foundation should feel flattered! Virtually every city the Foundation has contacted over sectarian government prayer violations last year was contacted in turn by these buttinskis. The ADF touts its legally untested "prayer guidelines" as if they were the law of the land.

At least in the case of the National Day of Prayer, the ADF has an actual role, since they are defending Shirley Dobson, chair of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, who is currently named as one of the defendants in the Foundation's national suit.

When religion becomes allied with government—such as by the National Day of Prayer violation—persecution and bigotry follow. As Thomas Paine said in The Rights of Man, "Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law." Believers who feel they have government sanction for their personal beliefs feel impunity to bully, or worse.

The ADF has accused the Foundation of bringing the NDP lawsuit to raise money. The opposite is true. The Foundation has spent more than $50,000 to date on the district level case over straight litigation costs.

Those who agree with the Foundation that it is an affront and an invasion of conscience for the U.S. President to set aside an entire day for prayer and to tell all American citizens to pray—and even what to pray about—are cordially invited to support the Foundation's Legal Fund.

Sphere: Related Content

Related posts:

1. PRESS RELEASE: Court: FFRF suit against National Day of Prayer can proceed
2. National Day of Prayer Lawsuit Moves Forward
3. National Day of Prayer Scaled Back at the White House
4. Gov Doyle Dismissed from National Day of Prayer Case
5. PRESS RELEASE: Federal Court To Hear Arguments In Case Challenging City-Sponsored Prayer In Greece, N.Y.
6. PRESS RELEASE: Censored! FFRF Billboards Removed Just Days After They Go Up
7. Religious News Verses: Prayer, Hate and Christmas
8. PRESS RELEASE: Lawsuit Settled — 77'7" Cross to be Raised in Kerrville Overlooking IH – 10
9. PRESS RELEASE: Lawsuit Challenging Government Funding Of 'Faith-Based' Youth Home To Go Forward
10. Dobsons Will Not Be Invited to the White House for the National Day of Prayer

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