Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
Sabillasville Elementary School in Maryland held a 50th anniversary celebration last week. For some reason, Bob Kells, pastor at Weller United Methodist Church, was invited to speak to the students. Take a wild guess what happened! If you said, “he invoked the name of God,” then you’re smarter than Principal Kate Krietz, who allegedly had no clue what Kells would say to the students. Officials for the Frederick County Public Schools are now trying to deflect any blame, claiming no one knew this would happen, and refusing to do anything to get to the bottom of the story. Read more
This should be obvious by now: Public universities are not equivalent to private hotel chains. When you stay in a campus hotel room, there’s no reason a Bible should be in your nightstand by default. It may make sense to assume people want one from a business perspective, which is why most private hotels will have one in your room when you arrive, but public schools shouldn’t be making the same mistake. They should keep bibles available for customers who want them — and that’s it. Northern Illinois University is the latest school to learn that the hard way. When the school’s Secular Student Alliance invited the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Annie Laurie Gaylor to speak, she stayed in the Holmes Student Center and noticed the problem immediately. And why wouldn’t she? FFRF has dealt with this problem several times before. Read more
Last month, when more than a dozen candidates were in a battle for five spots on the Cleveland County Board of Education in North Carolina, we learned that all of them wanted prayer at school board meetings. On Monday, they voted to include those prayers at meetings. The weird thing is that they now want to put this issue behind them and refocus on education, as if it was ever okay to put education on the back burner. Read more
