FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor to Speak in Buffalo! Join Upstate New York Freethinkers as we welcome renowned freethought advocate, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), to Buffalo, New York! For both the Chapter dinner gathering and Café meetup, exclusive for chapter participants, reserve your seats today!

Choose to attend one, two, or all three of these events! Free stickers, buttons, bookmarks, the Freethought Today newspaper, and brochures will be waiting for you to take home and share with friends. A roundtable will be led by David Hoffman, Ph.D., the author of American Freethought: The History of a Social Movement, 1794-1948, who is also a participant of Upstate New York Freethinkers. This will be a great time for history buffs, legal minds, and anyone concerned about religious liberty. After the roundtable, we will have a chapter gathering dinner and the next morning a café meetup. We hope to see you there!

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a proud cosponsor of the Black Nonbeliver’s ‘Revival of Reason – The Homecoming’ event, taking place March 21-23rd, 2025 at the Oasis Event Center located at 6975 Jonesboro Rd, Morrow, GA 30260. Join FFRF and Black Nonbelivers near Atlanta, GA for this premiere gathering, which will focus on connecting and growing the non-religious community. FFRF Co-President Dan Barker will be performing in ‘Godless Gospel,’ a group of freethinkers—atheists and agnostics—performing a nonreligious and humanistic message in modern and traditional “gospel” styles of music.

Featured speakers include:

– Chris Cameron
– Jeremiah Camara
– Candace Gorham
– Nikki G.
– Cynthia McDonald
– Kyria Santa
– Mandisa Thomas

– And MORE!!!

This is a family-friendly event, so please bring your loved ones and anyone who is interested in learning and needs secular support. Student discounts and sponsorship opportunities are available. Registration is required. Click here for more information on the event and to register. 

FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker will be speaking at the Dubuque Area Humanist’s Annual Darwin Lecture on Monday, February 17th, at 6:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church, located at 1699 Iowa St., Dubuque, Iowa. Gaylor and Barker will cover the topic of Today’s Challenges in defending the separation of church and state. The annual event is free and open to the public. No RSVP is necessary.

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker will be speaking at NaNoCon, an annual convention for the non-religious, at the Lodge at Montgomery Bell, located at 100 Hotel Avenue, Burns, TN, 37029. NaNoCon is a gathering for happy heathens living in the Bible Belt area and is a weekend-long event, hosting various secular speakers over the span of 3 days. NaNoCan has been dubbed the “Nones” Convention of the greater Nashville area and has been hosted annually since 2016. Barker will be joined by a variety of other guests, such as Candace Gorham, President of the American Humanist Association, April Ajoy, author of ‘Star Spangled Jesus’ and Seth Andrews, host of ‘The Thinking Atheist Podcast.’ The event is open to the public, and registration is required. For more information and to register, click here.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Thomas Paine Memorial Association (TPMA), Center for Inquiry/Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (CFI/RDFR&S), Black Nonbelievers (BN), American Humanist Association (AHA), the Freethought Society (FS), and the Secular Coalition for America (SCA) are sponsoring a Zoom webinar celebration of the birth of Paine on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST. Pre-registration for this Zoom event is required.

Register here.

Congressman Jamie Raskin hopes to be the welcome speaker if his hectic Washington, D.C. schedule allows. Margaret Downey, president of TPMA, will also welcome everyone to the event and introduce the special guest speaker, artist Steve Simon.

Simon will talk about Paine’s life and accomplishments while the artwork he created and dedicated to honoring the under-appreciated and oft-forgotten Founder is on display. The Simon portrait is actually the logo for this event and is pictured above.

Following the Simon presentation, a video about the Thomas Paine Hotel, located in Paine’s birthplace (Thetford, England), will be shown. The director and owner of the hotel, Gez Chetal, will usher us through the hotel’s Paine-themed displays and educational exhibits.

After the two presentations, audience members will be able to ask questions of the artist and Paine experts Gary Berton (president of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association) and Frances Chiu (professor, TPMA board member, and author of The Routledge Guidebook on Paine’s Rights of Man). SCA’s communications manager, Nnenna Onwukwe, will host the Q and A portion of this event.

Representatives of the cosponsoring organizations will deliver closing messages. They are Robyn Blumner (CFI/RDFR&S), Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF), Fish Stark (AHA), Steven Emmert (SCA), Mandisa Thomas (BN), and Downey (FS).

Register now.

FFRF co-president Dan Barker will be speaking at the Third Latin American Freethought Encounter in Mexico City, November 13–14, 2024. The conference, co-sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and many other groups in Central and South America, will take place at the National School of Anthropology and History. See details at piensalibre.lat. Ask for more information at encuentro.librepensamiento3@gmail.com

FFRF is co-Sponsoring the 2024 International Secular Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos free online event on Friday, November 1, 2024, at 4:00 PM PDT / 7:00 PM EDT. This event is a celebration of life — nontheist Hispanics view this day as a perfect way to remember the legacies of dead loved ones in a way that does not require prayer, church, or religious dogma. To nontheists, our legacies are our afterlife. More and more people are abandoning their religious upbringing but still want to celebrate the beauty of their culture. This is why a Secular Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos Secular event was created.

Special guests include actor Jon Huertas; professor and political activist Grisch Raether; film and digital animator Yoa Martínez; neuroscientist and biomolecular engineer Sergio Labra; professional illustrator and artist Marco Lorenzana; and professor of theater Enrique Castillo.

Register here.

FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker will be attending “Celebrating Dissent Oslo” on August 31st through September 1st, 2024 in the capital city of Norway, Oslo. FFRF will be one of many co-sponsors of the event, and Barker and Gaylor will be joined by more than 50 other freethinking groups from over 30 different countries. The two-day conference is a continuation of the widely successful Celebrating Dissent conferences held in London, Amsterdam, Cologne, and Paris, in what has become the largest gathering of ex-Muslims in the world. Organized by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Dømmekraft, the event will pay tribute to taboo-breaking ex-Muslim comedian Shabana Rehman and celebrate blasphemy, apostasy and freedom of expression through discussions, poetry, film, protest art, and music. The event is open to the public, and tickets and registration can be found by clicking here.

FFRF Patrick O’Reilly Legal Fellow Hirsh Joshi will be speaking at the Ethical Humanist Society, hosted by the Metropolitan Chicago Chapter of FFRF. This free event is open to the public, and will be held on October 13 at 1PM, located at 7574 Lincoln Ave, Skokie IL. Hirsh will be discussing the current state of FFRF ongoing legal battles, as well as highlighting the foundation’s recent successes. This event is in-person only, and registration is not required.

Hirsh joined FFRF in January 2024. He was raised in the Chicago suburbs and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 with a B.A. in Political Science. He then graduated from the Cotton Bowl champion University of Missouri in 2023 with his Juris Doctor. Hirsh is currently licensed as an attorney in Missouri.

To learn more about the Metropolitan Chicago Chapter of FFRF, email Steven Foulkes, chapter president: sfoulkes@ffrf.org.

FFRF Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell will be speaking on topics surrounding the current state of the Supreme Court at the Kentucky Freethought Convention on Saturday, September 7, 2024. Cavell joined the FFRF as a staff attorney in January 2013, after working for the Foundation part-time since September 2012. Elizabeth became Deputy Legal Director in April 2024. To purchase tickets for this event, and to view the full schedule and list of speakers, click here.

Chris Line, Staff Attorney at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, will be speaking in Bentonville, AR to discuss the implications of Christian Nationalism, the laws protecting separation between church & state, and the legal landscape entering the 2024 election.  

The event will be held on August 18, 2024 at 11AM in NWA Best Friends in Bentonville, AR. This event is open to the general public for $5, and free to members of the Ozarks Chapter of FFRF. General admission tickets can be reserved by clicking here. To learn more about the Ozarks Chapter of FFRF, visit their Facebook by clicking here.

Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Sammi Lawrence will be speaking on a panel for Common Wealth Development’s employment and mentorship program at the Madison Central Library on July 26, 2024 in Madison, WI. The career panel seeks to introduce teenagers from less privileged backgrounds to a variety of careers. This event is by invitation only; the participating students won a spot in the program after competing in a rigorous application process.

Common Wealth Development is a non-profit community development organization whose mission is to support and preserve the vitality of neighborhoods in the Madison Metropolitan area. Their work serves as the foundational bedrock of healthy community and economic development, with projects aimed at improving the housing and business climate of our neighborhoods through a people-first approach centered on racial justice and community level health improvement. To learn more about Common Wealth Development, visit their website. 

Join us on Monday, July 1, at 7:30 p.m. ET (6:30 p.m. CST) for an exclusive webinar to discuss the Louisiana Ten Commandment lawsuit, filed together with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Our panel of speakers includes:

• Andrew L. Seidel, Americans United
• Dan Mach, ACLU National
• Sam Grover, Freedom from Religion Foundation
• Multiple plaintiffs in the case

Our experts will explain our strategy for keeping Louisiana public schools inclusive for all students and free from religious coercion. We’ll share next steps in this fight, how you can support our efforts against this law and similar bills in other states, and answer your questions live!

RSVP now.

If you are unable to attend the webinar live, RSVP now to receive a recording of the discussion afterward!

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker will be speaking at the Critical Thinking Conference in Argentina on May 18 & 19, 2024. One of his topics will be “Lose Faith in Faith.” He will also talk about his newest book Contraduction: The Hidden Fallacy that Inverts Reality. For more information, visit ffrf.us/3ww6lfW.

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker was invited to Uruguay for a meeting with The September 20 Civil Association and the Respectable Freethinkers Lodge No. 1, with the support of the Uruguayan Association of Free Thinkers (AULP) and the International Association of Free Thoughts (AILP).

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, with our friends at the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America, will be hosting the inaugural Congressional Reason Reception on May 1 in Washington, D.C. The event will honor the use of reason in public policy, the Congressional Freethought Caucus and the legacy of Thomas Paine. The in-person event, which is sold out, will take place in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. But you can join the event via Zoom by registering here. Guests include Reps. Jared Huffman, Jamie Raskin and other members of Congress, and Washington Post columnist, author and FFRF 2023 Freethought Heroine Kate Cohen.

Annie Laurie and Dan Barker will be speaking at the Rationalist International’s Spring of Reason and Exuberance conference, which will be held on a 3-day cruise in the Baltic Sea on April 26-28, 2024. The cruise will host a 3-day festival of reason, giving attendees a chance to experience the beauty of the Baltic archipelago, see historic places, and the global centers of freedom of thought, free speech, and human rights. For more information, and to register for this event, click here to visit the Rational International’s website.

FFRF’s Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow, Sammi Lawrence, will be speaking at Congregation Beth Adam in Loveland, OH on February 25th, 2024. Lawrence will be presenting to members of Congregation Beth Adam as part of their regular Adult Education series and will be covering recent state/church violations in the OH area, FFRF’s actions & victories, and current Ohio legislation. The event will be both in person and virtual, and the link to the virtual meeting will be posted here closer to the event date. Though this event is free, it is only open to members of the Congregation Beth Adam. For more information about Beth Adam, please visit the congregation’s website at bethadam.org.

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker will be speaking at the Secular Humanists of Roanoke meeting at the South Roanoke County Library for Saturday, February 17, 2024 from 10am to Noon. Barker will be discussing church and state issues of Roanoke and the surrounding communities. This event is free, open to the public, and registration is not required. For more information about the Secular Humanists of Roanoke, click here. More details to follow.

FFRF will be co sponsoring an annual event to recognize and celebrate Thomas Paine’s birthday on January 29th. The theme for the 2024 event is “The Anti-Slavery Efforts of Thomas Paine.” The event starts at 4:00 PM EDT or 7:00 PM EDT, and is a virtual event. Pre-registration for Paine’s birthday celebration is required. The event registration link can be found by clicking here. Sponsors of the 2024 event are the Secular Coalition for America, Black Nonbelievers, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Center for Inquiry, the Thomas Paine Memorial Association (TPMA), and the Freethought Society.