Challenging The Freedom From Religion Foundation

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is an organization that "works as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church."

America is a "free country" and people have a constitutional right to say and believe whatever we want. And therefore, we at The Refiner's Fire will exercise our right to expose this organization's deceitful tactics as presented in one of their latest television advertisements....

My response is below, and you can also see it on YouTube (click on video #18.

Question for The Freedom From Religion Foundation: What history book are you guys reading? In a recent television ad, the Foundation stated: "Let's restore respect for America's secular roots"....

America's secular roots? Are they kidding? America's roots have their origin indisputably in freedom from religious persecution, not secularism - and it is unconscionable that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or FFRF, would stoop to such a lie in their campaign of misinformation.

In their TV ad, they use a 1960 campaign speech by John F. Kennedy in which he appears to say the following: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. Where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace." A narrator goes on to say: "Let's restore respect for America's secular roots. Help the Freedom From Religion Foundation defend the wall of separation between state and church."

First of all, this video depicting Kennedy's 1960 speech as saying those things is a LIE, because the Freedom From Religion Foundation heavily edited the speech! They combined disparate thoughts from the speech to make you think the presidential candidate Kennedy was against the concept of God being involved in government. (You can see the transcript of what he actually said by Googling Kennedy's Sept. 12, 1960 speech!) The whole speech is too long to reproduce here, but here is what the President actually said:

"These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues - for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.

"But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured - perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in - for that should be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in.

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

You see, Kennedy was advocating that people from all faiths had the right to run for office and he was FOR our right to observe our faith free from outside influences like the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I find this misrepresentation of Kennedy's speech to further their agenda despicable!

Now, to this "separation of church and state" that so many, including the FFRF are quick to cite. Well here is a fact: The Constitution doesn't say a thing about "separation of church and state"! It says, in the 1st Amendment that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

Nowhere are the use of the words "separation of church and state" found in the Constitution! You see, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects people of faith from the government, not the government from people of faith.

The FFRF concludes its misguided TV ad with these words: "Freedom depends on free thinkers," Folks, in my opinion America is in the shape it's in today BECAUSE of the destructive efforts of "free" thinkers and their ungodly opinions that have elevated MANs rule and authority over God! Our once great nation was NOT founded on "secular" roots. Our nation once stood with God and honored Him and became a great nation as a result... That is, until "free thinkers" removed God from our schools in 1962, when the decline began.

You see in 1962 we allowed "arbitrary law" to become the rule of our land rather than insisting that God's law be the law of our land. For in 1962 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Engel vs. Vitale in Hyde Park, New York that, "the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State" - Never mind that no such "constitutional wall" exists - and stopped prayer in our schools.

Here is what they ruled against: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country." Ten families objected to that prayer, and so, the simple school prayer suddenly became "unconstitutional". On the whim of 10 families, let's call them "free thinkers", the eradication of God from public institutions began! That simple, non-denominational prayer became evil, and the good things it conveyed, became bad....

The phrase actually came from Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of our nation's most fundamental documents. Actually the way it is applied today is a complete 180-degree turnabout from how it was originally intended by the one who coined that phrase in 1803....

Isaiah 5:20 -"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who change darkness into light and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter!"

But this is exactly what happens when "free thinkers" impose their opinions and through deceptive tactics like the Freedom From Religion Foundation impose on our RIGHT to the free exercise of our faith - which, by the way, is not to be infringed upon - and that is in the Constitution!