Mayor Uses Government Resources To Promote Christianity
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The mayor of Orange, California has come under fire for repeatedly using government resources to promote Christian events.
[She Has] has come under fire from the national nonprofit organization Freedom From Religion Foundation for using government resources for Christian prayer breakfasts, reports Patheos.
These breakfasts were originally described as open to all faiths, but after FFRF further investigated them, the organization discovered evidence that suggests these events were biased towards a specific religion and that public officials were very involved in organizing the religious aspects.
In a letter to Mayor Teresa Smith’s office, FFRF wrote, “[T]hese prayer breakfasts were undoubtedly Christian affairs. In an October 8, 2013 email between a city staffer, Deputy City Manager Irma Hernandez, when asked about the content of the keynote speaker’s address, Hernandez stated ‘[h]e will be talking about how Christ and following Christ has impacted his life — duh it’s a prayer breakfast and their goal is to share the Gospel and bring people to Christ and strengthen their beliefs,’” reports Patheos.
While Smith’s office has yet to respond to FFRF’s claim, these events do pose “constitutional concerns,” as the group explains, violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
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