God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom of Conscience

Lynn is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a United Church of Christ minister, and a lawyer. He makes his points with vigor in this blustery, repetitious, sometimes tiresome compilation of speeches, newspaper editorials, blog posts, and essays chronicling his work. Ranging widely over topics including debates over evolution, the tactics of the religious right, prayer in public schools, and tuition tax credits, Lynn gustily protests any encroachment of religious groups make on secular territory. In his 2002 speech to the Texas Civil Liberties Union, he lists ten reasons to be suspicious of members of the religious right, including their hypocrisy and their use of pressure and intimidation to achieve their purposes when blocked through normal channels. In his comments to a 2012 conference of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, he declares that Catholic canon lawyers engage in "unimaginable distortions of liberty and freedom," and proclaims a "moral duty to prevent these distorted claims from successfully becoming part of American judicial philosophy." Because of the defeat of government-sponsored prayer in public schools, as well as ever-increasing support for teaching evolution in public schools, Lynn remains guardedly optimistic that secularists will win and keep religion out of the public square. (Aug.)