U.S. State Department Promotes Atheism Abroad While Hiding the Funding

Read time: 4 minutes 5 seconds

Each year, Open Doors USA assembles its report on Christian persecution across the world and they found that Christians are the most widely persecuted faith in the world.

Contrary to what the liberal U.S. media portrays, the United States’ own Department of Justice and State Department have openly shown hostility toward Christians in what was once viewed as a Christian nation.

With the FBI’s lack of investigation into terror threats against pro-life pregnancy centers and pro-life protesters, the U.S. federal government has become complicit in the continual targeting of Christians in America.

But there are some groups that the State Department are actively trying to protect.

Several GOP sources have commented on a conference call that took place between Mariah Mercer and multiple House members and their staff.

According to Mercer’s LinkedIn, she was formerly the Unit Chief for the Office of International Religious Freedom, yet appears to have been promoted during the Biden administration and now holds the office of Deputy to the Ambassador and Deputy Director at the U.S. Department of State.

During the call, the State Department allegedly refused to tell GOP lawmakers which atheist organizations were being given religious freedom grants around the world.

The sources also claimed that the State Department was giving favorable treatment to atheist groups over non-atheists.

The allegations start to get a bit muddied about where the locations of the majority of funds were being sent.

The grants in question are mostly being sent to either groups or individuals, which only the State Department knows, located in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia—all areas with few atheists, but are predominantly Muslim in population.

When pressed for a list of the exact countries that are receiving these religious freedom grants, the State Department claimed to have difficulty getting that information and that they were “working on it” due to its challenging nature.

As reported by Fox News Digital, this process of finding out who the money is going to has been ongoing for the last six months.

Sources within the GOP claim that they are being “stonewalled” by the State Department due to the consistently late responses they receive for their inquiries. Their requests for transparency have also not been answered with any information regarding the money trail for the religious grants.

In a statement given to Fox News Digital, Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Banks said that for “six months and multiple letters the Biden State Department is still hiding basic information about their funding of atheism abroad.

“They know that the details would outrage American taxpayers and they’re worried they’d also expose the program as unconstitutional,” Banks claimed. “Congress gave them this money but apparently we’re not allowed to know which countries are getting the money—it’s insane.”

“In just a few short weeks Republicans will retake the majority and we absolutely should use the compulsory process to force the Biden State Department to release this information,” he continued.

In a letter to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent in June, Banks and other House Republicans sought clarification into where and how the funds are being used.

“The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) was officially titled ‘DRL FY20 IRF Promoting and Defending Religious Freedom Inclusive of Atheist, Humanist, Non-Practicing and Non-Affiliated Individuals,'” the letter said.

“It announced a ‘competitive’ process that would award grants of up to $500,000 to organizations committed to the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa,” the letter continued.

Banks and his fellow Republicans told the State Department they would “like to know what other United States government programs supported with appropriated funds are being used either to encourage, inculcate or to disparage any official belief system—atheist, humanist, Christian, Muslim or otherwise.”

Within the letter is the biggest bombshell of this situation, that the United States State Department is funding “the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa.”

That sounds a lot like missions work that religious organizations perform.

Yet atheism is the religion for a Marxist government, because there cannot be any competing authority against their god: the State. This makes God, the One True God, the de-facto enemy of that state’s leadership.

America has the lesson of Israel to see the fate that their society is heading toward. When a nation turns from God, He will remove His hand of protection and blessing from it. Invaders will come and take that which the Lord has given.

With the United States government actively promoting a belief system that says “God is not real” (remember “God’s Not Dead?”), how much more needs to happen before Christians take a stand and risk getting uncomfortable for the gospel message? {eoa}

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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.