Americans for Religious Liberty

PO Box 6656

Silver Spring, MD 20916

301-260-2988

Americans for Religious Liberty: A Short History

Americans for Religious Liberty was founded in the spring of 1982 when the leaders of its two predecessor organizations, the Voice of Reason and the Center for Moral democracy, agreed to a merger. The Voice of Reason had been founded in 1981 in Michigan by Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine, Lynne Silverberg-Master, and others in response to the upsurge of political fundamentalism championed by televangelist Jerry Falwell and others. The Center for Moral Democracy was started around the same time in New York by Edward L. Ericson, leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, the Rev. Bruce Southworth, minister of Community Church (Unitarian Universalist), in New York, and others. Because of their similarity, the two groups were enthusiastic about combining.

The birth of ARL (originally named the Voice of Reason) was marked by a National Summit Conference on Religious Freedom and the Secular State in New York in late March. Featured speakers included Sherwin Wine, Edward Ericson, writer Isaac Asimov, biblical archeology professor Gerald Larue, ACLU attorney Arthur Eisenberg, American Ethical Union director Jean Kotkin, Unitarian Universalist Association board member Donald Field, biologist Ernst Mayr, and former Church & State magazine editor Edd Doerr, who was named executive director of the new organization. Lynne Silverberg-Master became president.

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1982

  • Edward Ericson’s book, American Freedom and the Radical Right, was published.
  • Sherwin Wine addressed audiences in Florida, Missouri, and Illinois. Edward Ericson spoke in Pennsylvania.
  • Executive director Edd Doerr presented testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to appointment to the Commission on Civil Rights of a nominee opposed to abortion rights and in favor of tax aid to sectarian schools.
  • Doerr was a guest on a 3½ hour talk show in Lynchburg, VA, Jerry Falwell’s home base, and for two hours on a popular Washington, D.C., talk show.
  • Doerr was a delegate to the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly and crafted a denominational resolution on religious liberty issues and abortion rights.

1983

  • ARL’s board voted to change the organization’s name from the original Voice of Reason to Americans for Religious Liberty.
  • Cleveland attorney and church-state activist Anne Lindsay was elected president, replacing Lynne Silverberg-Master.
  • ARL was a co-sponsor of the ACLU’s 1983 Bill of Rights Lobby Conference and Free Inquiry magazine’s James Madison conference. ARL’s Doerr was a speaker at the ACLU conference.
  • ARL was active in Texas and Michigan in dealing with creationism and school censorship issues.
  • Doerr debated Moral Majority national secretary Gary Dixon on a Chicago talk show, tangled with Jerry Falwell on a television talk show, and was a guest on other talk shows in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Michigan. He delivered a major address before the John Dewey Society in Detroit and spoke to audiences in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

1984

  • ARL joined amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court in two important church-state cases, Grand Rapids v. Ball (tax aid to church schools) and Wallace v. Jaffree (school prayer).
  • ARL chapters in Michigan sponsored forums on the implications of a national constitutional convention, featuring Sherwin Wine and other speakers.
  • Maury Abraham joined the ARL staff. He was the main organizer of a March 5 rally at the U.S. Capitol opposing President Reagan’s proposed school prayer amendment. Abraham conducted workshops on church-state issues at conferences in Ohio and Washington, D.C., and taught a class on the subject at a Unitarian church in Maryland.
  • ARL called on the Coast Guard to stop allowing ships and crews to participate in denominational religious rites.
  • Executive director Edd Doerr debated Rep. Henry Hyde and economist Walter Berns on a nationally televised program sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.
  • Doerr was a guest (solo) for six hours on KABC radio in Los Angeles and addressed audiences in California, New York, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and Texas.
  • Doerr addressed the Constitution Study Group at the U.S. National Archives on “Religious Liberty in America: A Constitutional Perspective.” He also spoke at a Republican Platform Hearing.
  • Doerr received the Eric M. Steel Award from the Rochester, New York, chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Humanist Pioneer Award from the American Humanist Association, both for his work for church-state separation.

1985

  • Ethicist, author, civil libertarian, and peace activist John M. Swomley was elected president of ARL. Swomley was a speaker at the ACLU biennial conference at Brevard Community College in Florida, and he and ARL board member Sol Gordon were featured speakers at the American Humanist Association conference.
  • ARL joined other organizations in amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court in abortion rights, “equal access,” and tax aid to religious colleges cases.
  • ARL’s Doerr was a guest for three hours on KABC radio in Los Angeles and was interviewed on the ABC and NBC television networks. He was also a guest on talk shows in Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Florida, New York, Oklahoma, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, and Indiana, and addressed audiences in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Florida.
  • ARL’s pamphlet, “Creationism, Evolution, and the Public Schools,” was reprinted in Creation/Evolution, published by the National Center for Science Education.
  • Swomley’s article analyzing “equal access” legislation was published in The School Administrator, published by the American Association of School Administrators.
  • Doerr presented testimony on school vouchers to the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations.

1986

  • ARL and the Anti-Defamation League filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Louisiana creationism case. ARL’s Doerr originated the strategy of having Nobel science laureates sign an amicus brief in the creationism case.
  • Doerr was a plaintiff in an ultimately unsuccessful court challenge to President Reagan’s extending diplomatic recognition to the Holy See. ARL urged Reagan not to replace the departing Holy See ambassador.
  • ARL president John Swomley spoke at a PEARL conference, the Boston University Law School, and the Nebraska Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. He also lectured in Australia. Board member James Wood, Jr., spoke in Beijing, and Doerr in Oslo.
  • ARL co-founder Sherwin Wine spoke on “Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell – The New Strategy of the Religious Right” at an ARL-sponsored meeting in Detroit.
  • ARL’s Doerr addressed audiences in Washington, D.C., Maryland, New York, California, Illinois, and Florida, and was a guest on talk shows in New York, California, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Oregon, Florida, Illinois, Colorado, and Pennsylvania.

1987

  • ARL and 33 other religious and civil liberties groups filed suit in federal court in New York challenging federal and state aid to sectarian private education. The suit, PEARL v. Secretary of Education, challenged remedial services and related programs under Chapter 1 of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It also targeted the constitutionality of a New York statute providing publicly-funded vans and neutral-site leasing, as well as Chapter 2 funds for computer software, audiovisual equipment, library materials and supplies for use on the premises of religious schools.
  • ARL president John M. Swomley published a major study of the First Amendment’s wall of separation concept in his Religious Liberty and the Secular State.
  • ARL opposed the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that his confirmation “would seriously endanger the liberties of Americans well into the next century.” Doerr made 30 appearances on radio, television, and before audiences speaking on the Bork nomination.
  • ARL sponsored the first interdisciplinary conference on the scientific, ethical and legal aspects of fetal personhood and the abortion rights issue. The conference attracted nationally distinguished scientists, ethicists, and theologians. The ARL Distinguished Service Award was presented to Patricia A. Jaworski for her audio documentary challenging the distortions of the anti-choice film, “The Silent Scream.”
  • Scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan were named to the ARL National Advisory Board, as was William F. Schulz, president of Unitarian Universalist Association.
  • ARL joined 18 educational organizations in an amicus brief in the Tennessee textbook case, Mozert v. Hawkins County Public Schools, in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  • ARL joined with the Anti-Defamation League in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging New Jersey’s “silence for prayer” law, Karcher v. May.
  • ARL joined the ACLU of Illinois in amicus briefs challenging a nativity tableau in the Chicago city hall and a prayer room in the Illinois state capitol in Springfield.
  • ARL joined the ACLU of Maryland in challenging invocations and benedictions at the University of Maryland. The case, Barry v. Slaughter, was filed in federal court in Baltimore.
  • ARL joined a wide spectrum of women’s, civil liberties, educational and religious groups challenging federal chastity laws in Bowen v. Kendrick. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review an April 1987 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
  • During 1987, ARL staff (executive director Edd Doerr, associate director Maury Abraham, president John Swomley) gave 55 speeches and lectures before diverse audiences and 58 radio and television appearances.

1988

  • ARL and national ACLU filed suit on February 1 challenging the constitutionality of a congressional appropriation of funds for religious schools in France, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel and the Philippines. The suit, Lamont v. Shultz, was filed in federal district court in New York.
  • ARL publishes executive director Edd Doerr’s book, Religious Liberty in Crisis, an introduction to the major church-state issues of the day.
  • ARL filed an amicus brief in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving religious censorship, Virgil v. School Board of Columbia County, Florida. People for the American Way and 30 other groups joined the coalition effort seeking to overturn a lower federal court ruling which allowed a local school board to remove a textbook anthology for classes because of fundamentalist demands.
  • ARL joined an amicus brief filed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) challenging the Reagan administration’s “gag rules” in the federal public health program. The state of Massachusetts refused to implement the regulations, which prohibited federal funds from family planning programs if abortion information was available. The case, Massachusetts v. Bower, was applied after a district court ordered the state to enforce the regulations.
  • ARL joined with NOW and NARAL in a Third Circuit Court of Appeals case, Northeast Women’s Center v. McMonagle, which sought to protect women who chose to avail themselves of abortion services at clinics. Violence was becoming increasingly common at abortion clinics.

1989

  • ARL filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case challenging a Missouri law which bars all public funding of abortions, bans privately paid abortions in public hospitals, prohibits publicly paid health care professionals and counselors from providing information to clients, and defines human life as beginning at conception. The ARL brief, signed by 167 distinguished scientists, including 12 Nobel laureates, was praised by NOW as the strongest brief filed in the case.
  • ARL cosponsored the April 9 March for Women’s Lives on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
  • ARL criticized the Smithsonian Institution for stacking the deck in favor of accommodationism in church-state questions and showing favoritism toward “moral majoritarian” and sectarian special interests in its nine-week program of lectures on “Religion in American Life.”
  • ARL published Abortion Rights and Fetal Personhood, a collection of addresses from the ARL conference on abortion rights and refuting the unscientific claims propounded by anti-choice activists.
  • ARL filed amicus briefs in four cases at the U.S. Supreme Court level. They were: Board of Education v. Mergens, dealing with school-sponsored religious meetings; Turnock v. Ragsdale, challenging an Illinois statute restricting abortion rights by imposing excessive requirements on clinics and drastically increasing the cost of first trimester abortions, as well as interfering in physician-patient relationships; Hodgson v. Minnesota and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, which involved restrictions on abortion access.
  • ARL opposed attempts to dilute the anti-discrimination language in the pending child care legislation in Congress. ARL joined more than three dozen other groups in affirming that “public funds must not be spent on any program that is in any way discriminatory along religious, racial, ideological or gender lines. The First Amendment principle of separation of church and state must be carefully observed.”
  • ARL protested compulsory prayer in the U.S. Marine Corps. ARL’s letter to Marine Corps Commandant General A.M. Gray, Jr., reminded the military that the first Amendment applies to military personnel as it does to all American citizens. ARL reminded General Gray that a 1972 U.S. Supreme court decision, Laird v. Anderson, had reaffirmed this.
  • Writer Albert J. Menendez joined the ARL staff as a contributing editor to the newsletter.
  • In 1989 ARL staff addressed 27 audiences, including colleges and universities, and appeared on 29 radio and television programs.

1990

  • ARL joined with more than 50 medical, women’s religious and other groups in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan, which involved the Reagan administration’s 1988 cutoff of federal aid to family planning and reproductive health services. This Title X program of the Public Health Service Act had provided $140 million annually to 4,000 family planning clinics serving 4.3 million women, 85 % of them poor.
  • ARL joined with 12 religious and medical organizations in an amicus brief to the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Davis v. Davis, a case involving in vitro fertilization.
  • ARL joined with the National Coalition for Public Education and Religious Liberty in Pulido v. Cavasos, a Missouri case on appeal to a federal court. The case involved the distribution of federal remedial services to parochial schools.
  • ARL joined with the American Jewish Congress and 22 other organizations in an amicus brief to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in a public school Bible reading case from the Western District of Arkansas. Unqualified community volunteers offered Bible readings to the students, and a federal district court ordered the Gravette School District to halt the program.
  • ARL joined the state coalition opposing a tuition tax credit scheme to aid private and parochial schools in Oregon. ARL also joined pro-choice groups in referendum elections involving freedom of choice in Nevada and Oregon. All three referenda were on the ballot in November, 1990.
  • ARL joined the New York Civil Liberties Union in challenging New York City actions that favor one religious group over others. ARL and NYCLU filed an amicus brief in Southside Fair Housing Committee v. City of New York in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
  • ARL joined in a National PEARL amicus brief in the Helms v. Cody case in Louisiana. The case involved federal and state aid to parochial schools.
  • ARL supported a federal court challenge to the Boy Scouts of America, involving charges of religious discrimination against atheists, in Welsh v. BSA.
  • ARL staff addressed 23 audiences and appeared on 14 radio and television programs.

1991

  • ARL published The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom by staffers Edd Doerr and Albert J. Menendez. The collection of 561 quotations covered the full range of history and included 102 relevant quotes from U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
  • ARL joined an amicus brief to the Tennessee Supreme Court in Stowe v. Davis, a case involving the definition of fetal personhood.
  • ARL and five Nashville taxpayers challenged the constitutionality of $15 million in tax exempt bonds for construction at a pervasively sectarian college. The suit, Steele v. Industrial Development Board, was filed in federal district court in Nashville. The college involved was David Lipscomb University, affiliated with the fundamentalist Churches of Christ.
  • ARL participated in the coalition in Washington State to guarantee freedom of conscience in the abortion rights controversy.
  • ARL executive director Edd Doerr and research director Albert J. Menendez published Church Schools and Public Money: The Politics of Parochiaid, a thorough examination of the campaign to get taxpayers to support nonpublic schools.
  • ARL filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Lee v. Weisman, a public school graduation prayer case from Rhode Island. The ARL brief, prepared by General Counsel Ronald A. Lindsay, argued that government sponsorship of invocations tends to degrade religion and violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
  • ARL worked closely with the anti-voucher coalition in Pennsylvania, where the State House of Representatives rejected a $300 million voucher plan for private and parochial schools.
  • The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ARL/ACLU challenge to distribution of U.S. Agency for International Development funds for sectarian schools overseas. The case, renamed Lamont v. Woods, held that the $14 million grants to Jewish and Catholic schools in Egypt, Israel, Jamaica, the Philippines, Micronesia and South Korea were unconstitutional.
  • ARL staffers Menendez and Doerr published Religion and Public Education, a book-length study of the problems involving religion in public schools. The comprehensive guide covered religious observances, course offerings in the curriculum, and included relevant court rulings on all aspects of the controversy.
  • ARL staff addressed 41 audiences and made 20 appearances on radio and television.

1992