GOP leaders are desperately trying to stir up controversy by claiming the Biden administration used taxpayer dollars to spread godlessness

May 23, 2024

I first published this article last year, but a recent update shows that Republicans are still making a grave mistake, so I’m reposting it with vital updates.

Republican leaders are literally putting atheists’ lives in danger, in what is likely a desperate attempt to excite their base over culture war issues before November.

Last August, GOP members of congress publicized information that had, for over a year, been a closely guarded secret. There’s no telling what could happen if more detailed information falls into the wrong hands.

On Wednesday, the same Republicans repeated their claim that the State Department “sought to promote atheism overseas under the guise of ‘religious freedom.’”
Why the U.S. government is protecting the religious freedom of atheists

To make sense of this, you have to go back to April of 2021, when the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor announced that it would be offering one or two grants totaling $500,000 to groups that wanted to fund a project to “support Religious Freedom globally.”

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) was specifically meant to help people often branded as apostates in parts of South/Central Asia or Middle East/North Africa.

(Follow above article link to view photos/PDFs that accompany this article.)

Examples of possible projects listed on the application included legal rights advocacy (to protect non-theists in majority-religious nations), journalism (to promote dialogue between religion/non-religious people), and increasing the capacity to document abuses of religious freedom.

None of the money was earmarked for promoting or advancing atheism.

It was always about helping atheists who may face obstacles as a result of what they believe.

Let me say that again: This money was meant to advance the U.S.-backed cause of religious freedom. The money helps people regardless of their views. If religious minorities face persecution anywhere, our nation has decided it’s worthwhile to help them out as best we can. It’s an extremely noble cause.

As we’ve seen repeatedly in the Freedom of Thought Report released by Humanists International each year, atheists are uniquely targeted in countries where they are in the minority, with punishments including prison time and execution.

All of this was explained in the original funding announcement:

[The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor’s] goal is to ensure everyone enjoys religious freedom, including the freedom to dissent from religious belief and to not practice or adhere to a religion. By not adhering to a predominant religious tradition, many individuals face discrimination in employment, housing, in civil and criminal proceedings, and other areas especially in the context of intersectional identities. DRL’s objective is to combat discrimination, harassment and abuses against atheist, humanist, non-practicing and non-affiliated individuals of all religious communities by strengthening networks among these communities and providing organizational training and resources.

That last sentence may be a bit confusing because it suggests the objective is to help atheists as opposed to any religious group, but that is just DRL’s objective with this particular call for grant proposals. The bureau’s overall goal is much broader.

It’s not like promoting religious freedom for atheists is the only item on DRL’s wishlist, either. They’ve offered funding to combat antisemitism online, to promote religious freedom in (majority Buddhist) Burma and (majority Muslim) Bangladesh, to assist freedom of expression in Morocco, and so many other worthy efforts.

Regardless of your feelings about the U.S. government, we should all be glad our country supports these causes. If we really care about religious freedom, then helping religious (and non-religious) minorities in other countries is paramount to advancing our overall goals.

But conservatives couldn’t get past the idea that the Biden administration was using taxpayer money to advance atheism overseas, no matter how wrong that idea was.
Republicans began weaponizing the policy in 2022

In June of 2022, well over a year after the call for this particular grant proposal was first announced, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) chairman, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, trashed the entire thing and wrote it off as an attempt to “promote atheism worldwide”… which, as I explained above, it was not.

In a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Banks and 14 other members of Congress claimed the government was working to “empower” atheists—an act they clearly believed was anti-Christian.

We are writing to express our grave concern that the State Department is using appropriated funds to support atheism and radical, progressive orthodoxy across the world.

…

… As an initial matter, therefore, we would like to know what other United States government programs supported with appropriated funds are being used either to encourage, inculcate, or to disparage any official belief system – atheist, humanist, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise. It is one thing for the Department to be tolerant and respectful of a wide range of belief systems, and to encourage governments to respect the religious freedom interests of their citizens. It is quite another for the United States government to work actively to empower atheists, humanists, non-practicing, and non-affiliated in public decision-making. Any such program – for any religiously-identifiable group – in the United States would be unconstitutional.

…

… This would be analogous to official State Department promotion of religious freedom “particularly for Christians” in China, with the express goal being to build a corresponding missionary network. Obviously, this goal that would never pass constitutional muster and would be derided by radical leftist bureaucrats in your agency as completely out-of-bounds. So why is this atheist NOFO [Notice of Funding Opportunity] not viewed with similar objection?

The argument may have sounded reasonable… until you looked more closely. Banks argued that this funding promoted atheism in a way that was illegal, and that this was analogous to promoting religious freedom for Christians in China, which would NEVER EVER happen.

Except it does happen.

All the time.

And anyone who looked at the other projects promoted by the agency would know that. Banks neglected to mention how the DRL has, in fact, done exactly what he said they wouldn’t do.

In a similar call for grant proposals to promote religious freedom in Afghanistan, the agency literally mentioned the importance of helping “Shia Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, and others.” A different call for expanding religious tolerance in Mozambique pointed out the prevalence of “religiously motivated discrimination among the various Christian faiths practiced in northern Mozambique.” Another call for proposals to support religious equality in Bangladesh highlighted how the “government sometimes fails to hold accountable the perpetrators of mob violence against minority Hindu, Christian, Ahmadi, and Humanist communities.”

All of those are problems. All of those demand our attention. If the United States can assist in protecting religious freedom in places where it is under attack, no matter who’s under attack, it’s a worthy goal.

What Banks was doing was cherry-picking one proposal out of many—one that assisted atheists specifically—and claimed it was actually a government endorsement of godlessness. It was nothing like that. Either Banks doesn’t know how to read, no one in his office knows how to Google, or they’re all completely incompetent.

So why would he do that? I would argue this had nothing to do with defending the Constitution. This letter was all about stoking the Culture Wars and angering white evangelicals who would never take the time to dig into the details. I feel comfortable saying that because Banks, in that same letter, also denounced Black Lives Matter and “Critical Race Theory,” slammed abortion rights, and equated atheism with “Marxism and communism.”

He was never trying to make sense. He was just throwing shit at the wall to see if any of it would stick. He wanted the headlines.

And right-wing propagandists gave it to him. Here’s a headline from FOX later that day:

On a side note, the letter said atheism and humanism were “official belief systems,” therefore any defense of them was, by definition, unconstitutional. I don’t buy that argument at all; promoting freedom for non-religious minorities is not synonymous with endorsing atheism. But that specific line included a strange footnote:

You might think that tweet from the American Humanist Association said something like “Humanism is an official belief system” because why else would he link to it? But no! That’s not what it said! Not even close. This is the tweet Banks linked to:

That was an old tweet referring to anti-trans comments made by Richard Dawkins. What did that have to do with Humanism being a “belief system”? No clue. Banks just tossed it in there, I assume, because he wasn’t counting on anyone to closely read his letter.

In any case, the letter included a handful of specific questions the Republicans wanted answer to. They boiled down to these, which I’m paraphrasing:

Who got the money?

How much did they get?

What will these groups be doing with the money?

There were also questions designed specifically for the MAGA crowd, asking why the State Department wanted to “promote radical work organizations abroad” and why they would be “promoting a belief system” that represented a minority in the U.S. (To be clear, there’s no reason to believe anything “radical” was happening, and promoting religious freedom obviously means promoting the freedom of religious minorities.)

If you set aside the MAGA questions, there were legitimate ones in the bunch. I mean, I also wanted to know who got the money and what it was being used for.

(I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of State nearly two years ago to get those answers. As of this writing, I still haven’t received a response.)
Republicans couldn’t get answers, so they continued weaponizing the policy

That letter from Rep. Banks was sent out in June of 2022.

Two months later, in August, he sent a follow-up letter noting that “no responses have been provided thus far.” Banks also pointed out that constituents had reached out to his committee’s members demanding answers… without mentioning his own role in stoking the fire in right-wing media.

Since we sent our letter, many of our constituents have reached out with concerns not only about the State Department’s promotion of atheism, but also about its apparent promotion of “humanism”—an official belief system---as well as the State Department’s promotion of other radical, divisive, and destructive cultural policies. Americans deserve to know why the State Department is committed to spreading atheism abroad, and which foreign, anti-religious groups are receiving their tax dollars.

The second letter also called on the State Department to preserve all documents connected with this grant program (even though there was no reason to think those documents were being destroyed).

Why wouldn’t the State Department give answers to these members of Congress?

Think about that for a moment because it’s not hard to come up with a plausible answer. It’s entirely possible that telling the public where the money was going could put atheists in danger. The last thing you’d want to do is announce an ongoing plan intended to help people whose beliefs paint a target on them.

The Republicans didn’t seem to care. They wanted answers. And if they couldn’t get them, they wanted to treat the State Department as if it was pursuing some rogue liberal agenda.

In February of 2023, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Mike McCaul entered into the picture. The Texas Republican sent his own letter to the State Department (and passed it along to the National Review).

“I do not take lightly the plight that some non-believers face in coercive environments,” McCaul wrote, before falsely suggesting that the State Department was “promoting a specific secular agenda.”

Without more information—which has been requested by my colleagues in Congress but never supplied by the Department—about other U.S. government support being offered to adherents of various religious faiths, I have no choice but to assume those groups are not receiving the same privileged attention and funding as atheists. 

Why are we treating atheists better than Christians, wondered the Christian Nationalist who sits in a Congress that’s nearly 90% Christian.

That claim, of course, was bullshit. He didn’t need “more information” from the State Department. He could’ve done what I did: search the other NOFO announcements.

Here’s one meant to promote religious tolerance in Nigeria. And here’s one intended to help “marginalized racial and ethnic communities in Europe.” And here’s one to address “severe violations of religious freedom” around the globe. See? Easy.

The point is that other groups get attention, too. There was one application to help atheists. There were plenty of others to help protect religious freedom in other situations, for members of other religious groups. Just as there should be.

McCaul’s letter appeared to be written by someone who had no knowledge of what this program was, or how it worked, or what the broader goal was. And yet he demanded specific answers… even though publicizing those answers could put people in harm’s way. (He could have requested that the State Department give him those answers if and only if it was safe to do so… but there was no such caveat in his letter.)

Naturally, Rep. Banks celebrated having another Republican demanding the intel:

In a statement to National Review, Banks thanked McCaul for taking up the investigation “after months of stonewalling from the Biden administration.”

“The House Republican majority will not tolerate the unconstitutional and harmful funding of atheism abroad,” he continued. “Americans believe in free exercise of religion, not state-supported atheism, and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for this anti-American program.”

There’s nothing “anti-American” about promoting religious freedom. But MAGA Republicans seized on the opportunity to paint the Biden administration as being pr-atheist.
Republicans finally got a response… and acted irresponsibly

Last August, Rep. McCaul (along with GOP Reps. Chris Smith and Brian Mast) once again announced that the State Department was stonewalling them and they wanted answers. Nothing had really changed, so that could have been yet another attempt at getting news coverage at a time when the Republican Party was trying to draw attention away from Donald Trump’s alleged crimes.

But there was a revelation in that letter that we had not seen before.

McCaul noted that the State Department had responded to him in June—on two separate occasions—but he wasn’t satisfied with all the answers.

After nearly six months of silence, on June 8, 2023, the Department purported to explain the implementation of the NOFO but, in so doing, raised new questions. Then, on June 20, 2023, the Department finally produced a batch of documents related to the programs that were funded under the NOFO. This production, however, failed to answer many of the Committee’s previous questions and has brought to light additional concerns regarding the Department’s grant review process.

If the letter just ended there, fine. The Republicans and the State Department could continue going back and forth for a while, and maybe it’d get another headline in conservative media, and most Americans would never really care.

Instead, McCaul inadvertently revealed at least one organization that had received money from the State Department’s grant: Humanists International.
Why are Republicans putting this in writing?!

A footnote in his letter added that Humanists International’s application said, “We will use our existing structures for dissemination and monitoring of grants to make available two sub-grants to member organizations in Sri Lanka and Nepal.” (The group, in essence, promised to give the money to two member groups in those countries and monitor them using systems they already have in place.)

McCaul was furious because those member groups have an explicit interest in promoting Humanism… however, there’s no reason to think the grant money was used for that purpose. Still, McCaul alleged that, by working with Humanists International, the State Department was “publicly negating the Department’s claim of neutrality.” (That was a lie.)

The State Department must have also said a constitutional review of their grant—which Republicans demanded—was unnecessary because humanism isn’t a religion. McCaul claimed it was and that the courts have treated it as such… but this was all a philosophical debate that got away from the bigger picture. He was angry that the application said the money would be used to “promote the positive aspects of humanism and other ethical non-religious worldviews” because he equated that with religious proselytizing, which is absurd.

Finally, McCaul pointed out that Humanists International worked closely with the American Humanist Association, a group that has fought for church/state separation in a number of contentious legal battles… as if the association itself should be a black mark on the group.

Far from advancing religious freedom, AHA often takes actions which are antithetical to the idea of religious freedom. HI’s close association with AHA speaks volumes about the true objectives of HI, and should be of grave concern to the Department. 

Again, just pure bullshit right there. Promoting church/state separation helps strengthen religious freedom, not destroy it. McCaul even cited the AHA referring to attendees of the National Prayer Breakfast as “Christian Nationalists” as evidence the AHA is anti-Christian. (The label absolutely fits.) He was using a misleading right-wing talking point to tarnish two organizations that were actually advancing our nation’s goals.

We still didn’t know how much money Humanists International received, if they were the only recipients of the money, and how that money was being used. It’s possible we won’t know those answers until after the programs are completed and the safety of everyone involved can be guaranteed.

But rather than keep that information closely guarded, McCaul just blurted it all out.

He also mentioned that there were training sessions held in Kathmandu, Nepal in early 2023… which is the kind of information that could be dangerous if religious zealots were able to trace who attended it.

His letter ended with a new set of pointless questions for the State Department. Among them, he wanted to know if they “view Atheism and Humanism as religions,” specifics about the Establishment Clause “training slides” used by the Department, and whether the Department was sufficiently concerned about the American Humanist Association.

It was just a giant list of pointless requests meant to tie the State Department’s hands in a game it couldn’t possibly win.
Why the hell were Republicans revealing those details?!

It was—and still is—absolutely appalling that the chairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (McCaul); Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations (Smith); and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability (Mast) released those details with no concern about why the State Department may have wanted to keep them close to its chest.

Atheists in Sri Lanka and Nepal face serious danger. According to Humanists International’s Freethought of Thought Report, “blasphemy” is punishable with a prison sentence and religious instruction is mandatory in most schools. There are very few safe spaces for non-religious people to interact, much less talk about their beliefs in public. Humanists International was trying to assist them, a risky endeavor that requires careful planning.

These Republican morons were so obsessed with the ridiculous notion that Christians are persecuted in the U.S. that they were willing to blow up the entire project in order to score headlines in conservative media outlets and win a few seconds on FOX News’ primetime shows.

It was completely irresponsible and perfectly on-brand for the GOP.
What’s happening now

This is where we were at as of last August. But now, with the general election coming into focus and very few people paying attention to this desperate plea for attention, the same Republicans are trying once again to make this a salient issue.

On Wednesday, McCaul, Mast, and Smith sent another letter to the State Department—to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Verma—demanding more answers. It seems that the State Department responded to their previous letters, but not to the Republicans’ satisfaction. (Because, of course, they never wanted to be satisfied. They just wanted a sword to hang over the department’s head.)

Misleadingly referring to the department’s “new atheism innovation,” the Republicans claim government officials lied to them by talking about how the funds were “used to support international religious freedom programs globally.”

That is obviously true… but because the State Department didn’t say they were funding atheism, which they were not, the Republicans are calling it “obfuscation and denial”:

There is no mention of non-religious minority populations, much less of promoting atheism or humanism, which as you know was carried out as part of at least one grant award that followed from the CN. Thus, from the earliest juncture, the Department may not have been truthful about its plans. 

The letter also points to a response the State Department sent in April in which they allegedly expressed “deep concern” with the programing and promised to “pursue appropriate accountability measures.” (Without knowing the context of those statements, it’s not clear what the State Department might be worried about.)

The Republicans then spend multiple paragraphs insisting the funds were used to promote atheism while quoting the State Department saying otherwise. “Nobody had any Establishment Clause issues,” one official told the Republicans about the funds. The reason the official said that was because the State Department had already seen the training materials that were being used to implement the Humanists’ program.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Verma attested to that in March when he testified in front of Mast’s committee:

Mr. Chairman, I've actually looked at this. I've looked at the grant. I've looked at the materials. That's not what the grant is for and that's not what the work would be for, and frankly, we would never authorize such a grant to any organization to promote any kind of religion.

As the Ranking Member discussed, this was actually to fulfill a requirement that this committee put forward to defend people who are being persecuted for their beliefs. Governments across the world, as you know, are cracking down, can torture people, lock people up, for their religious belief…

In their letter, the Republicans call that a lie, saying that “Legal counsel for the grantee uncovered in a matter of weeks what the Department obfuscated, misrepresented, and denied for years.”

What did the Humanists uncover, that the Republicans are treating as some huge bombshell?

We’re told that the training slides reviewed by the State Department were not the ones actually used in the training. The actual slides, the Republicans say, “are damning.” Damning because it’s apparently proof that the State Department is more interested in promoting atheism than protecting religious minorities.

… despite all of the evasions by the Department, it is now plain that the grant promoted atheism and expanded atheist networks abroad, while neglecting Christian and Muslim minorities who, unlike atheists and humanists, face real persecution in the relevant parts of South Asia.

(Christian and Muslim minorities in certain parts of South Asia undoubtedly face persecution. But so do atheists. In Bangladesh, for example, several atheists were literally targeted and assassinated over their beliefs.)

With that prelude, you might think it’s a good time for the Republicans to reveal what they found.

What “damning” information did they uncover?! What proof do they have that the actual training slides were used to turn people into atheists using U.S. taxpayer dollars?! What evidence is there that the funds are not being used as intended?

It would be great to see that information… but we’re never shown anything.

The letter attempted to spike the football but fumbled before getting to the end zone.

For all we know, the State Department was provided “Training Slides Version 1.0” but the grant recipients actually used Version 1.1 which just had some small changes. For all we know, those changes inform atheists how they can safely talk to each other and form communities without painting a target on themselves.

Without knowing what the Republicans found, or what those slides showed, or the full context of those presentations, we have no clue what the Republicans are getting bent out of shape about. And given their track record, there’s no reason to take them at their word. This is all too similar to Rep. James Comer’s failed attempts to impeach Biden—they came to their conclusion before they ever looked at the evidence, and now they’re in too deep to admit any mistakes.

Even if there was a rogue slide in the presentation, the State Department already said they would “pursue appropriate accountability measures,” so what more do the Republicans want?

We know the answer: They want headlines that say an “atheism grant” was given out by the Biden Administration.

And guess what? They got what they wanted.

If the funding was not being used as intended, then there should obviously be consequences. There’s no proof that’s happening. Not in this letter, anyway. There are only insinuations of wrongdoing. There’s smoke but no fire. Given how these Republicans have already spilled the beans on a program that should have been under wraps until it was over, it’s telling that they’re now hiding whatever information they have that could prove their case.

Needless to say, the State Department isn’t promoting atheism. Atheists in certain parts of the world really are persecuted for their non-belief, as are religious minorities, and our country has an obligation to help them all to the best of our abilities. Not to promote their beliefs but to promote religious freedom and freedom of thought for everyone.

For Republicans to act like this program is broken because atheists received the same kind of grant that several religious groups have received—in far greater amounts—is nothing more than an attempt to stir up conservatives who will never look into the details.

UPDATE: American Atheists president Nick Fish has released a statement condemning the GOP’s “smear campaign”:

… The fact is that atheists, humanists, and other nonreligious people face state-sanctioned violence across the globe, including in South Asia, because of their religious minority status. The committee’s politically motivated attacks minimize these threats and put the lives of nonreligious people, including those who participated in the program, at risk.

For years, State Department grants have helped protect a variety of religious groups from this kind of persecution abroad, particularly in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and South and Central Asia. Humanists, atheists, and other nonreligious people need — and deserve — access to the same protections. 

We are proud to support programs that promote democracy, pluralism, and universal respect for Freedom of Religion or Belief and ensure that protecting those values remains a core objective of American foreign policy. 

We commend the Biden Administration’s State Department for advancing an inclusive and pluralistic approach to their Freedom of Religion or Belief work, including grants aimed at promoting religious freedom in Afghanistan inclusive of “Shia Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, and others,”  for expanding religious tolerance in Mozambique given the prevalence of “religiously motivated discrimination among the various Christian faiths practiced in northern Mozambique,” and for supporting religious equality in Bangladesh because the “government sometimes fails to hold accountable the perpetrators of mob violence against minority Hindu, Christian, Ahmadi, and Humanist communities.” 

The fact that none of these grants drew the ire of the Committee makes it clear that their selective outrage about purported Establishment Clause violations is entirely about their animus toward atheists and humanists — and a desire to attack the Biden Administration — and not any genuine concern about the work of Humanists International or fealty to the Constitution. 

Religious freedom is a universal human right. It is not, as Reps.  McCaul, Mast, and Smith seem to think, a cudgel to be wielded against disfavored groups for political gain.