Tom Waddell is head of the Maine chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) and a periodic Kennebec Journal columnist, wherein he promotes lies and misinformation about the religious heritage of the United States and the First Amendment’s  religion clauses.

He frequently writes that there is a constitutional wall of separation between church and state. There is no such wording in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. The phrase comes from a letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote to Connecticut Baptists in 1802, assuring them that the federal government would not seek to establish a national denomination, which the Baptists feared was the intent of Episcopalians and Congregationalists. Nothing more.

In recent columns Waddell has gone off on “White Christian Nationalists” in particular and the so-called Religious Right in general, as violating the separation of church and state. He complains that taxpayer-funded abused women’s shelters run by the Catholic Church in Philadelphia should not be able to deny admittance to a biological male identifying as female. A simple solution would be for the FFRF to establish their own shelter, then they could admit whoever they wanted.

This is nothing more than partisan Democrat attacks on political views which he disagrees with. If in fact there are White Christian Nationalists in Congress, e.g., Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, where are the Black Christian Nationalists? Isn’t the head of Proud Boys a Black man? And what about the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Evangelicals for Social Action, Evangelicals for Biden, etc., groups on the Religious Left and all expressing liberal Democrat political views.

Apparently the wall of separation doesn’t apply to religious groups Waddell agrees with.

Bob Scheirer

Randolph

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