An atheist activist group is responding to President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 victory with a pledge to lead a “secular resistance for freedom and the First Amendment.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist advocacy group based in Madison, Wisconsin, released a statement Wednesday urging people to join them in the battle for the separation of church and state and the “secular ‘soul’ of our democracy.”
The FFRF appealed to Trump’s own words after he was shot during an attempted assassination on his life to sound the alarm over the “threats” and issues it sees on the horizon once he takes office.
“Declaring that ‘people tell me that God spared my life for a reason,’ President-elect Trump announced: ‘That reason was to save our country,’” the atheist group wrote. “Trump added, ‘America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.’”
The FFRF then proceeded to break down, from its perspective, what those promises might look like — and why, from an atheist perspective, they might be seen as problematic.
The organization warned the incoming president “will be working with extremists and Christian nationalists ready to undermine America’s democratic principles — including the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” and offered a plethora of other cautions.
The list started with Trump’s proposed task force that would potentially seek to expose “anti-Christian bias” and his comments about the importance of worshipping God and not government.
The atheist group seemingly referenced remarks Trump made while speaking in 2017 at Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they prayed,” Trump said at the time. “When the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they invoked our creator four times. Because, in America, we don’t worship government, we worship God.”
The FFRF, known for waging battles over perceived violations of the First Amendment, also cited the push to place the 10 Commandments in schools, universal school voucher systems, Trump’s pledge to ax the U.S. Department of Education, and more.
Another area of mention was “Christian nationalist cabinet and judicial appointments,” with the FFRF pledging to guard against “extremist judicial appointments.” The atheist organization implored people to join them in their mission to fight back over the separation of church and state.
