Last fall, I told you about the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s war against Prayer before High School Football Games in DeSoto County, Mississippi, where I presently reside.

Well, now this little group of Athiests is attacking my hometown.

WREG.com reports:

The Freedom from Religion Foundation believes Memphis is one of the worst offenders in the nation, when it comes to the separation of church and state in which the group believes.

The Memphis City Council has opened their meetings with a prayer since 1968.

Some council members say they’ve received complaints from the public about the prayers, but the majority of people in Memphis support it.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation says it doesn’t care how many people support the prayers, they believe it’s in violation of the constitution.

Others however point out the phrase never appears in the Constitution.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation says they get complains about prayer at government meetings from around the country, but they consider Memphis City Council to be one of the worst.

“Exclusively Christian prayers, goody bags to the ministers, giving them all kinds of attention at the meetings, turning it into kind of religious ritual,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor with the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The Foundation believes some people are made to think they must pray also, or council won’t consider their requests.

Council Member Myron Lowery disagrees, “That has no effect at all on any of the decision we make or the deliberations we make. We accept things based on their merit.

Lowery says he thinks the Memphis City Council is a target, because it’s been doing it for so long.

He also says members promote diversity through the prayers and invite priests, rabbis and Islamic leaders to take part.

Regardless, the allegations could cost the city.

Lowery says he hopes the city’s attorneys will handle the case, but if they have to bring in outside attorneys to fight the suit, it could cost tax payer money.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation says they have not filed the lawsuit against the city yet, but they expect to very soon.

So, who are these people?

Discoverthenetworks.com tells us about them in great detail:

Founded in 1978, the nonprofit, tax-exempt Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) consists of more than 13,000 members and calls itself “the largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) in the United States.” Its mission is “to promote free thought and to keep state and church separate.”

According to FFRF, religion invariably has been a negative force in human societies. “The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion,” the organization says. “… In modern times, the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, for abolition of capital punishment, for women’s right to vote, for death with dignity for the terminally ill, and for the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers [i.e., atheists and agnostics], just as they were the first to call for an end to slavery.”

FFRF promotes its message through a variety of vehicles, including a weekly national radio program; a newspaper titled Freethought Today; a “freethought billboard campaign”; scholarships “for freethinking students”; high-school and college “freethought essay competitions” with cash awards; annual national conventions honoring a “Freethinker of the Year” for state/church activism; and the sale of educational products, bumper-stickers, music CDs, winter solstice greeting cards, and books promoting “freethought.” The Foundation also provides speakers for events and debates on subjects related to religion, and has established a “freethought book collection” at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library.

Most significantly, FFRF initiates lawsuits that center around issues involving religion in the public square. As of mid-2009, the Foundation had filed nearly 30 First Amendment lawsuits over the course of its history. It also “keeps several Establishment law challenges in the courts at all times.”

…In a 1996 lawsuit, FFRF argued that Wisconsin’s observance of Good Friday as a legal holiday violated the First Amendment by “favoring Christianity over other religions or no religion.”

In 2002 the Foundation challenged in court the government’s funding of Faith Works, a Milwaukee organization dedicated to bringing “homeless addicts to Christ.”

In 2005 FFRF filed a federal lawsuit challenging a state-funded fundamentalist Christian prison-ministry program in New Mexico.

In 2006 the Foundation filed yet another federal suit calling for the discontinuance of faith-based prison programs at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That same year, FFRF charged that “the pervasive integration of ‘spirituality’ into health care by the Department of Veteran Affairs … unconstitutionally promotes, advances and endorses religion.”

Other noteworthy FFRF lawsuits have challenged: the display of a manger scene at the entrance of a city-government building; the inclusion of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance; a chaplaincy designed to bring “faith into the workplace” for state workers in Indiana; the display of a shrine to Jesus in a public park in Wisconsin; the presence of playground equipment resembling a biblical Noah’s Ark in another public park; the public financing of nativity pageants and Easter services; public subsidies to religious schools; and the recital of commencement prayers at a major university.

FFRF’s total revenues for 2007 were $2,408,730; its net assets at that time totaled $5,573,153.

The Foundation is led by its co-presidents, Dan Barker and his wife, Annie Laurie Gaylor. Barker was a Christian preacher for 19 years before renouncing his faith in 1984. Gaylor, who earned a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, co-founded FFRC with her mother and the late John Sontarck in 1978. She is author of the books Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So (1981), and Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children (1988). She also edited the 1997 anthology Women Without Superstition: No Gods, No Masters. Today she edits FFRF’s newspaper, Freethought Today, which is published ten times annually.

So, a measly little organization of 13,000 people wants to take away the rights of the 92% of Americans, who believe in God, and  wish to exercise their Freedom of Religion?

Truly a case of, as I’ve labelled it before, “The Tyranny of the Minority”.