Freedom From Religion Foundation

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for atheists, agnostics, and nontheists. Formed in 1976, FFRF promotes the separation of church and state, and challenges the legitimacy of many federal and state programs that are faith-based. It supports groups such as nonreligious students and clergy who want to leave their faith. The FFRF was co-founded by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, in 1976 and was incorporated nationally on April 15, 1978. The organization was supported by over 19,000 members in 2012 and operated from an 1855-era building in Madison, Wisconsin, that once served as a church rectory. In March 2011, FFRF, along with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, began The Clergy Project, a confidential on-line community that supports clergy as they leave their faith. In 2012, it gave its first Freedom From Religion Foundation and Clergy Project "Hardship Grant" to Jerry DeWitt, a former pastor who left the ministry to join the atheist movement. FFRF provides financial support to the Secular Student Alliance, an organization that has affiliate groups for nonreligious students on college campuses. In 2015, FFRF announced Nonbelief Relief, a related organization that obtained and later gave up its federal tax-exempt status. Nonbelief Relief was unsuccessful in a lawsuit against the IRS because it lacked standing to challenge the Form 990 exemption that applies to churches. Nonbelief Relief is a humanitarian agency for atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and their supporters. Nonbelief Relief was created by the executive board of FFRF to remediate conditions of human suffering and injustice on a global scale, whether the result of natural disasters, human actions or adherence to religious dogma. The FFRF publishes a newspaper, Freethought Today, ten times a year. Since 2006, as the Freethought Radio Network, FFRF has produced the Freethought Radio show, an hour-long show broadcast live on WXXM-FM Saturdays at 11 a.m.

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Related concepts (15)

Atheism

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. The first individuals to identify themselves as atheists lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment.

Criticism of religion

Criticism of religion involves criticism of the validity, concept, or ideas of religion. Historical records of criticism of religion go back to at least 5th century BCE in ancient Greece, in Athens specifically, with Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos. In ancient Rome, an early known example is Lucretius' De rerum natura from the 1st century BCE. Every exclusive religion on Earth (as well as every exclusive world view) that promotes exclusive truth-claims necessarily denigrates the truth-claims of other religions.