God and Government Quotes

“The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in religious institutions almost every day of his adult life but never once told a congregation or gathering there for whom to vote.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“lawmakers reacted to the report by cutting off the funds to continue the testing of students so nobody would know if there was any improvement. This even turns free marketism on its head: Create an expensive government program with taxpayer money, and when the data suggests the program isn't working, hide the data and make sure consumers”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“George W. Bush began a program referred to as the Faith-Based Initiative, an effort to get more grants and contracts to religious providers of secular services, from mentoring to feeding the hungry, based on the largely mythological claim—akin to the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq—that there was widespread discrimination in giving government funds to religious groups. At the time, Catholic Charities alone appeared to be getting over five hundred million dollars in aid and the Salvation Army, literally a Christian denomination with strong homophobic tendencies, was getting eighty-nine million dollars for work in New York alone.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“that is from a legal viewpoint what is technically referred to in the Latin as de minimis” and, in the equally technical language of common sense, as “batshit crazy.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“So refusing to say you won't do something is the moral equivalent of doing”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“we have now begun a wide range of case involvement at religiously connected hospitals and universities that are already exempt from having to cover contraception, in my view a completely unnecessary accommodation this administration doled up to such entities.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“So, here we have cases about cakes and contraception that could still eventually lead to what I consider a bizarre outcome: religious claims trump any and all laws some corporate owner doesn't agree with. Why not just let companies refuse to go along with civil rights laws based on religious objections. Some of us heard preachers in the early sixties actually argue that the words in book of Genesis, “God separated the light from the darkness,” should be interpreted to reject school integration.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“The “religious freedom” promoted by Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Religious Right of Ken Ham and Tony Perkins is a fraud and a scam; it is antithetical to true freedom of conscience and belief.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“expand”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“that”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“calling the Guantanamo prison “a gated timeshare community in the Northern Caribbean.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“A bedrock principle of religious freedom is that freedom is achieved only if it is achieved for all.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Indeed, some legislators happily admitted they wouldn't promote Islamic, Wiccan, or Buddhist plates. The argument seems to be: no Muslim plates because we don't want to look like we are supporting that faith, but a Christian plate is great—although in court we'll say that isn't a sign of support. When you combine hypocrisy with bad constitutional law, little wonder you buy yourself a lawsuit!”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“AU investigated the Religious Right's most common examples of the “war on Christmas.” Guess what? They're bogus! Two schools accused of banning red and green did no such thing. Another school was accused of rewriting “Silent Night.” In reality, it was putting on an eighteen-year-old play that changes the words of familiar Christmas carols to fit the play's secular theme of homelessness.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“because none of the wording is included in the artistic rendering. Moses is depicted cradling two tablets on a frieze that also includes historical lawgivers like Hammurabi, Solomon, Confucius, Muhammad, Napoleon, and the Roman emperor Augustus. The display represents the evolution of the law over the centuries. It's not intended to promote religion.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“some of those who crafted the Constitution had serious doubts about tax-supported clergy. James Madison, for example, wrote that such employment was a “palpable violation of equal rights as well as Constitutional principles” and a “national establishment” of religion.10 He suggested that if Congress wanted chaplains to discharge religious duties, members should pay for them from their own pockets. “How just would it be in its principle!” he proclaimed.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Let's keep this simple: We separate religion and government in this country. That means the state has no business setting aside special days for prayer or other religious observances. Thomas Jefferson knew that. He refused to issue prayer proclamations during his presidency. James Madison issued a few under pressure from Congress but later in his life wrote an essay saying he wished he hadn't. Andrew Jackson followed Jefferson's lead and refused to issue such proclamations entirely.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“have used it in a highly offensive way and drenched it in fallacious, right-wing “Christian nation” pseudohistory. Worse, they've sponsored “Christians only” prayer events that exclude millions of Americans. (And by “Christians” they mean fundamentalists. Progressive Christians like me got nowhere near the microphone.)”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“The government is, in fact, urging you to pray. That's simply not government's job.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Furthermore, the National Day of Prayer has always been soaked in the kind of offensive “God and country” rhetoric that many of us find nauseating.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Government is supposed to be neutral on religion. It has no business telling people how, when, or where to pray—or even if they ought to pray. Government does lots of things well, but meddling in our private religious lives is not among them.”
― Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“The promise of anyone seeking to be on the federal bench, the Supreme Court in particular, must again be—not to serve as Chief Justice Roberts's “referee” but to do what is necessary to serve that one great overarching value of American democracy: to serve as a constraint on the otherwise overarching tyranny of the majority (and their political allies) for us and future generations.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“The Constitution—the Bill of Rights in particular—was filled with “majestic generalities” precisely so that federal courts could breathe life into them as the reality of America changed.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Thurmond Rule,” a largely fictional claim that in presidential-election years the party whose President is in office is supposed to sit on its hands and await the outcome in November. This is named for Senator Strom Thurmond, arch-segregationist to the end; Strom Thurmond, who never saw a wasteful weapons system he didn't want to fund; Strom Thurmond, who attempted to get John Lennon deported; Senator Strom Thurmond, who has no moral standing to be invoked for one blessed thing. If we truly believe that this is a real emergency because these vacancies are denying the opportunity for Americans to be heard when their fundamental rights and liberties are in jeopardy, then we should insist that the Senate not allow the Thurmond rule to be the last word.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“Under the claim of “religious freedom”—the cover for a gigantic new fictional creature called “corporate conscience”—the rights of workers could be given short shrift once again. [More on this in chapter 8.]”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“We all should know what the Right's agenda is here: privatize education, kill public schools, and transfer the teaching of the young to private entities.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“I am much more troubled by the claims we get in our office about what can only be described as a “Christian nationalism,” an effort by some in military circles to denigrate the service of those who are not Christian, or who are not even religious. There is a real difference in my view between God and country—Christianity has not cornered the market on faith. When we lapse into a sense that what we do is a holy enterprise and that our military policy represents God's will as well as that of the Pentagon,”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“chaplains are here to serve the needs of servicemembers who ask for assistance—persons struggling with personal, professional, or philosophical problems they want addressed from a religious viewpoint. They are not hired to be roving missionaries to all persons with whom they come in contact.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“governments and their official representatives will be strictly neutral on matters of religion: not hostile, not promotional, simply neutral.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience

“The Supreme Court got it right in a 1973 case, PEARL v. Nyquist, when it said bluntly: “If the State may not erect buildings in which religious activities are to take place, it may not maintain such buildings or renovate them when they fall into disrepair.”
― Rev. Barry W. Lynn, God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom Of Conscience