Editor’s note: This blog post by AU President and CEO Rachel Laser originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of AU’s Church & State magazine.
Brave. Clear-eyed. Informed. Determined. Action-oriented. Those are some adjectives that come to mind when I think about my recent experiences with the young adults involved with Americans United.
A few weeks ago, I had the honor of addressing a group of people who gathered in the apartment of a couple who live on the Upper West Side of New York City to learn more about Americans United and our work defending church-state separation in these tumultuous (to put it mildly) times. A clergy board member and former Americans United Youth Organizing Fellow joined me in presenting to the group.
The board member and I connected well with the crowd, but our former youth fellow really blew them away with her insights and commitment to church-state separation. She shared how scared she and her peers feel at this moment, and how it makes them that much more driven to act. She explained that her peers support church-state separation not because of our country’s founders, who got a lot wrong, but because it’s core to our democracy and something the founders got right. Her remarks generated a palpable energy and hopefulness in the room.
When I read the first-place essays for our high school and college essay contests, which are printed in this month’s magazine, I find myself similarly inspired. Our high school contest essay winner, Dhruti Pathak, is a lover of books who, having grown up in Saudi Arabia, witnessed how a conservative religious movement controlled education.
Determined to ward off the same in America, on the day that her Texas school board was voting to give their superintendent the authority to unilaterally ban books, bypassing her district’s book review committee, she decided to join a crowd of protestors all wearing red and carrying “Let Freedom Read” signs. Dhruti describes finding her voice that day, as she bravely spoke to the press. Her essay, which references multiple legal cases and historical church-state separation leaders, exudes power, knowledge and commitment.
Our college winner, Krrisha Patel, is a Hindu-American who grew up in a predominantly Christian community. She describes her school’s “quiet endorsement” of Christianity through its focus on Christian traditions like Christmas assemblies and its neglect to teach about the contribution of non-Christian cultures to our country. For Krrisha, the fight for church-state separation is not only about embracing her own identity, it’s about insisting that our society values it and others’ identities equally to white Christians — as our country promises.
If only we could all dare to name our lived realities so clearly, to share our vulnerability, and to demand better. Authenticity and vulnerability are powerful. They connect us to others, generate empathy and disarm those we need to convince to join us.
This past month, I also had the joy of attending the Legal Academy Spring Summit in sunny Los Angeles. Co-hosted by Americans United, UCLA Law’s Center for Reproductive Health Law and Policy, and Columbia Law School’s Law, Rights and Religion Project, the Summit explored intersectional advocacy around bodily autonomy and identity. I was proud that 37 Legal Academy alumni took the time out of their lives to come be with us for this important gathering. Practitioners from over a dozen groups representing the religious freedom, reproductive freedom and justice, and LGBTQ+ equality legal communities joined these law students and new lawyers for a lively Summit.
The Legal Academy alumni were not all having the easiest time — some had lost jobs working for the government because they were still probationary employees, and many were concerned about the state of student loan forgiveness. Even so, they were resolute in their commitment to continue fighting for America’s core values. The same young attorney who a few years ago had told me that thanks to the Legal Academy program he no longer had imposter syndrome as a legal intern for his storied nonprofit, said the Summit was helping him think about how to make sure that “in 30 years, I don’t look back and think that I was part of the problem.”
I know this is an extremely upsetting and unsettling moment for many of us. It’s easy to fear that nothing will remain of our country after the next four years. So please, remember that a new generation of Americans is staunchly and bravely committed to preserving our democracy, which they understand is grounded in church-state separation, and our beloved Americans United is doing all we can to help give them the support and tools they need to succeed.
