Dear Friend,
On Thursday, our partners at Humanists International released the 2025 Freedom of Thought Report, the most comprehensive global survey of state-sanctioned discrimination against the nonreligious. American Atheists contributed substantial research and analysis, helping document how public policies and court decisions are eroding the separation of church and state in the United States.
The findings are sobering. In 65 countries, you could be imprisoned, or worse, for blasphemy. Around the world, governments are increasingly grounding their political legitimacy and justifying the curtailing of rights in dominant religious identity — promoting uniformity as strength, religious pluralism as weakness, and narrowing the definition of who belongs.
The report concludes that even the U.S., long considered a model for freedom of thought, now shows “systematic discrimination” across all measured categories. “Under the current administration, the country has experienced an unprecedented backsliding of democratic rights and fundamental freedoms. Those that criticize the government’s policies — and the conservative Christian ideology which underpin them — are frequently labelled as ‘anti-American.’”
This is how authoritarians consolidate power. Repression doesn’t always begin with a dramatic coup. It advances through legislation, litigation, elections, and escalating rhetoric that treats equity as a threat and diversity as decay.
Consider the language coming from the highest levels of our own government: “Like nothing we’ve seen before,” is one of the president’s favorite phrases, repeated throughout this week’s State of the Union Address. Whether it is a boast or a threat depends: Are you white? Christian? Sufficiently “manly” (as per page 2, line 16 of this ridiculous Idaho bill)?
A political comeback, a country transformed, a “tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity, and belief in God.” All of it “like nothing we’ve seen before.” These remarks are at once textbook Trumperbole and some of the most honest lines of the night.
Last week, at the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was explicit about the administration’s theocratic agenda. There is, he said, “a direct throughline from the Old and New Testament Christian gospels to the development of Western civilization and the United States of America.” Critics aren’t simply mistaken, they’re “fueled by godless and toxic ideologies, foreign to the Western way of life.” And, “Protecting our culture and our religion from godless ideologies and pagan religions, is not political. It’s biblical.”
Hegseth said that out loud and onstage only a couple days after welcoming Doug Wilson to lead a prayer at the Pentagon. Wilson — an unabashed white Christian Nationalist who defends slavery and opposes women’s suffrage — defended the invitation on his blog, mansplaining to his minions: Attendance was voluntary, so there’s nothing to harp about, you see?
There are many things wrong with Wilson, but being dumb is regrettably not one of them. He gets symbolism. In fact, I’d posit few political groups understand the power of imagery better than white Christian Nationalists. He and Hegseth know that when the might of the U.S. military publicly aligns itself with their once-fringe worldview, they are conferring legitimacy to their belief system and recasting concerns about constitutionality as the overreactions of “swarming harpies.”
That religious nationalists in the U.S. have no need for dogwhistles anymore is as telling as it is troubling. They feel empowered to tell us we don’t belong because, right now, they are empowered — like never before.
Across the country, our State Policy Team is monitoring and weighing in on over 1,500 bills and resolutions, hundreds of which seek to inject Christianity into public schools. All of them — from mandated pledges and devotional periods to school chaplains and Ten Commandments displays — are presented as harmless, patriotic, rooted in “heritage.”
But if lawmakers succeed in reframing these clear entanglements of religion and government as part of U.S. history or so-called “Western values,” what else will they wrap in that language? What other exclusions can be normalized and privileges baptized in the name of “freedom?”
This is how democratic backsliding happens. Dictators don’t always disappear rights overnight. They do always reinterpret, redefine, and redistribute them. It might unfold over decades, as movements learn they can acquire power by sowing fear and manufacturing outrage. In time, the infrastructure becomes ripe for even more extreme factions intent on dominating every aspect of government and society.
We’ve seen this play out in other nations, but not here, not at this level. Slowing the advance of religious nationalism and stopping our slide into authoritarianism will require a proportionate degree of resistance. As the State of the Union counter-programming reminded viewers: Democracy isn’t something we have, but something we do.
Every day, American Atheists does just that — engaging in and defending democracy, defeating unconstitutional legislation, challenging exclusionary policies, and rejecting the narrative that to be American is to be Christian.
If you believe, as we do, that religious freedom is for all of us, I hope you’ll continue to support our work. In the face of unprecedented threats, we nonreligious American need to organize better, speak louder, and litigate smarter. Our defense of secular democracy must be like nothing they’ve seen before.
In solidarity,
Melina Cohen
Director of Strategic Communications & Policy Engagement
Swarming Harpy
American Atheists is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan, nonprofit educational organization that relies on the support of members like you. Contributions are tax-deductible. Our Federal Tax ID Number is 74-2466507.
American Atheists
225 Cristiani Street
Cranford, NJ 07016
United States