Paid to Piss People Off: Book 3 PRAYER: Book 3 PRAYER

By Barry W. Lynn

In this 3rd book of his three-volume memoir, Barry W. Lynn recounts twenty-five years working against the top leaders of the Religious Right on issues including school prayer, prayer in public places, public religious displays, creationism, the Faith-Based Initiative, the Ten Commandments, and death with dignity. He describes his frequent visits

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Cedar Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958728130

Barry W. Lynn

Barry W. Lynn caused lots of good trouble. He worked in Washington from 1974 to 2017-first for the United Church of Christ (UCC), helping gain amnesty for Vietnam war resisters; then for the ACLU, defending the First Amendment and destroying the Meese Pornography Commission; and for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, doing battle with every Religious Right leader aiming to have government adopt their agendas. Lynn is an ordained minister in the UCC and a lawyer with membership in the Supreme Court Bar.

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Praise for Paid to Piss People Off:

Book 1 PEACE, Book 2 PORN, Book 3 PRAYER

Barry Lynn does it again! This tale of his life and work is every bit as inspiring and energizing as all the hard work he’s done so far. You will be entertained and occasionally horrified by the people and institutions he has taken on. He shows how real activism works and how you can do the work too!

—Thom Hartmann, progressive national radio and television host and best-selling author

Barry Lynn brilliantly expresses his ideas which he delivers with wit, humor, and panache. If this book is in your hands, you’re lucky. Open it and start reading. You’ll be glad you did.

—Lewis Black, comedian

Barry Lynn has been a tenacious advocate for peace and justice. I am glad that he has gotten around to writing this memoir of his extraordinary life.

—Pat Schroeder, former Congresswoman from Colorado

Barry Lynn has created an important and beautiful literary treasure. Lynn is brilliant and courageous, a key figure in the amnesty and peace movements who has written an unforgettable portrait of a generation in turmoil. This is a fascinating history lesson told with wit, honesty, and grace.

—Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran

and author of Born on the Fourth of July

"Barry Lynn is a national treasure and Paid to Piss People Off perfectly captures his trajectory. He built a career out of poking holes in hypocrisy and religious zealotry using an artful blend of substance, humor, and incisive wit. This book captures the unvarnished essence of the Rev. Barry Lynn, one of the most important voices of his generation."

—Wade Henderson, former President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Lucky Barry Lynn for leading such a fun life. And lucky for all of us for him to have led such a purposeful life. Decades of work on civil rights, peace, and true religious freedom make me proud to be one of his fellow travelers.

—Bill Press, former co-host of CNN’s Crossfire and award-winning author

Barry Lynn is one of the rare people who recognize the deep connection between social justice, music, comedy, and film. He understands and never waivers in his support of folks on the margins of society. I think he likes us more than the powerful politicians he has worked with all these years. Barry is a gem; his words, truth to power. These three volumes are thrilling.

—Mary Gauthier, Grammy nominated songwriter and author of Saved by A Song

I observed Barry Lynn doing the difficult dance between faith and social policy for three decades, regretfully mainly as his ideological nemesis. Too late in life I concluded that he was mostly right and I was mostly wrong. This memoir helps me make up for lost time and might allow others to do the same.

—The Rev. Rob Schenck, director of the

Bonhoeffer Institute and former leader

in the anti-abortion movement

Barry Lynn has always been a powerful speaker and leader of progressive causes, and a strong advocate for women’s privacy and bodily integrity. This book is a clarion call to the next generations to never give up on fighting hard for what is right.

—Kim Gandy, Past President of the National Organization for Women and current President of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Paid to Piss People Off:

Book 3 PRAYER

Barry W. Lynn

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Blue Cedar Press

Wichita, Kansas

Paid to Piss People Off: Book 3, PRAYER

Copyright © 2023 Red Toad Books LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to:

Blue Cedar Press

P.O. Box 48715

Wichita, KS 67201

Visit the Blue Cedar Press website: www.bluecedarpress.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First edition April 2023

ISBN: 978-1-958728-11-6 (paper)

ISBN: 978-1-958728-13-0 (ebook)

Cover design by Barry W. Lynn, Joanne Lynn, and Gina Laiso.

Interior design by Gina Laiso, Integrita Productions.

Cover photo: Barry at Gay Rights rally. Source: Americans United.

Editors Laura Tillem and Gretchen Eick.

Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN): 2023931760

Printed in the United States of America

Note: Images are from Author’s personal collection unless otherwise identified.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: AMERICANS UNITED: THE JOB OF A LIFETIME BEGINS

Jumping Right In

More Early Interactions

Targets of the Religious Right

Moving into the Internet Era

CHAPTER 2: MY PRINCIPAL OPPONENTS

Pat Robertson

Jerry Falwell

Jay Sekulow

Rob Schenck

Wallis and DuBois

CHAPTER 3: MINOR LEAGUE RELIGIOUS RIGHT FIGURES

Robert Jeffress and Wiley Drake

Herb Titus

Kelly Shackleford

Bill Murray

Bill Donohue

Mat Staver

CHAPTER 4: VISITING THE CIRCLES OF HELL

Religious Right Conferences

What Responsibility Does the Religious Right Have for Tragedy?

CHAPTER 5: VENUES TO PRESENT MY VIEWS

Congressional Testimony

Response to Supreme Court Cases

CHAPTER 6: THE BIG ISSUES

Creationism

The Ten Commandments

Public Prayer–The National Day of Prayer

The Faith-Based Initiative

Project Fair Play

Pragmatic Policy for Religious Claims

Public Schools

CHAPTER 7: THE SMALLER CONTROVERSIES

The War on Christmas and on Christians

Death with Dignity

Important AU Cases that Did Not Go to the Supreme Court

Small Episodes of Being a National Irritant

Presidential Love of God

Church/State Separation around the World

CHAPTER 8: GREAT AUDIENCES

Non-Theists

Military Chaplains

No Disaster Exception to the First Amendment

Another Generation of Activists

Receiving the Roosevelt Medal of Freedom

CHAPTER 9: FACING THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

CHAPTER 10: WRAPPING IT UP

Final AU Speeches

Retirement

IN CLOSING

About the Author

Index

INTRODUCTION

In Washington, DC, hundreds of Davids try to slay Goliaths, Goliaths such as: the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned the nation about when his terms as president ended. Or Big Pharma and the insurance industry that keep health care costs in the U.S. the highest in the world. Or Dark Money that since the 2006 Citizens United Supreme Court decision has allowed billionaires to sway our elections. Or the prison industrial complex that has made the U.S. the biggest jailer in the world. Or the Religious Right and its allies in Congress waging their culture wars against public schools and concepts of human rights.

Davids exhaust themselves hurling their stones at giants. Usually, they burn out and move to other careers. Barry W. Lynn would not burn out. From the 1970s to the 2010s he used his lawyer skills, his keen mind and devastating wit, and his pastoral empathy against the Goliaths. He aimed his smooth stones at those who would punish young people who refused to kill others in war (Book 1), at those who would withhold rights protected in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Book 2), and at the Religious Right that sought to erase the Constitution’s core principle of the separation of church and state (Book 3).

His stones were his keen legal arguments and he delivered them with sharp humor. That made him a popular speaker at press conferences and hearings, on television and radio and podcasts. This is his story. It includes politicians and activists, as well as the comedians, musicians, actors, and movies that kept him sane as he persisted. Lynn’s phenomenal ability to keep engaging in debate and conversation with leaders of those Goliaths, entering their spaces to listen to them and take them on, makes his story an entertaining and educational tour of the last five decades.

Blue Cedar Press

CHAPTER 1

AMERICANS UNITED: THE JOB OF A LIFETIME BEGINS

When you hang around any job long enough, it tends to be the one for which you are remembered. That was the case with my twenty-five years with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

After months of misery as I tried unsuccessfully to accommodate to life in New Hampshire, Kim Yelton called. She was the lobbyist for Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), with whom I had often partnered while doing religious liberty work at the ACLU. She had heard that I was not happy in New England, and she wanted to pass on some hot news. The AU Board of Directors had chosen Oliver Buzz Thomas (a Baptist preacher and attorney) to be the new executive director, but he had just declined the offer. Kim had let several members of the Board’s search committee know that I might be looking to return to Washington. I certainly was.

That afternoon, while taking our children swimming, I broached this possibility with Joanne. She wasn’t completely comfortable with this development but agreed to my pursuing the possibility.

In the early Sixties, a popular genre of bestsellers focused on turning hot controversies like nuclear weapons into thrillers. One of the best was Fail Safe, about the accidental launching of a nuclear missile resulting in the destruction of an entire Russian city. The Soviets did not retaliate instantly, so the book focused on American efforts to prevent World War III, which required allowing the Soviets to launch a missile and destroy Atlantic City, New Jersey. This seemed reasonable to readers. Donald Trump had not yet developed the place, and the major attraction was the beach and a horse that dove two stories into a tank of water at Steel Pier.

By mid-l992, I was having fantasies about this scenario. If President, I would gladly trade the entire state of New Hampshire for destruction for almost any reason. I obviously needed to leave! I hated my job, was bored and sullen, thought my children were being lured into bad friendships, and didn’t like myself.

Then I got a call from the Reverend Cal Didier, a mid-western Presbyterian minister who led the search for a new executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This organization had been formed in l948 by a group of prominent Protestant religious leaders of the day to combat the rising influence of religious groups (mainly Roman Catholics) in matters of personal faith and morals. I had spoken at its national conferences and, when I was leaving the ACLU, had been interviewed for its monthly magazine, Church and State, about the state of religious liberty in America. I later found that the interview had won the magazine a prestigious journalism award. I was vaguely aware that the group’s executive director, Bob Maddox, had resigned after eight years to return to the parish ministry. Cal told me that he had heard from Kim Yelton that I might be lured back to Washington.

I was deeply interested in this job. Indeed, I might have accepted any position with AU. However, I told Cal that moving again would be difficult because Joanne had grant commitments at Dartmouth for another year and a half. When I first spoke with Cal, I was making a slower than expected recovery from an appendectomy. I took his call from my bed, too tired to get up that morning. However, I realized what a momentous opportunity this was, and I agreed to meet him and Dr. Foy Valentine, the Board of Trustees President. Dr. Valentine had led the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention until he was purged for having too many progressive ideas.

About an hour into our interview, they started discussing salary. But before I could be offered the job, I must have a question and answer session with the full Board and then be voted on by the National Advisory Council at the organization’s annual meeting, just a few months away.

Image1BarryLynnselected.jpg

Barry Lynn selected as Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, announced by Board President Dr. Foy Valentine. Source: Rob Boston, Americans United.

The Board questioning period was brutal—lots of questions about specific federal cases and gotcha questions like whether I had ever attended a Seventh Day Adventist church service (I had not). Adventists were strongly in support of church/state separation, but they had differing and more challenging views on other topics of interest to the religious community. One of the Adventist Board members had wanted his son to get the job, but the non-Adventist members did not support him.

I returned to New Hampshire and then came back to Washington for the annual meeting and the Advisory Committee vote. Ominous signs came early: the hotel had no room reservation for me, and when I asked Foy how things were looking for my candidacy, he responded, I don’t know. After locating a room down the street and sleeping fitfully, I returned to the meeting for the Advisory Committee vote, deeply concerned. The Adventists complained that I had no managerial experience (which was true) and proposed that the search be continued. Bob Alley, a professor at the University of Richmond and an expert on the First Amendment, spoke passionately in favor of my candidacy and then did something quite extraordinary. Many Adventists had left the room to discuss their strategy to derail my nomination. Bob immediately called the question, and my nomination was approved. When the Adventists returned to the room, they discovered I was the new Executive Director. The four Adventists on the Board never let me forget that they considered my election illegitimate.

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In 1985 Barry Lynn attends a meeting of the American Enterprise Institute to discuss religious freedom. As late as that, the AEI had invited only a gaggle of white men. In 2023, women head both of the leading organizations working on separation of church and state and religious freedom: Rachel Laser of Americans United and Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee.

Joanne and I felt that one or the other of our jobs would not work out well. So, for the time being, she would continue living with our children and my mother in New Hampshire, and I would find an apartment close to the AU office and commute back to family frequently. Our daughter was a sophomore in high school and our son was in elementary school. We’d keep them in their situations, keep Joanne finishing her big project, and make other decisions later.

Jumping Right In

I was officially on board at Americans United (AU) only a few days when, having returned to New Hampshire for the weekend, Joanne handed me the Friday edition of USA TODAY and said, What do you think of this? She pointed to a full-page advertisement headlined CHRISTIAN BEWARE. It claimed that Bill Clinton, then a candidate for President, was a sinner, evidenced by his positions on social issues, including abortion. Every sinful action was followed by a Bible verse providing the authority for the accusation. Near the bottom, the ad also asserted, also with Scriptural references, that people who vote for sinners are sinners themselves. In smaller type at the very bottom, it called for readers to send their tax deductible contributions to a post office box to defray the cost of the ad that had been paid for by The Church at Pierce Creek, Binghamton, New York.

I already knew that a rigid prohibition in the Internal Revenue System code specifically prohibits non-profits from supporting or opposing candidates for public office. This anybody but Clinton screed certainly seemed to fall into that category in a breathtakingly obvious fashion. I called my office to see if the communications staff thought we could do something about this. Joe Conn, a nearly twenty-year veteran of AU, seemed pleased by my aggressive approach. He reminded me that, back in 1988, he had worked with my predecessor to send an open letter to the IRS about the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s plan to raise campaign funds for his presidential candidacy by collecting money in African American churches during Sunday services. Jackson was sent a copy and to his credit he canceled the project. In the current case, however, the damage was already done: the opposition to Clinton and the solicitation of tax-exempt funds was now out to every town, city, and hamlet in the country.

We quickly discovered that the ad’s funder was a tiny church with a handful of members. One member, however, was quite prominent: Randall Terry, the founder of the extremist anti-choice group Operation Rescue. Indeed, some of the pamphlets and other materials he had been distributing recently contained the same rhetoric as the newspaper advertisement. A few calls disclosed that the ad also cost forty-four thousand dollars, a hefty percentage of a budget for a tiny church.

Conn and his colleague, Rob Boston, worked with me to draft both a letter to the IRS and a contemporaneous press release calling for an immediate investigation of the Church’s intercession in the political process. We got it out that day and learned that aggressive interventions like this paid off in ink, airtime, and, most important, bringing the organization name recognition. I knew the latter was essential to significantly increase Americans United's size and clout. We called this activity Project Fair Play.

Just before Christmas, Crossfire, then the most popular show on CNN, invited me to debate this topic with Michael Schwartz of the Free Congress Foundation. This appearance went well and led to many media appearances on this topic, as well as invitations to CNN shows on other topics.

By the next week, the story had spread, and I was appearing on television with the defiant pastor of the church, George Little, who claimed the right to communicate anyway he wanted and said that he didn’t care what Barry Lynn or the IRS thinks about it. He was still defiant as the tax folks removed his church’s tax exemption about a year later.

Little did two things. He immediately dissolved the Church at Pierce Creek and restarted the congregation with a new name. He also got Pat Robertson’s legal group, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), to represent him in a lawsuit against the IRS to recover his exemption. The case dragged on for years at trial and then before the DC Court of Appeals. Both the trial judge and all three of the appeals judges rejected all the free speech and free exercise of religion claims of the Church and rejected the claimed technical objections to the tax-exemption statute. With that track record of failure, the ACLJ and Pastor Little decided not to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Frankly, I wished they had, since this would have put the final nail in the phony argument that churches had some higher right to speak than any other tax-exempt non-profit, an issue we would still be fighting thirteen years later.

At this early stage, I knew that the staff at Americans United was highly talented, but that the group desperately needed not only that name recognition upgrade, but also more people to help them do more of the work. This meant more money, which was in short supply, and a more sophisticated way to raise it than a handful of visits to foundations and a monthly direct mail program to twenty thousand people on a mailing list. Sitting on the couch in my DC apartment (with my family still in New Hampshire), facing a pile of financial documents several feet high, I said out loud, It is not possible that this organization could have survived for the past few years. It had, and I was determined to make sure it lasted a whole lot longer.

I always disliked when newly selected staff of any organization would introduce themselves as ready to get moving soon, as if they had an obvious need to figure things out before they could possibly be expected to accomplish anything. My goal was, What can I achieve immediately? I had a marvelous but tiny staff. My principal way to communicate with our members and the public was my monthly column in our publication Church and State and my monthly fundraising letter.

Like many nonprofits, AU used a regular mass mailing to get donations and new members. Each month, a guy in Colorado would interview staff and compose the letter. I couldn’t see why we needed to pay him to rewrite material we knew intimately. Joe Conn and Rob Boston were eager to save money by doing the writing themselves. Two women on the staff would go to the post office each day to pick up mail, including money mail, count the funds, and then head to the bank to deposit it. This too seemed to entail wasted effort. A professional lockbox operation could do these jobs more efficiently and other tasks were assigned to the two money mail openers. I don’t believe in firing people just because you find an alternative, cheaper way to get their jobs done.

Bill Clinton had just been elected President and had a mixed record on church/state issues: opposition to school vouchers that were primarily used to subsidize private religious schools but shaky views on prayer in public schools, suggesting that prayers might be acceptable in public events, outdoors, where he felt they could be non-coercive.

My predecessor at AU, the Rev. Bob Maddox, had connections from having worked for President Jimmy Carter, but I had rarely seen him in the media. This had to change. If you were not on television in the late 1990s, you didn’t really exist. I had substantial media exposure at the ACLU and wanted to parlay that (with our communications team) into television exposure.

Early in my tenure, I visited the founder of Americans United, Glenn Archer, a staunch Republican. He was lured to Washington one summer by an early predecessor to the National Education Association to set up a new yet-to-be-named non-profit out of a Unitarian Church basement. The cause, keeping church and state separate, was so popular in the Fifties that thousands of people would crowd into Masonic temples, large churches, and Washington’s Constitution Hall to hear speakers critique threats to separation. He greeted me at his retirement community in Maryland with a punch in the chest. Archer was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, who once told him, The battle for church/state separation may have to be fought all over again in each generation. She was correct.

The organization was initially called Protestants and Other Americans for Separation of Church and State and reflected a view that the powerful Roman Catholic church was the primary opponent of a clear separation between church and state. Some of its original