A prominent CEO misappropriated a White House coronavirus event to sermonize to the country, contends the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Concerned American citizens, including many of FFRF’s 31,000 members across the nation, contacted the state/church watchdog after watching MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell preaching at the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing on March 30. Lindell read from prepared notes and then asked President Trump’s permission to read something else he had written:

God gave us grace on Nov. 8, 2016, to change the course we were on. God had been taken out of our schools and lives. A nation had turned its back on God. And I encourage you: Use this time at home to get home, to get back in the Word, read our bibles, and spend time with our families. . . . With our great president, vice president, and this administration and all the great people in this country praying daily, we will get through this and get back to a place that's stronger and safer than ever.

FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor have written Lindell to complain about his off-message proselytizing. They point out Lindell was at a presidential task force briefing, standing in front of the White House behind a presidential seal. With the full power, prestige and imprimatur of the federal government — of We the People — he exploited the invitation to promote his personal religion as if he were doing an infomercial for his pillow line.

Like many evangelical Christians, Lindell seems to be laboring under a persecution complex when he argues that: “God had been taken out of our schools and lives. A nation had turned its back on God.” This sloppy attack on our secular government is completely off the mark, FFRF insists.

“God was never taken out of our schools or lives,” FFRF writes to Lindell. “Citizens are free to worship (or not) as we please. America was not founded on God; it was founded as a secular nation under a godless Constitution that draws its power from the people.”

The “wall of separation” between state and church is a great American original — and we should be proud of that fact, not belittle it in the White House, FFRF adds.

Lindell’s call on Americans to “read our bibles” is also untenable, FFRF emphasizes. Nonbelievers actually score better than Christians on tests of religious knowledge, it points out. That is why many of them are nonreligious. FFRF encourages Lindell to read the bible — not just a few popular verses, but all of it, from the “begats,” through the genocides, rapes, pestilences, murders and worse. Lindell might pay special attention to Ezekiel 13:20 (King James Version): “Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against your pillows.”

That verse is directed against false prophets, and here Lindell is the false prophet, FFRF maintains, since he is falsely mixing government with religion. FFRF asks the MyPillow CEO to stop violating the spirit of the First Amendment and help us protect true religious liberty by keeping government and religion separate.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation works to protect the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism.