Atheist organization rises quickly out of obscurity

MADISON, Wis. — Annie Laurie Gaylor speaks with a soft voice, but her message catches attention: Keep God out of government.

Gaylor has helped take the Freedom From Religion Foundation from obscurity into the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics, with a fast-rising membership and increasing legal clout.

Next week, the group started by Gaylor and her mother in the 1970s to take on the religious right will fight its highest-profile battle when the Supreme Court hears arguments on its lawsuit against President Bush's faith-based initiative.

The court will decide whether taxpayers can sue over federal funding that the foundation believes promotes religion. It could be a major ruling for groups that fight to keep church and state separate.

"What's at stake is the right to challenge the establishment of religion by the government," said Gaylor, 51.

Among its victories, the group has stopped funding for a Milwaukee charity that Bush visited during the 2000 campaign and an Arizona group that preached to children of prisoners.

The case in front of the high court says White House conferences to promote the faith-based initiative turn into unconstitutional pep rallies for religion. The initiative helps religious organizations get government funding to provide social services.

George Washington University law professor Ira Lupu called the Madison-based foundation "by far the most aggressive litigating entity against the faith-based initiative."

Critics say the group imposes such an extreme view of the First Amendment that religious groups can't receive tax dollars even for laudable purposes.

"They are successful in the sense that they have disrupted government funding for faith-based initiatives," said Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religion in the public arena. "But real people with real problems are no longer getting help because of some of their lawsuits."

The group has grown as its legal challenges mount. It claims 8,500 members in 50 states. Members consider themselves freethinkers who form opinions based on reason, not faith.

Gaylor and her husband, Dan Barker, a former fundamentalist minister who turned against religion, are co-presidents. Her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, founded the group in 1978 to counter religious influence in government after clashing with religious leaders over abortion.

Its leaders say the surge in membership reflects a U.S. population that is becoming less religious and growing liberal alarm since Bush's re-election.

"There was a feeling that there was almost a near religious-right takeover of our government and that we better speak up now," Gaylor said.

The American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 estimated that 29 million Americans had no religion, double the number from 1990. The survey, which was conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, estimated that 1.9 million identified themselves as atheist or agnostic.