For the next few days, Iâll be highlighting some of my picks for the top âWall of Separationâ blog posts from 2025. I wrote some, and others were written by youth activists and other AU staffers. I hope youâll enjoy revisiting some of the important developments from the past year!
We began the year with a reminder of how extreme some Christian Nationalists are. Joshua Cummings admitted that he vandalized a statue erected by the Satanic Temple in a space that is considered an open forum in Concord, N.H.
Cummings was proud of what he did. He posted on social media, âI maintain my stance that we ought to have anti-blasphemy laws, and that it is un-Christian to not destroy idolatrous statues. ⊠What does it say about us as a people if we allow such a filthy and hideous image to appear before God in our most basic societal representation?â
Trumpâs reelection to a second, non-consecutive term was a blow to church-state separation, but on the day he was inaugurated, Americans United vowed to fight him and his Christian Nationalist allies at every turn with a multi-pronged plan to support separation of church and state. Weâve kept that promise and have secured many legal and other victories since.
Itâs not just Trump. Other politicians attacked church-state separation in 2025. Among them was New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams unleased a particularly ill-informed rant during an interfaith breakfast, remarking, âDonât tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies ⊠I canât separate my belief because Iâm an elected official.â His remarks were so extreme they offended some attendees. Lex Colleen, a member of the 2024-25 cohort of AUâs Youth Organizing Fellowship, explained where Adams had gone astray in this post.
Our public schools are amazing! They educate children from many different backgrounds and religious/nonreligious traditions, welcoming all. This post, issued during Public Schools Week, reminded Americans how special our system is and urged them to defend it from attacks by forces that seek to privatize education and funnel public money to private religious schools.
The Summit for Religious Freedom (SRF), an annual event sponsored by Americans United and its allies, brings together advocates of church-state separation for three days of training, strategizing and information sharing. SRF 2025 was a huge success, with a full house in Alexandria, Va., and hundreds more watching online. This post recapped some of SRFâs most inspiring speakers.
Iâll be back tomorrow with five more posts from 2025. See you then!
Photo: Attendees of the Summit for Religious Freedom visit Capitol Hill. Photo by Chris Line.
