Robert Knight of the American Civil Rights Union appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to discuss his recent column where he warned that the so-called War on Christmas will be even more traumatic this year as the “Christmas-phobic ACLU tacks up portraits of Grandfather Frost in back offices to inspire them during that darned holiday season that Dare Not Tell Its Name.” Mefferd and Knight floated a legal strategy to challenge what Knight called in his column “the secular virus,” a lawsuit on the grounds that the government violated the First Amendment by establishing atheism as the state’s official religion.
Mefferd: As we were talking about atheism being the de facto official religion with all of this, do you know if there’ve been any lawsuits dealing with the establishment of religion with atheism? This issue of saying, hey by not allowing this, by default the state really seems to be embracing atheism?
Knight: No but that sounds like a good lawsuit to me. I think Christians and others who believe in religious freedom in this country ought to be more aggressive, and that kind of strategy Janet, that’s a great idea.
It appears that Mefferd and Knight confuse government neutrality towards religion, a principal reason for religious freedom in America, with an official endorsement of atheism, which is not a religion.
