Orange County Atheists

With "In God We Trust" falling by the wayside, we've kinda lost focus on the other things that city councils are doing - namely, invocations. As we've discussed before, some cities are worse than others in terms of their offenses, but it's my firm belief that we could get a lot done with just a few people willing to going to their city's meetings and meet with officials (together with others in OC Atheists). Click "Continue Reading" to find out how you can do your part!

It was brought up at the April meeting that we should coordinate to fight the Bakersfield lady who is pushing all the city council's to put the nation's slogan up at all the city halls. Click "Continue reading..." to see how you can help and discuss planning and strategy.

SANTA ANA, Calif., February 28, 2007 - The Villa Park City Council made the correct decision to choose not to have a prayer before council meetings, an Atheist civil rights organization said today.

Council members voted 3-2 Tuesday against the state-sponsored prayers, noting that mixing religion and politics in government meetings was inappropriate. While applauding Villa Park's ruling, Orange County Atheists warned that many city councils in Orange County are still in defiance of the 2002 California appellate court ruling banning sectarian invocations, further blurring the line between church and state.

Travis was kind enough to record and transcribe multiple weeks of invocations from the Anaheim City Council - and they're full of language that the Burbank decision has found to be against the law. The transcribed text is below the fold here - if people are interested in the MP3 files of the invocations, let me know and I'll post them.

Below you’ll find a template for writing to your city officials about invocations during city council meetings. Simply fill in the blanks to personalize it, then send to your city officials via the mail or by email. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages; you might want to do both. Feel free to add/subtract/personalize it in any way you see fit. Remember to be polite, and please CC or BCC contact@ocatheists.com if you email your letter, so I can have a copy.

Below is the transcript of the Santa Ana City Council invocation for October 2, 2006.

This page will serve as a gateway to information about the OC Atheists project to remove/change city council invocations throughout the county.

Since the project is just beginning, we're looking for volunteers in various OC cities to check out their city council meetings (either live, on their local cable systems, or via videotape or DVD supplied by the city) and report back on whether they observe an invocation (always at the beginning of the meeting), and whether it's overtly religious. Once we identify which cities are the worst offenders, we'll work out a plan of meetings with city leaders to hopefully eliminate invocations, but at least get them in line with current law.

To get us started, this link goes to an Excel spreadsheet with information I gathered via the web last year. It's not complete or up to date, but with everyone's help, we can flush it out and get started on the nitty gritty.

Please leave comments, questions, suggestions and findings in the comments here until we've got a better system in place. I'm looking forward to working with all of you!