American Atheists’ Next Chapter: Nick Fish on Collaboration, Equality, and Real Religious Freedom

[0:01] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. We talk to Nick Fish, only the fourth president of American Atheists in its 60-year history. We talk about how he came to American Atheists, the recently introduced strategic plan for their next 60 years, the current health of religious freedom in the U.S., including his his thoughts on LifeWise Academy, and how like-minded groups can work together to support the religious freedom for everyone. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:59] Our guest today is Nick Fish. He is the president of American Atheists. He is a seasoned civil rights and civil liberties activist with more than a decade of political organizing and leadership experience with many of the nation’s most prominent political organizations and progressive nonprofits. A native of Michigan, and we will give him the slack about that. at. Nick studied political science at Albion College, which is not too far away from Toledo, before working in Raleigh, North Carolina, managing a voter outreach office. Since joining American Atheist, he has been the development director and national program director before being elevated to president of the organization since 2018. Thank you for joining us today, Nick. Good to be with you, Doug. One of the things I like to do when I have the free thought leaders on the Glass City humanists, is to ask your origin story. How did you decide to join American Atheists?

[1:58] Yeah, I mean, you mentioned some of the work that I did in politics getting started. And at some point, I kind of got frustrated with partisan politics. You know, I really cared a lot about a wide range of issues. But the things that really animated me, the things that got me excited about working in policy and changing, you know, policy for the better and protecting people’s rights.

[2:21] The common thread through so many of those things was the intrusion of religion into public life, the attacks on LGBTQ people, on abortion and abortion access, on public education, on a whole host of issues from what we would now identify as the white Christian nationalist movement. And so that common thread got me excited and interested in finding a place. And the first place I worked in the secular community was the Secular Coalition for America in Washington, DC. I’m still very proud of that work and proud to be a member of the coalition. Abolition um and in 2012 i joined american atheist and i’ve been there since so you know it’s been it’ll be 12 years um later this year that i’ve been with american atheists and so you know my origin story as far as advocacy is just you know seeing the world around me and seeing you know where are the forces uh for the things that you know i i looked at and said oh man this is not good where so much that was coming from um you know people always ask about my personal origin story as well of like, you know, how did you, how did I become an atheist? I never was religious. My, my parents to their great credit, um, didn’t push me in any one direction or another. I think my parents would probably have identified as Christians, um, or as sort of vaguely religious, but we never went to church. Um, I went, I was in the boy Scouts. I’m an Eagle Scout. Uh, but my scout troop was chartered through a public school. So I have a lot of that kind of Midwestern sensibility about religion where, you know, it’s kind of in the background, but it’s not being pushed into anyone’s face.

[3:50] And a lot of my secular third spaces, my secular institutions.

[3:56] Were a bigger impact on my life. And even the stuff that’s quasi-religious or has the potential to be religious just wasn’t relevant to me. And I really got the language to describe my beliefs in college and from, you know, like studying philosophy and doing political science.

[4:14] But I never had that religious belief. And I had some really good conversations with people about, you know, where we stood on faith and what we believed, even in the Scouts. But But because I was a member of a troop that was through a public school, no one cared. It’s a pretty great deal that I got. So yeah, I’m really happy with how it went. The fact that I never really faced that religious ostracizing where I got pushed out of something for leaving religion, it just wasn’t part of my life. And I knew from an early age that you could be a good person, lead a good life as an atheist, as a humanist, but developing the rhetoric or the words to use to define my beliefs sort of came later.

[5:00] Yeah, I was a Boy Scout, too, and my troop was chartered by the Knights of Columbus. Okay, slightly different experience. Yeah, so I had to go to mass on campout weekends. But at the time, I was a Protestant, so they didn’t hassle me too much. But yeah, I wouldn’t have my kids join Scouts today. It’s just way too Christian nationalist for me. And I think it depends. You know, I don’t want a major digression into scouting. I’ve got a lot to say because I think it’s in general, it’s a good program and they’ve made some advances. They still, you know, they still are openly hostile to atheists, openly hostile in some cases to, you know, gay leaders and gay scouts, which is really unfortunate. But, you know, it’s one of those things where, like many churches, it very much depends on the locale and the leadership and what’s going on there.

[5:55] You know, it’s unfortunate the national group hasn’t taken a stronger stand in favor of equality. Quality, but the steps they’ve taken to, you know, welcome in, um, you know, gay scouts to welcome in girls, um, to, to be a more inclusive program is, is heartening, especially for those of us that, um, you know, would be kicked out two or three times now because of our various identities, uh, from scouting. So I want the program to succeed. I think it’s valuable. I think, you know, having an outlet for kids, uh, to, to go camping and, you know, boating or hiking or whatever is, is good. And I wish the scouting scouting movement was, was more inclusive, uh, here in the United States. So, yeah.

[6:36] And how do you see American atheists fitting into the framework of religious freedom in the United States in general? Yeah, I mean, people talk a big game about religious freedom. People on the religious right, members of the Christian nationalist movement, talk a big game about religious freedom. But when the rubber meets the road, they don’t care about religious freedom. They care about religious supremacy, and they care specifically about a very specific type of Christian supremacy. They use the language of religious freedom as a fig leaf to cover up what they actually believe, which is that everyone has the God-given right to be any type of Christian as long as it’s a conservative evangelical Christian and maybe Catholic.

[7:22] We see it all the time at all levels of government where the moment any religious minority tries to claim or use that mantle of religious equality or religious freedom to practice their own faith or to practice no faith at all and claim our equal spot as equal, co-equal members of a body politic, you see them absolutely lose their minds about how we’re attacking Christianity somehow. Right now, in fact, members of Congress on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are continuing a years-long campaign attacking the Biden administration State Department for daring to.

[8:07] Put forward an inclusive vision of international religious freedom by supporting the right of atheists and humanists and other non-religious people to get organized and to you know claim an inclusive vision of freedom of religion or belief abroad as required by federal law by the way by supporting a humanist group humanist international with american atheists as a member of um in elevating and making sure that the voices of humanists and atheists are being heard occurred in Central Asia. And they’ve spent years investigating a $500,000 grant for two years of programming, claiming that atheists, that this money was being used to convert people to atheists, atheism was being used to advance atheism. It was doing nothing of the sort. And so American atheists takes our obligation to protect secularism and to protect religious equality and religious freedom very seriously. It’s at the core of our values. We would never claim that people don’t have a right to practice whatever religion they want? Of course they do. What they don’t have the right to is the right to special treatment, the right to special privileges on the basis of that religion. And that really infuriates the white Christian nationalist movement and those who would claim that mantle of defenders of religious freedom. They’re nothing of the sort. And in fact, our values are the ones that are in line with the overwhelming majority.

[9:33] Yeah, I, that, um, and I can’t think of the name now, but it’s that agency, the International Religious Freedom Committee or whatever it’s called. So there’s a few. One of them is USURF, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. It’s an independent body that advises the State Department essentially on religious freedom issues. We’ve had really productive conversations with them. We’ve had really great meetings and we’ve invited them and they’ve spoken at launches of humanist and atheist and secular reports about international religious freedom. We have a great working relationship with them. They’ve done great work protecting and standing up for the rights of atheists and humanists who’ve been imprisoned abroad, including Mubarak Bala, the head of a humanist organization that was essentially abducted and thrown in prison for being a humanist. Um they’ve done a great job advocating for him this state department the the the biden the biden harris administration state department um has done a great job this ambassador at large for international religious freedom has done a great job it’s really unfortunate that this is unfortunately some sort of partisan experience sometimes where you know people will talk again a big game about how much they care about religious freedom but when it comes to protecting the rights of atheists we get left out or accused of being communists or you know accused of something.

[10:55] Yeah. I mean, I was a little unclear on exactly what it is we’re being accused of, but saying that the protections of religious freedom, those universal rights don’t extend to us, that seems to be their view, which again is dramatically out of step with the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans and the international community as well. Yeah. And the thing that I like to point out to people is that Yusef committee doesn’t include an atheist or a humanist on it. And all their terms expired, I think, in May or something. And I had sent a note to President Biden to have him appoint a humanist or an atheist, because the whole entire history of that group has not had an atheist or a humanist. And it claims to be looking out for international religious freedom. Yeah, it’s a great point. It’s something we’ve raised with President Biden. But one thing just to note on that is President Biden appoints three members of that body.

[11:56] Chuck Schumer gets one, Mitch McConnell gets two, Speaker of the House gets two, and the minority leader gets one in the House. So, you know, it maintains a like five to four partisan, you know, division based on whoever is in the White House. But it’s based on the advice of or unilateral actually appointments by all these different people. And so, you know, we’ve we’ve reached out to Senator Schumer. We’ve reached out to Mitch McConnell. We’ve reached out to the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. We’ve reached out to, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, urging them. But, you know, we have a good working relationship, even with people who are religious on this on this panel, because they genuinely most of them do value religious freedom. And we’re not seeing the people getting appointed under the Biden administration that we saw when Donald Trump was president of people who were just avowed white Christian nationalists like Tony Perkins. Tony Perkins and that lawyer from ADF that was on it. Over and over. Gary Bauer. Just all these people. Gary Bauer. Yeah. I mean, Tony Perkins, you know, just all these horrible people that say horrible things about any type of religious minority. That is not, you know, the face of international religious freedom that I think the United States wants to project.

[13:18] Thankfully, we haven’t seen that with the Biden administration. And, you know, we hope that President Biden and congressional leaders will appoint a humanist or a non-religious person or an unaligned person even would be a step in the right direction. You know, I’m not angling for the job myself, but at the same time, there are a ton of qualified folks who would do a great job advocating for universal human rights and would bring a humanist atheist perspective to it that is long overdue. And so, you know, you’re exactly right to raise the point, but I will certainly commend them for the work they do, even though we disagree on one or two big things. They do a great job advocating on behalf of our community. So and I we really do appreciate it.

{14:04] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[14:18] You, Yeah, I had a constitutional lawyer, a professor of constitutional law at our local university. He was in an interview talking about the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment, and he was making the claim about fetal personhood and all that stuff. But what he was what interested me besides that was that he claimed that the First Amendment only applies to people who have religious belief. How would you respond to a claim like that, that the First Amendment only applies to religious believers? I would say that this is not a very good constitutional law professor who is not up on decades, more than a century, two centuries of jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed over and over and over again that the First Amendment protects atheists and humanists just as much as it protects any sort of religious believer. The thing about freedom of religion or belief is that it’s a universal human right.

[15:30] It’s clearly articulated in an international human rights framework that you have the right to have a belief, to not have a belief, to challenge or to change your belief, to join a different belief, whatever you want to do. And belief is broadly defined. And the moment they start to get into this habit or this attempt to box us out of it, they immediately find out that they’re boxing out things that they would intuitively call a religion.

[16:00] They say, well, you have to believe in a higher power. Okay, well, what about a Buddhist? Buddhists don’t necessarily believe in a higher power, though they certainly believe in some supernatural things. And they say, okay, well, you need to believe in supernatural things. And then there’s.

[16:14] Any number of boundary pushing things here that you rapidly run out of it, run out of a way to define it in any meaningful way. So what you have to do is, and the reason we call it this in the international context, is freedom of religion or belief. And so humanists, humanism, atheists, secularists, whatever term you use and you’re most comfortable with, we have values just the same that a religious person does. And those values are felt and held just as deeply and strongly as the religious beliefs and the religious precepts that a person adheres to. That moral code, that sense of belonging, that sense of community, that deeply held personal to us and important to us belief structure is indistinguishable. And so there’s a reason, there’s a good reason that these are protected exactly the same. And anybody who claims otherwise is either intentionally mischaracterizing the law and, I think, hasn’t thought very hard about what it would mean to try to define it otherwise. One of the things that I like about American Atheists is you publish a state scorecard for every state. And basically what you do is you look at what legislation that they had and how they voted and whether or not it supported religious freedom. And so.

[17:37] So if you could briefly just let us know, what are those scorecards and what exactly, how are we supposed to use them? Yeah, the scorecards I think are a great tool and really are a thing that we launched a few years ago because we wanted to empower folks in all 50 states. I think people in our community sometimes have this idea or this incorrect idea, quite quite frankly, that everything that is important happens in Washington, D.C. or in a courtroom. And I’m here to tell you that that’s not the case.

[18:10] There’s innumerable amounts of work, just so much work that has to happen all across this country, even in states where you think you’ve got it pretty good as an atheist. There’s room for improvement. There’s innovation that we can do. There are new laws that we can pass. There are bad laws that we can get off the books. And so what we’ve done is we’ve looked at the law in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. We’ve looked at areas, I think it’s more than 60 different policy areas that we’ve looked at, ranging from things as simple as does your state constitution extend additional benefits to religious folks that aren’t extended to non-religious folks?

[18:52] Does your state law have tax exemptions for churches that aren’t available to anyone else? But also, what does your state do about child marriage? Does your state allow religious exemptions from child marriage laws, allowing children as young as 14 to be married to, we’re almost always talking about young girls being married off to older men, and they say, well, as long as you have a religious reason for doing it, it’s fine.

[19:20] What other religion, what other reason could there possibly be for something like that? That’s not really a protection here. You know, do they allow secular celebrants to solemnize marriages? Do they have medical aid in dying laws? Do they have exemptions from requirements for medical treatment, allowing hospitals or providers to deny medical treatment to people on the basis of their own religion, regardless of the medical need of the patient? And so the list really goes on and on and on, covers things like schools and health and just, you know, a ton of things. So you can see exactly where your state stands, know what is an area where we can improve, what’s something that we’re doing really well, what are some other states doing well, and how can we borrow from those states? And then allowing us to build capacity and, you know, train folks to then make a huge difference in their communities, know how to and build confidence with advocating for their own rights. You know, it’s not groups like American Atheists and our paid staff that are going to make the difference for everybody. We simply don’t have the time, the resources, the people to do that. What’s going to make the big difference is people feeling empowered, being empowered, and having the tools they need to go into their state capitals, go into their communities, go to their school board meetings, their town council meetings, whatever it might be, and stand up for their rights. fights.

[20:40] That’s what’s going to win this fight because it’s happening in every single community all across this country, not just in Washington, D.C., not just in a federal courtroom. Those are important tools in our toolbox, but they’re not the only tools. And so our state scorecards available at states.atheist.org or atheist.org slash states, whichever works best for you. Check them out. See what your state is doing well. So you know when you talk to your elected officials, hey, here’s something we can do to improve. Here’s something that I, as an atheist, as a humanist, would like to see. And here’s a state that’s right next door that’s doing it great. We should just do that. We want people to feel empowered to do that. Yeah, and I’ll have those links in the show notes when I publish the episode. Perfect.

[21:23] How do you see the climate for religious freedom in the United States right now?

[21:30] Yeah, I mean, it’s a secular people. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this recently. We just launched a new strategic plan, a vision, a mission, vision and value statement and a plan for how we’re going to do our work moving forward. And we were thinking a lot about history, you know, thinking about what’s changed since 19 1963 when American Atheist was founded. I mean, it’s been 61 years since the Supreme Court case that was the genesis of American atheists, Marie V. Curlett.

[22:01] And we actually had Ellery Shemp, who was the plaintiff in Shemp versus Abington School District, that was consolidated with Madeline Murray O’Hare’s case that got compulsory prayer out of public schools. That was 61 years ago. Um, and thinking about what’s changed in the intervening time. Um, and you know, there’s been a lot of progress. Um, and I think we should celebrate that progress, but at the same time, we’re seeing a lot of almost backsliding, um, not just in the treatment of atheists and humanists, but in like the rhetoric and the, um, the, the way that we’re viewed by some people, um, and an increasing amount of extremism, where people that are really, really powerful, that have a lot of power in American politics, are flat out saying that Christianity ought to be the only religion protected by the United States government, that the United States government should favor one particular interpretation of Christianity.

[23:06] And we’re seeing this dragging back of of, um, of, of our policy in places like Louisiana and, uh, Oklahoma and Florida requiring that, you know, states put up 10 commandment displays or, you know, sticking, slapping the Bible into every possible public school by really, really unhinged extremists that are part of the white Christian nationalist movement, um, seeking to usurp decades of progress. Um, and, you know, in some cases take us back to a past that didn’t really exist. They have this notion, this fake history that they have in their head about how things used to be, but it never was the case that, you know, people were doing these sorts of extreme, you know, supplications to religion in public schools. It just wasn’t happening. But they’re wanting to implement that because they’re terrified of their cultural power and their relevancy fading away. They can see it slipping through their grasp, so they’re tightening down even harder, trying to kind of solidify that position of privilege while they still can. And that’s what we’re seeing right now, is that sort of.

[24:21] Um doubling down on extremism while also kind of building uh like a regime of religious exemptions and you know kind of like parallel systems so that you know they don’t have to deal with us us dirty awful secular people right um you know that we’re seeing a ton of that so there’s a lot of progress but it’s very much like a two steps forward two steps back one step forward two steps back three steps forward one step back type thing where you know it just it every single year is a is a fight and we can’t let or pretend that the, um, changing demographics, the increasing secularization of young people, it’s not an inevitability. Um, these are things that, you know, there is, it’s not a slow steady march of progress implying it’s going in one direction. Uh, that, that ain’t how it goes. We have to keep up the fight. We have to keep working. Um, we have to keep advocating. We have to talk about our values, um, and, and demonstrate that, you know, we’re the ones that are normal.

[25:20] We’re the ones that, you know, are right in line with the mainstream of American life, that these Christian nationalists are the ones that are threat to democracy and just weird and, you know, trying to do everything they can to take away people’s rights, intrude into their bedroom, intrude into the most private decisions, the most, you know, the most, just, excuse me, sacred things that we can do. They’re trying to intrude in that and it’s bizarre and it’s awful and it’s not who we are as Americans. My friend, Andrew Seidel from Americans United is very fond of saying that if America becomes a Christian nation, it ceases to be America. I’m slightly paraphrasing there, but what we are as a country is so intertwined in religious freedom in church state separation in the establishment clause and the free exercise clause being there that the moment you destroy that you destroy america and i couldn’t agree more with that sentiment and that’s why we get up every day and do this work is because it is so important to every single policy area every single part of our lives that matters.

[26:30] It’s in there. And so we’ve got to keep up that fight. Yeah. And I agree totally with what you’re saying. And you can see it’s like a playbook there. You can see it with racism. Yeah. You know, they’re trying to use the 14th Amendment to undo racial support rules that were put in place because minorities were not in charge and they were hurt by the power of the white people. And so they’re trying to flip it on its head and they’re doing the same thing with religion they’re trying to say that that you know if we have a rule that that uh protects secular people then how that somehow uh discriminates against christians i’m like you guys are everywhere yeah they they claim that religious neutrality that the the public school teacher for example having teaching Teaching neutrality is, in fact, teaching secularism as or teaching atheism. And that’s not it’s not true. It’s simply false. And so we have to call that stuff out. We don’t want government picking and choosing winners in the sphere of religious decision making. We don’t want government.

[27:40] I don’t want a government employee telling my kids what the truth is on religious matters. I want we want to have those conversations as a family, not have a teacher or, you know, Somebody working for whatever government agency saying, no, no, this is the right religious doctrine for you to believe. No one wants that, or no one should want that, because you rapidly find out that there’s no such thing as one unified version of Christianity. There’s not even one unified version of the Ten Commandments. They can’t even agree which version of that, and that’s what they want to stick up in every classroom as if it’s some universal…

[28:21] Document it isn’t no it’s just like they made up a version uh to stick uh up on the walls and i think the funniest thing about that is the version that they made up was literally the version from the charlton heston movie the ten commandments like that’s the version that they are sticking up is not from the bible not from any holy book it’s from a charlton heston movie and that’s what you’re sticking on public school classrooms yeah that that’s really that’s the version that we have on a stone tablet on our courthouse lawn. Yep. It was a concerted campaign. Movie prop. Yep. It was a movie prop. Wild. Absolutely wild. And when we, and then when the ACLU tried to get it removed, then they’re like, oh, well, you know, that’s religion. You can’t mess with, I’m like, it’s a movie prop. Come on. Yep. Oh, anyway.

[29:11] Hello, this is Douglas, host of the Glass City Humanist, inviting you to listen to selected segments of The Glass City Humanist on Toledo Community Radio Station WAKT, 106.1 FM, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t listen to us on the radio, you can live stream us on toledoradio.org or visit our On WAKT page on our website glasscityhumanist.show for past episodes.

[29:55] You did mention that American Atheists did announce their strategic plan for the next 60 years. Can you give us an overview of what that entails? Yeah, I’m happy to. If folks want to take a look at it, it’s just future.atheists.org. That’s future.atheists.org. You know, we really wanted to communicate about our organization. I think people have a misconception about what it means to be an atheist and what those values are. Right front and center, we wanted to highlight the importance of our view on religious pluralism, that we’re not trying to take away anyone’s right to believe whatever they want to believe, even if we disagree on what that is. We believe that religious pluralism is –, a core value of who we are as Americans. And it’s the only way to protect our democracy. And it’s the only way for us to protect equality for everyone. But, you know, alongside that, we also want to make sure that folks know that we are an atheist organization. We center the voices and the experiences and the perspectives of atheists. We’re all about elevating and ensuring that atheists are heard in our nation’s politics, in our nation’s, you know, not just policy debates, but also our civic institutions, also our interpersonal relationships. And so, you know, those are some of the, you know, you can read the specifics of the mission and the vision, and also, you know, the values that we articulated. But I think the thing that people are most interested in out of this have been our priorities.

[31:21] And, you know, part of this is, again, an acknowledgement that it’s not enough, just enough for us to file lawsuits in court. I think our community has this misapprehension about how to do activism that we sort of think that, well, if you just say the right magic words in a court brief, the court has no choice but to yield to our greater sense of logic and reason that Sam Alito will read the brief and go, ah, darn it, you got me there. I have no choice. Yes, secularism is good, actually. But it’s just not how it works. And so we wanted to approach our priorities and our plan.

[32:04] Acknowledging the limitations of some of the things that we’ve historically done as a community, while also not shying away from the things that do work and that have worked well. So number one, we’re building capacity. We’re making sure that in all 50 states, there are groups of activists committed to improving the lives of atheists, improving the lives of all Americans, and advocating for the things that we care about, but also building communities, building strong communities for people that are leaving a church or really want to be part of something. We know that’s not for everyone, but we know that it is important for a lot of folks. So fostering community, making sure that we’re giving resources to people because church has had a few hundred year head start on us in terms of creating and sustaining vibrant and lasting community spaces for people to just, you know, not have to worry about, you know, facing discrimination or not have to worry about, you know, saying the wrong thing, but rather finding mutually supportive shared value spaces where people can come together. But beyond that, we wanted to also acknowledge that much of our work doesn’t just happen in the policy sphere. I talked a lot about interpersonal relationships and making sure that people feel comfortable and confident about being atheists in America, being honest and open about who they are and what they believe and don’t believe.

[33:24] There’s this wide range of experiences that atheists have had in the United States. Kevin Patton, And we want to make sure that every American understands what it’s like to be an atheist, what it’s like to experience stigma and discrimination and from being potentially pushed out from your family, being afraid of losing your job simply because of what we believe or don’t believe. And so we need to tell the stories of our community. We need to do a better job of humanizing us, that it’s not just about, oh, the constitution says X, Y, and Z. It’s also So my brother-in-law or my kid or my best friend is an atheist, and here’s how I can support them and make sure that they’re being included in all of this and that they’re not being, you know, they’re not worrying about losing their friends and family just for saying, you know, oh, yeah, I actually don’t go to church, right? We don’t want that to be the case.

[34:14] And then the last thing, you know, that I think we’re never going to step away from, It’s always a core part of our DNA is, yeah, fighting for secularism, fighting for secular government, protecting religious equality and the civil rights of atheists, rebuilding the wall of separation between church and state. It’s what we’ve been doing for 60 years. We’re going to continue doing it. But we’re going to use, and I alluded to this earlier, we’re going to use every tool in our toolbox. We’re not just going to file lawsuits. We’re not just going to work on legislation. We’re going to do all of those things. We’re not just going to work at the federal level. We’re going to work in all 50 states. We’re going to work at local school boards and towns and cities all across the country because that’s where so much of the work needs to be done. So it’s an all-of-the-above approach. This isn’t some stuffy dust-gathering document that’s just going to sit there on a shelf for the next three years until we do another version of it. We wanted this to really demonstrate our commitment to a broad approach to atheism, to fighting for our rights, and to standing up for our values. Um, in America.

[35:18] Cool. That sounds interesting. I can’t wait to see it get implemented over the years. It’s going to be real good, real good. I read some of the information on the website and everything, and yeah, I’m on board with it. I can see it improving things, at least on the atheist side.

[35:39] Yeah. And I want to just close on this point by just saying we thought it was really important to bring in and speak with people that were on board already, but also the people that were critical of work that we’ve done in the past to make sure that we’re, again, building as big a coalition as possible. We want this to be about us working together for common values. It’s not about fame or glory for us. It’s about improving the lives of everyday Americans, improving the lives of atheists all across America, and acknowledging that the United States has an outsized role to play often in international affairs, and recognizing that things are not often perfect or even good in the United States on some of these issues. But we’re not worried about, you know, getting rounded up, getting arrested for being atheists in the US. And so, you know, acknowledging our place as part of this global community of atheists and humanists and, you know, building that capacity, not just locally, but being ready to support our friends and partners overseas as well. And I’m sure you had no trouble finding some critical atheists.

[36:48] You’d be shocked, Doug, to know that people are very eager to share their views with us. I know quite a few of them, yes, over the years, yes. I’m going to touch on this, and please forgive me, and if I step on any toes, let me know. But there was a recent story that came out about some confusion over a donation made by an estate to American Atheists and Freedom from Religion Foundation, and it culminated into a lawsuit that’s ongoing. Going um and i’m not going to have you talk about the lawsuit because that’s not what this is about but it got me thinking about how it how it really focused on the fact that groups like american atheists and ffrf count their pennies you know we don’t have some uh rich tech billionaire cutting us checks all the time and i wish they would but they don’t um you know like our we have They have a CCV Christian, I don’t know, here in Ohio. They’re a religious right group. They cut a check for $10 million and bought a building.

[38:04] Just at a drop of a hat. Do you think that it hinders our struggle for religious freedom to have so many related free thought groups? I mean, like there’s a pie and it’s divided so many ways. Do you think that that’s a problem or is that like a feature? Sure. Yeah. I mean, here’s the thing. We share a ton of values with all of these groups. And one thing that’s really important to us at American Atheist is collaboration.

[38:37] And we work very closely with groups like the American Humanist Association, like the Secular Coalition, like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, like Americans United, even though Americans United is not an atheist group, sort of interfaith church-state separation group. An interesting distinction. But I don’t think it hinders us. We don’t have any eccentric billionaires cutting us checks to fund weird youth-ish groups that are intended to indoctrinate college kids with free pizza to get them to come in. We don’t have that. And I think we wouldn’t want something quite like that because it would be in conflict with our values. And so I put a really high premium on us getting into a room, talking things out if there’s a concern or a problem, and working on projects together. And what I’ve heard from our members, from our donors, from people that do support our work is that they put a value, a high premium on that as well. That they’re tired of, I’ve been around this community long enough to remember the squabbling and the fights from even the early 2010s, but they go back even further. I mean, there’s, you know, you go back to like 1980, 1990, and, you know, there was just all this just.

[39:57] Really hostile, you know, uh, like conflicts of personalities. And I don’t want to pretend for a moment that, you know, it was that anyone is blameless in that, uh, least of all American atheists. I’m sure there’s, you know, there, there’s some big personalities in, uh, in, in, in this community, especially at a time when things were really difficult for atheists and you’re sort of, you know, have to have sharp elbows to, uh, to, to get noticed. Um, but what I’ll say now is we’re focused on the work and we’re focused on getting things done for people, getting things done for our community. And people are tired of squabbling over, well, which word do you want to use? We’re American Atheists, and guess what? We’re going to work with the American Humanist Association every single day, because at the end of that day, we have so many values in common, and the threat is so grave that we can’t afford to leave any partnership on the table. As long as we can agree on a few core things, we are good to go. Even if we disagree on something, even if it’s a public disagreement.

[40:58] We’re happy to work with anybody. My frustration with all of this, you know, going into court and anything like that, and it kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier is courtrooms are not the only way to solve things. And, you know, we want to have conversations, you know, rely on the soft power that we build up, the relationships that we build up, the knowledge that we have and the good faith, pardon the expression, the good faith collaboration that we’ve done over the years to get things done. And that’s how government works. That’s how we’re working in the private sector works. That’s how working in a coalition works. And that’s what we’re going to continue doing because it’s what our donors want, but it’s the right thing to do. It’s the right thing for us moving forward. And it’s the right thing for the moment that we’re facing when, you know, the opposition, the opposition’s project 2025, for example, Christian nationalist playbook, you know, you talked about how there’s a playbook, there’s literally a playbook, they wrote it down, right? And just that project had just the implementation, the creation of that project had a budget larger than all of the atheist and humanist organizations put together and doubled.

[42:15] Just that project. And this is a project that is one small part of the entire movement, a movement that has billions of dollars behind it every single year. And we’re a group of, you know, five or six large national organizations that combined have a budget of what, 15, $20 million, maybe. And, you know, we can’t, we can’t win if we’re not working together, We punch way above our weight. But folks who have the ability to make a difference in our work by supporting our work with financial contributions or volunteering or whatever it might be, you’re really able to be a force multiplier for us because it turns out that our positions are actually popular.

[42:57] And we don’t have to lie to people. We don’t have to flood the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars in ads. We don’t have to provide sort of like a jobs program for grifting white Christian nationalists who have nothing better to do with their time. We’re actually getting things done. And so if you’re thinking about supporting our work, this is a great way to do it. Support whatever group works for you. We all kind of work on slightly different things. And so if you’re really passionate about state-level work, if you’re really passionate about promoting understanding of atheists and humanists, support American Atheists. If you’re really supportive of working at the federal level and some lawsuits and humanist education, support AHA. If you’re really passionate about lawsuits, support FFRF. And we all do different, some bits of all of those as well, but you know, you can support all of us and, and we, we hope that you will, um, because at the end of the day, um, I’d, I’d rather that that support is in our community than not. Um, and I want people to have confidence that we are able to, that we’re working together and we’re getting a lot done because we are. Um, and you know, like I said, that, that’s what the moment calls for is that level of of collaboration, that, um, generosity of spirit and that smallness of ego, um, putting the ego aside because we’ve, we’ve got too much to do to, to let our, our egos get in the way.

[44:18] Okay, good. I like that answer. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, it’s the turf wars. And I was part, I experienced all of that when I started in the 90s. Yeah, you know, and I don’t want to pretend for a moment that there aren’t real differences between these groups. And especially like, we say this all the time. There’s never going to be a one size fits all, like some groups are going to have different values. And that’s fine. And there’s going to be personality conflict. And if you can get past it and still work together, great. I hope you can, and that’d be great if you can. If you can’t, though, there’s no inherent problem with there being two different groups in one city. How many churches are there?

[44:58] And they still manage to have a really big impact on American society. So if they can do it, so can we, because at the end of the day, it’s about shared values and you set aside everything else in service of getting stuff done.

[45:12] And so we’ve got a lot of stuff to get done, so we’re going to do it. And I’m as committed to that as anyone. And I think folks will affirm that American Atheists and the team that we’ve built, it’s sort of job one for us, is serving as a force multiplier, making sure that folks know that we are here to collaborate with anybody who agrees with us on the issues, who agrees with us that atheists deserve equality, who agrees with us on our commitment to democracy, on our commitment to a human-focused, human-centered approach to our work. We’re happy to work with those folks, 100%.

[45:50] Would you like to be a guest on Glass City Humanist or know someone who would make a good guest? Let us know and visit glasscityhumanist.show and click on the link, how to be a guest.

[46:04] Here in Ohio, now that you mentioned Project 2025, we have a group that’s tangentially, well, I wouldn’t even say tangentially, connected to Project 2025. They are supported by a couple of groups that helped write 2025. It’s called LifeWise. Yeah. And what they did is they are manipulating the release time religious instruction policy to ship kids off campus to have a Bible class. Yep. So I’m assuming because you’re agreeing that you’ve heard of it and it’s kind of on American Atheists’ radar. Do you have any specific plans to address that or just in general?

[46:51] Yeah. So release time is one of those sort of things that people have no idea what it is. You know, they look at that and go, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And then you tell them and they say, wait a second, that’s legal. So for folks who don’t know, release time is essentially allowing kids in a public school to go off campus, like you just said, to religious instruction for a part of the day, either every day, sometimes once or twice a week. And states have varying degrees of permissiveness on what that is. So in Ohio, you mentioned the state has very permissive release time rules again. Again, and sometimes these schools’ rules will extend so far as providing transportation to public school students to take them to a church to have Bible study and then bring them back from the church to the public school.

[47:44] That’s the level of involvement we’re talking about here. I know that this curriculum that you’re talking about from the group in Ohio, it’s pretty extreme. And it’s not, I don’t think that, I think when you tell people about what release time is, they look at that and go, that is not an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. It’s not an appropriate use of the time that people are spending in school. They should be being instructed. They should be learning about the things that are going to make them, give them the skills that they need to be successful later in life. And, you know, we shouldn’t be subsidizing religious instruction with taxpayer dollars, period. Period.

[48:23] And just like every other example of this, you know, they created these loopholes, these accommodations. And I’m doing air quotes that, you know, if you’re listening to this, you can’t see. They created all of this. And with the express purpose of allowing churches to get in the door, it’s horrendously inappropriate. Appropriate just to like try to like you know give a good word for this it’s it’s so uh such a waste of resources and time and is so slanted in one direction um of allowing one particular type of religion to uh dominate um so as to be you know not neutral at all um they have the the sort of veneer of neutrality where they say well anybody can start their own you know religious instruction thing. And it’s like, well, yeah, but we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to indoctrinate children into atheism on the public’s dime. We don’t think it’s an appropriate use of school resources. We’d much rather our kids be learning about, I don’t know, American history or taking a music class or learning Spanish or studying math, literally anything else other than learning, about religion between the hours of the first bell and last bell in a public school.

[49:48] That’s, that’s not the inappropriate use of, of these resources. And, you know, I think that pointing this out, elevating this, highlighting, you know, just how negative an impact it has on people is what we need to do. But also, you know, not just on educational attainment, but also on people being excluded, right? A lot of this happens in really small school districts where you’ve got a class of 30, and they have a release time, and all but four people or something go to release time, and then those four people are excluded. Those four kids who are non-religious or are children of non-religious parents or non-religious themselves, they’re ostracized because they’re not, well, why aren’t you going to this? What their classmates might tell them. That’s not creating an environment that’s conducive to learning either, where kids have that hostility directed at them for not towing the line, for not complying and not fitting in with their religious classmates. In a lot of places around the country, Christianity remains the overwhelming consensus among folks.

[51:00] It’s a lot to ask, to ask a 15-year-old or a 10-year-old to stand up for their rights, to say, I don’t really believe this stuff. That’s asking a lot, and I think it’s really unfair to kids. I think we should insist on and demand neutrality from all of our systems and from our public schools. And this is a great thing for folks to highlight the hypocrisy and the terribleness of it and to do a lot of work because it happens at the school district level. There’s no federal law that we could pass that would fix this. It has to happen at the state level or even at the school board level to roll this back and to fix this problem. So it’s a great example of exactly what I’ve been talking about, that it doesn’t matter who wins the presidency.

[51:44] This is going to remain a problem and it’s a local problem that has to be fixed locally.

[51:50] American Atheist is known for having your national conference on Easter weekend. Yep. Can you tell us any details about what’s coming up in 2025 yet? Have you picked a spot? I can indeed. Yeah, if you go to atheist.org slash convention, there’s information up there. We will be in the Twin Cities on Easter weekend in 2025. So that’s the, I think it’s the second to last weekend of April. And so check that out. We’ll be, yeah, Minneapolis, right in Minneapolis. So go check that out. We have a great time. I mean, it’s a great opportunity for us to get together, hear from some really great speakers, do some really important workshops so you can take things back to your community and go in or come back with more knowledge than you came with. But just as importantly, it’s an opportunity for folks just to get together, to be in community with one another, to share space with atheists from all over the country and just have a great time. And again, not have to worry about like, oh, did I say the wrong thing? Am I going to get yelled at by a religious person because I said, oh, yeah, I don’t really want to go do anything on. I don’t really want to go to church today or I don’t go to church. Right. Like, you don’t want to have to worry about that. And you don’t have to worry about that at our conference. I can confirm.

[53:09] All right, Nick. And as we wrap up, what I like to do for the last bit is to give the guest an opportunity to either restate what you talked about with us today or.

[53:24] You know, if you want to promote something that we hadn’t talked about, feel free and the mic’s yours. Yeah. No, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about all the work that’s going on. You know just as well as anybody that it never stops. There’s no shortage of work that needs to be done that is getting done, thankfully. So I’d encourage folks to go to our website, atheist.org. Check out our plan. Check out what we’re working on as part of our strategic plan for the next, I don’t know, about 60 years. but the next number of years.

[53:55] We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re ready to do it. We can get a lot done thanks to the support of folks who are chipping in what they can, becoming a monthly member. If you like what you see on that website at future.atheist.org, become a monthly donor. Sign up, support this work, support our plan to make sure atheists are empowered in all 50 states, to make sure that we’re being heard, to protect equality under the law, to protect healthcare transparency, to tell the stories of the atheist community. It’s needed now more than ever, especially at a time when we’re seeing things like Project 2025 or other forms of ascendant white Christian nationalism in America. It’s incumbent upon us to push back on that. So I’m really proud of the work that we do and proud of the team that we have and proud of the volunteers that work with us every single day. We really couldn’t do any of the work that we do without those folks. So I can’t thank them enough. Check out our website, atheist.org. All right. Well, again, thank you for your time and we really appreciate it. Yeah. It’s great to be here. Thank you for listening. For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[55:15] Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. Surely can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Glass City Jam composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time!

[55:45] Music.