How Did YOU Celebrate National Religious Freedom Day?

Was it by forcing one specific religion down everyone's throat?

Question: how did everyone celebrate National Religious Freedom Day on 1.16.2024? 

Me? I went down to the Arizona Capitol because lawmakers reached out to let me know that a bunch of festivities were planned, and Rep. Teresa Martinez (R-LD16) wanted to celebrate religious overreach freedom:  

“January 16^th is National Religious Freedom Day. 

To celebrate that day we are asking each member to bring their person of faith, clergy, spiritual advisor, priest, pastor, cleric, chaplain, rabbi and bishop to shadow you for the day and be your guest in the Gallery.

 We will be holding a press conference at 11:00am in the Rose Garden to talk about the importance of Religious Freedom and all members are welcome to come.

Please let me know if you have any questions.”

Well, I hate to miss a celebration, and since I AM an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church (ULC), there was no WAY I was going to miss this party. 

So buckle up (again), Secular Fam, because as you’ve likely guessed, the elected evangelical extremists in the AZ House and Senate have some WILD ideas about religious freedom, the founding fathers, and what their jobs are.

I got to the Bad Place Capitol just a tad late to the Joint Legislative Appropriations Committee where they were discussing the budget presented by Governor Hobbs’ staffer, Marge Zylla. The Arizona Agenda did a fabulous job breaking down that discussion, and I highly recommend this publication for consistent, reliable coverage of Arizona current events. 

National Religious Freedom Day kicked off with a press conference in the Rose Garden. There was one camera there (not sure who they were repping), a bunch of religious leaders (mostly Christian/Jewish from what I could tell), and about a dozen or so legislators from the House and Senate (all of them were members of the Republican party except for two: Reps Alma {D-LD20} and Consuelo {D-LD21} Hernandez). 

There were about a dozen or so people hanging around to watch the festivities, and there were people at a booth with the name “North Valley Baptist Church” printed on the canopy, handing out free bibles. I looked into this church, and it appears to be your standard evangelical church, and members are expected to believe all the things you’d expect from this type of church. Additionally, this church seems to be responsible for bringing a weekly bible study and free lunch to elected officials at the Capitol. 

Things kicked off with Rep Martinez going over the agenda for the day, promoting the bible giveaway, and offering free prayers from clergy to anyone who was interested. 

Man, this was NOT what I would call a celebration. The first speaker of the day was none other than House Speaker, Ben Toma (R-LD27). As you may already know, Ben Toma is running for Congress in the crowded field that is the CD8 race. Maybe that’s why his LD27 senate counterpart J6 Insurrectionist, CD8 Congressional Hopeful, Fake Elector, Arizona’s Biggest Manbaby, AND Mama Fratelli Look Alike, Senator Anthony Kern (R-LD27)

decided to skip the festivities. Only God knows I guess. 

Anyhoo…Speaker Toma blamed his unbridled blurring of religion and government on his childhood. He was born in Romania and his family was persecuted for their Christian faith, so now I guess he wants to shove it down all of our throats as the architect of the greatest voucher grift expansion in the nation. Cool, cool…he said that actual freedom and religious freedom go hand-in-hand (whatever that means), and then started talking about “unbridled” COVID restrictions and how people could go to Walmart but not church. He asserted that for legislators, it was far more important to allow people to go to church than go to Walmart.  

It was weird that he was talking about public health recommendations from like, three years ago, but it’s so infrequent that this deeply unserious group of elected officials make sense, I think I’m maybe just numb to it now. 

Brother Toma essentially said that his faith is more important than anyone else’s health, and touted his sweeping religious freedom bill that was passed in 2022. 

Rep Martinez came back up to the microphone to let everyone know that keeping religion and government separate isn’t a thing (!!!!) and went on to introduce her “brother” (from another mother), Quang Nguyen (R-LD1). 

Rep Nguyen, who is from Vietnam, said that the communist regime there had essentially eradicated religion and that because of that, churches sit mostly empty. He also promised that as the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, anything that comes across his desk that he perceives to be anti-religious will be “dead on arrival.” He spoke about how his friends in Vietnam cannot worship openly insinuating that Christians in the US are also facing this same kind of persecution. I was following along until this part about persecution since, you know…he said this on public property, 50 feet away from a church booth that was handing out bibles, in front of a government building where overtly Christian invocations are uttered on a daily basis 👀👀👀…

Gaslighting at its finest, Secular Fam! Next, Rep Martinez introduced two members of the legislature who are both also members of the clergy, Rep David Marshall (R-LD7), and Rep Lupe Diaz (R-LD20).  

Rep Lupe Diaz chose to read excerpts from A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson in 1779. Though these deeply unserious legislators like to pretend that our founding fathers were devout Christians, hellbent on making us a Christian nation, it’s just not true. Most of the founding fathers were deists, and the Oxford Dictionary defines “deism” as an “intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.” 

Remember, this country was founded nearly 100 years before Darwin began publishing his scientific findings. While Jefferson and others thought there may have been some kind of supernatural intervention to justify the creation of the universe, they certainly didn’t believe that some bearded dude in the sky was watching our every move and/or intervening in human affairs. 

For Rep Diaz to twist the words of Jefferson and only use excerpts from his writings that serve his Christian nationalist ideologies totally tracks. From MTG, to Boebert, to Speaker Mike Johnson, alllll the way down to the Arizona State Legislature, this has become their favorite talking point: We are a Judeo-Christian nation. However, it’s simply not true. Make no mistake: Jefferson believed in secular government, secular education, and that no one - not even the religion in the majority - should ever create laws using religion to infringe on the rights of others. 

Rep Martinez was up next and talked about how she’s been planning to “bring god into the legislative process [!!!!!]” since September. She then brought up the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel to introduce Rep Alma Hernandez (D-LD20) to get the “Jewish perspective.” For those of you who don’t know, Rep Hernandez consistently scores pretty low on our annual Secular Scorecard. She’s a staunch Zionist, and co-sponsored the bill mandating a moment of silence in public schools back in 2022. 

Rep Hernandez shared her family’s history of religious persecution and how that motivates her to actually stand with members of the Freedom Caucus craft legislation that chips away at the wall separating religion and government.

Rep Hernandez invited a rabbi to the mic, and he asserted that in the US, we’re guaranteed “freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” 

He accurately described many ways that Jewish people have been persecuted throughout history, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he said people like me have no right to be free from religion. 

Rep Martinez came back up to the mic to brag about the many religions in attendance: Catholic, Baptist, LDS, Jewish. So much diversity. 

She then proceeded to close out the press conference, reminding folks that they had free bibles and drive-by prayer services. She then asked Rep Marshall to close the event with a prayer. I don’t know much about Rep Marshall, but you can check out his website. You’ll find he ticks all the Christian nationalist boxes. Rep Marshall is an Air Force veteran, retired cop, and an ordained pastor. His issues on his main page include: 

☑️2nd Amendment

☑️First Responders 

☑️Election Integrity

☑️pArEnTaL RiGhTs

☑️Life

☑️Religious Liberty

☑️Border Security

Since “life” is an important issue to him, I can’t wait to see how he plans on improving the lives of all Arizonans, especially members of our most vulnerable communities.

His prayer had a kind of Revelations vibe and he invoked Jesus’ name a couple times.

Next, Rep Martinez asked if anyone had questions, and a woman in the crowd raised her hand. She said something about how the speakers talked about religious “persecution” during COVID restrictions, but those restrictions haven’t been in place for a few years. She asked how religious freedoms are being threatened today? Rep Martinez immediately responded:

“I don’t know. I'll be honest. I don't know if religious freedom rights are, you know, are being trampled. I feel by the fact that people want to shame us and believing in god. People want us to stifle our praise and our joy toward him and I think the people are just uncomfortable with it. I don't think that any of us in this community would stand for closing the church, a synagogue, any kind of house of worship. So I think we're on a good footing. But I do feel that we're going to have to be a little bit brave moving forward to take back some of that pride and being able to show that we will not be trampled on again.”

The woman followed up and mentioned that Jesus would probably not behave the way many of his followers did during the pandemic, and Rep Martinez responded again, saying: 

“Our individual rights and how we congregate with each other? If somebody is fragile and they want to stay home or they want to wear a mask, I think that's fine. Don’t go to a rally. If you're a little weaker or your health is a little questionable…maybe you shouldn't be around people. I was horribly, horribly sick and one of the things I thought you know, even though I feel better, I'm going to stay home because I don't know that I want to be around people right now. We have to have individual rights and we have to take responsibilities…[t]hat does not mean that we should stop being able to socialize with each other and so, you know, for the government to come and say ‘everybody should mask up,’ what's next? ‘Everybody should get a tattoo? Everybody should get a chip?’ At some point, we have to say no and so you know again we have to be very very careful because the separation and state a lot of people think it's to protect the government from God. No, it's to protect the people from the government so they can worship the way they want to.”

There is so much to unpack here. First, she essentially admitted that she didn’t know how her rights were being trampled because they aren’t. Like I said, this circus happened on public property, outside a government building, where daily they open the business of running the state with an overtly (usually Christian) religious invocation. 

She then essentially said that she (and many, MANY others) won’t be bothered by being concerned about the medically fragile or most vulnerable amongst us. And as I was writing this up, I found this meme that sums up how today’s “Christians” view their savior: 

The press conference ended, and a little bit later, it was time for the House floor session. It just happened to be “Credit Union” day at the Capitol on January 16th, so there were a bunch of credit union people milling about. They were all wearing gold and blue scarves, and at first, I thought they were religious stoles. Many of them were up in the gallery when the National Religious Day of Prayer proclamation was read, and I watched them to gauge their reactions. 

I could tell that for many, it was their first time at the Bad Place Capitol, and I observed how many had super-confused looks on their faces, what with all the god-bothering happening in a government building. I was graciously invited by Rep Nancy Gutierrez to shadow her, and she announced my presence in the gallery. “Jeanne Casteen is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, the Executive Director of Secular Coalition for AZ, and a staunch advocate for Religious Freedom and the separation of religion and government.”

Several of the credit union people looked at me and some were nodding as they were clapping in my general direction. As I was leaving, someone came up to me and asked if it was always so religious at the Capitol, and I shared the harsh reality with them. 

I gave them my card, and I can only hope that this day will haunt them enough that they will get more engaged in local politics. 

And that’s what all of this is about, Secular Fam. These folks think that the four religions mentioned by Rep Martinez (Catholic, Baptist, LDS, Jewish) can insert their beliefs into our everyday lives through harmful policies and laws. 

Remember, this is no longer about the teachings of Christ or anyone else. For these Christian nationalists, it’s all about power and control. 

This is why we need your voice! Volunteer, become a member, support a candidate, or run for office. And if you haven’t already, upgrade to a paid Substack subscription. Until next time, Secular Fam.