Republicans demanding answers for sleazy scheme by President Joe Biden’s administration that aims to “spread atheism worldwide” are led by Indiana Rep. Jim Banks.
According to Fox News, Banks, the head of the Republican Study Committee, complained in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden about the DRL funding program’s support of atheism and “humanism.”
The group added in a statement, “We are writing to express our deep worry that the State Department is using appropriated funds to foster atheism and radical, progressive orthodoxy throughout the world.
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) of the State Department launched a funding program to advance atheism globally in April 2021. DRL FY20 IRF Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing, and Non-Affiliated Individuals was the official title of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). In South/Central Asia and the Middle East/North Africa, specifically, it established a “competitive” process that would offer funds of up to $500,000 to groups dedicated to the practice and dissemination of atheism and humanism.
To be clear, ‘humanism’ and agnosticism are recognized as valid worldviews. 2 Therefore, as a first step, we are interested in learning about additional US government initiatives supported by allotted funds that serve to promote, inculcate, or denigrate any official belief system, whether it be atheist, humanist, Christian, Muslim, or anything else. It is one thing for the Department to support governments that uphold the rights of their citizens to exercise their religion freely and to be tolerant of a diverse range of belief systems. It is quite another for the American government to actively endeavor to include humanists, atheists, and other non-religious people in public decision-making.
Any similar scheme in the United States – for any religiously identifiable group – would be unconstitutional. We question how such a grant or cooperative agreement program advances the foreign policy objectives of the United States in addition to its legally problematic legal underpinning. We would anticipate that local populations, interest groups, and governments would protest against what any “objective observer” would perceive as “covert” funding from a foreign power intended to upend local religious and cultural relationships if such programs were known to the people of the target countries, it said.
This does not constitute’religious freedom,’ This NOFO prioritizes atheists and humanists above all other potential receivers, much like the others we have analyzed. Such a priority not only contravenes Article VI’s No Religious Test Clause as well as the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of our country’s constitution. The State Department refers to atheists as a distinct religious group in the NOFO, and it also urges the formation of “networks and advocacy groups” for atheists. This would be comparable to the State Department’s stated promotion of religious freedom in China, “especially for Christians,” with the explicit objective of establishing a parallel missionary network.
It goes without saying that this objective would never pass constitutional muster4 and would be criticized as wholly inappropriate by extreme leftist bureaucrats in your organization. Why then does this atheist NOFO not elicit the same response? Americans correctly identify this as a component of your administration’s larger endeavor to spread radical, progressive doctrine abroad. The communist and marxist worldviews are fundamentally atheist. The American Embassy in Germany raised a “Black Lives Matter” banner a few weeks ago.
“This should cause great anxiety among Americans. In addition to the fact that “Black Lives Matter” is still a polarizing and unpopular movement in the United States, 6 the exhibit also appears to be endorsing a particular extreme group. 7 Other recent State Department initiatives include the appointment of a “Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice,” whose role will be to disseminate Critical Race Theory and other progressive ideologies globally, and seeking to lift international abortion prohibitions, they claimed.
Having lost their souls, Demon-crats are looking for companionship on the way to hell.
Of course, they must be stopped, legally if possible, with sticks and stones and tooth and claw if necessary. Personally I think skunks applied liberally would do the trick, though it might seem redundant.
Marxists.
Commie fellow travelers.
Treasonistas.
Idiots.
tell us once more how you and pelosi are catholics. theier is so much i want to say about how low you sink, but you wouldnt understand. nancy is just another drunken snake. all of you will burn in hell for this days work. i cant even feel sorry for what you are. yours is coming, better count the minutes, not much time left. you will burn in hell for this.