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‘Free thinkers’ host gathering

More than 600 agnostics will congregate in Madison this weekend to hear speakers, join in breakfasts without prayers and celebrate their beliefs.

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation will hold its 30th annual convention at the Frank Lloyd Wright Monona Terrace Convention Center today through Sunday.

Controversial atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of the critical book "The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice" will speak during the event.

The FFRF was founded in 1978 and is now headed by two co-presidents, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker. They are a self-proclaimed educational watchdog organization that litigates against possible violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause.

"We are a national association of free-thinking agnostics," Gaylor said. "We don't call ourselves atheists because we welcome any flavor of free thinker. We work especially for the separation of church and state. We tend to be dissed, marginalized, ignored and even demonized, but our Constitution is godless, so our government should be godless too. That's just neutrality."

Some of the FFRF's major accomplishments, according to its website, have been removing Ten Commandment monuments and crosses from public land, stopping the U.S. Post Office from issuing religious cancellations and ending 51 years of Bible instruction in public schools.

"We’ve taken the lead in challenging the faith-based initiative," Barker said. "We’ve won six or seven cases so far. We have stopped a lot of public money going to private religious groups. An important case we’ve won was the Good Friday case in the 1990s where we stopped Good Friday from being celebrated in the states."

However, while the organization teaches that religion impedes on individual free will, many religious groups feel differently.

"Generally, the implication of the Freedom From Religion Foundation is that in some way peoples' free will is removed when choosing to believe in dogma or a religion, and of course we agree with them that free will should never be a choice," said Catholic Diocese of Madison representative Brent King. "However, Christianity is a choice to follow Christ and choose to enter a relationship with Christ, which is using free will."

Just recently, the group chose Madison as the site of two of the first nontheistic billboards reading, "Beware of Dogma."

"Fourteen percent of Americans are nonreligious, and that's a huge swing vote and a huge minority," Gaylor said. "Who is wooing the secular vote? Who's including the secular population?"

According to Gaylor, this is where FFRF steps in. Their largest event is the upcoming FFRF convention, Gaylor said. It will include appearances by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, comedian Julia Sweeney, columnist Katha Pollitt, "Champion of the First Amendment" Ellery Schempp and student activist Matthew LaClair.

"We celebrate once a year with food, prizes, music and speeches," Barker said. "We just have a good time. People who do not know other nonbelievers in their area are happy to show up and meet other people."