American Atheists 535 Park View Drive Park City, Utah 84098-5204 e-mail: callen@atheists.org NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE American Atheists Criticizes Governor's Teaching-About-Religion Program For IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Chris Allen, Utah Director December 16, 1996 Res: (801) 649-7926 Off: (801) 594-2051 American Atheists today criticized the Teaching-About-Religion program being promoted by Governor Leavitt this afternoon at the State Capitol. "The developers of this program are not the fair and diverse bunch they pretend to be," said Mr. Allen. "They are a coalition of religious groups bent on using the public schools to promote religion generally. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the use of the public schools to promote religion generally. U.S. Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, emphasized that point in his August 10, 1995 letter on religion that he sent to all public schools." "American Atheists is not opposed to the concept of teaching about religion," said Allen, "but it has to be taught fairly and objectively and that is extremely difficult to do without discriminating. A program that promotes positive contributions of religion and ignores or gives short shrift to negative impacts is not neutral. I have no doubt that diverse religious leaders can agree on this program, but if the result is simply an advertisement for the religion industry taught in our schools, then we don't have education, we have indoctrination." "We've been watching this program develop for eight years," said Allen. "We were there when Ray Briscoe, a 'researcher' for the LDS church, launched the project on October 27, 1989, and we have been monitoring it ever since. The Williamsburgh Charter, the foundational document of the Freedom Foundation, the curriculum organization being represented by Charles Haynes, is biased and dishonest. That Charter is also signed by a coalition of religious groups and is clearly designed to promote religion generally. Then as now, the perspectives of atheists and other non-religious thinkers is excluded and largely ignored." "American Atheists is concerned that Mr. Briscoe and the teaching-about- religion program are too closely tied to the LDS church and its perspective," said Allen. "The program's flier, 'Religion in the Public School Curriculum', lists the LDS church as a sponsor. When we wrote to the Church for information on the program, we were sent a diatribe by Dallin Oaks (Wall Street Journal, 5/23/90) blasting civil rights groups for trying to stop graduation prayer in the public schools. Three months later, Briscoe himself appeared in the Standard-Examiner (8/19/90) debating in favor of graduation prayer against ACLU attorney Michael O'Brien. Given the recent strong attacks on secularism by Gordon Hinckley, and the Church's written endorsement of many intrusions of religion into government ("America's Religious Heritage", March 9, 1979), American Atheists has no confidence in Mr. Briscoe's ability to conduct a fair and neutral program, and Americans of all persuasions have good reason to question those abilities." "We are also concerned at the expressed intent to use religion to teach values in the public schools," said Allen. "While good values can certainly be taught without religion, you can't use religion to teach values without promoting religion and religious doctrine. It seems clear that all this talk about values from the Governor has just been a smoke screen to sneak religious indoctrination into the schools. How ironic then that the Governor's own commission on values chose to exclude religious values from their list of recommended values for Utah. If the Utah Office of Education wants to avoid law suits against the schools for promoting religion, it had better rethink its plans." Documentation of items referenced above is available by fax on request.