House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) issued a subpoena to Humanist International for refusing to turn over records relating to its receipt of a $500,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to promote atheism in Nepal.
“For too long, organizations with extreme ideological agendas like Humanist International have been allowed to carry out publicly funded programs far from the public eye and with little congressional oversight,” McCaul said in announcing the subpoenas on Thursday.
“I was forced to issue a subpoena to HI because the company has refused to provide transparency to Congress and the American people, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money,” he added.
“The United States is complicit with the State Department, and I prepare to issue subpoenas to the State Department in the coming days for repeatedly resisting document submissions and deliberately obfuscating its role in exporting atheism overseas and partisanly perverting religious freedom,” McCaul said.
The State Department first solicited applications for the controversial grants in April 2021, and they have since become the subject of a multi-year investigation by House Republicans.
McCaul’s investigation has the backing of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), a devout Southern Baptist, and Republicans in foreign affairs who believe the subsidies may be unconstitutional, according to RealClearPolitics.
The separation of church and state clause of the United States Constitution prohibits American taxpayer money from being used to advocate for any religion.
“Applicants are responsible for ensuring that program activities and outcomes are conducted in accordance with the separation of church and state clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor writes on its grant application webpage.
Recipients were encouraged to use the funds to support and strengthen “a diverse community of advocates for atheists, humanists, non-practicing people and non-affiliated people from all religious communities in the recipient country.”
The State Department may have misappropriated taxpayer funds and misled members of the Committee on Foreign Relations about grants that were supposed to be part of a religious freedom program and may have been anti-religious.
PowerPoint slides obtained by the committee contained “conclusive” evidence that Humanist International’s grants in Nepal were “designed to recruit new members to their atheistic cause.”
“Indeed, despite all the State Department’s excuses, it is now clear that this grant promoted atheism, expanded atheist networks overseas, and ignored Christian and Muslim minorities in relevant parts of South Asia who, unlike atheists and humanitarians, are actually suffering persecution,” the foreign ministers wrote in an April letter to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Verma.
None expressed confidence that the State Department would “take immediate action” or “recover the misused funds.”
A representative for Humanists International did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
