{"id":1068,"date":"2013-11-14T10:22:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T10:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/soup-kitchens-atheist-ban-sparks-controversy.html"},"modified":"2013-11-14T10:22:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T10:22:00","slug":"soup-kitchens-atheist-ban-sparks-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/soup-kitchens-atheist-ban-sparks-controversy.html","title":{"rendered":"Soup Kitchen’s Atheist Ban Sparks Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
After the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen in\u00a0Spartanburg, S.C., turned atheists away last spring when non-believers approached the group and offered to help feed the poor, secularists are hitting back with an outreach plan of their own.<\/span><\/div>\n
Upstate Atheists, a local cohort of non-believers, said that they were just trying to help and that the ban truly surprised them. And activist\u00a0Hemant\u00a0Mehta, a well-known secular blogger, was so stunned that he quipped\u00a0that \u201cJesus would be so pissed off\u201d as a result of the decision.<\/span><\/div>\n
Despite the group\u2019s promise not to market their non-belief while helping the soup kitchen, they claim they were turned away.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cI told them we wouldn\u2019t wear our T-shirts. We wouldn\u2019t tell anyone who we are with,\u201d Upstate Atheists President Eve Brannon\u00a0told The Spartanburg Herald Journal<\/a>. \u201cWe just want to help out. And they told us that we were not allowed.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
The soup kitchen\u2019s executive director, Lou Landrum, reiterated and defended the decision in an interview with the Journal.<\/span><\/div>\n
Doubling down, she reportedly said she\u2019d rather resign before allowing non-believers to volunteer with the Christian group.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen in\u00a0Spartanburg, S.C., turned atheists away last spring when non-believers approached the group and offered to help feed the poor, secularists are hitting back with an outreach plan of their own. Upstate Atheists, a local cohort of non-believers, said that they were just trying to help and that the ban truly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSoup Kitchen's Atheist Ban Sparks Controversy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen in Spartanburg, S.C., turned atheists away last spring when non-believers approached the group and offered to help\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/11\/soup-kitchens-atheist-ban-sparks-controversy.html\" \/>\n<meta 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