Megan Brown
Staff writer
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn may just piss you off.
At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Lynn will continue Week Two’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme “Sin and Redemption: Practices and Possibilities for Reconciliation.”
During his career, Lynn worked as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on church-state cases, from 1984 to 1991 before taking this experience to serve as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State from 1992 to 2018.
As an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and devout Christian, Lynn deeply believes the religious right needs to acknowledge people’s rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“I’m a religious person, but I am not interested in 95% of the positions taken by these appalling people who claim to be Christians and also those who claim to be Christian politicians,” Lynn said on the “Feminist Buzzkills” podcast in 2023.
Since his retirement from Americans United in 2018, Lynn has made numerous public speaking appearances and published Paid to Piss People Off, a three-book trilogy with the individual books titled Peace, Porn and Prayer. A student Lynn met inspired the name of the trilogy.
“A high school student came up to me at a party we were having, and he said, ‘Mr. Lynn, when I get out of school, I want to do what you do.’ And I looked at him, I said, ‘Connor, what do you think I do?’ He said, ‘I think you get paid to piss people off,’ ” he said in his “Feminist Buzzkills” interview. “And I thought, that’s a pretty darn good title.”
Comedian Lewis Black, who curated Week Two’s Chautauqua Lecture Series, had Lynn do a rant onstage in Washington D.C. in 2018. In Lewis’ review of Paid to Piss People Off, he wrote, “Barry Lynn brilliantly expresses his ideas which he delivers with wit, humor, and panache. If this book is in your hands, you’re lucky. Open it and start reading. You’ll be glad you did.”
Book one, Peace, covers Lynn’s career from the 1960s to 1980s. It focuses on Lynn’s work as an attorney and minister to encourage former President Jimmy Carter to issue amnesty for those who refused to serve in the Vietnam War. Book two, Porn, covering the 1970s to 2010s, relays his time fighting for First Amendment rights for the ACLU. Book three, Prayer, details his history of working against the religious right on cases surrounding public prayer in school, creationism and death with dignity.
“To me, separation of church and state is literally the most important American principle,” Lynn said on “Feminist Buzzkills. “It should be something that conservatives and liberals and progressives and everybody in between supports.”
Even though Lynn spent his career fighting for the separation of church and state, he still sees other trying to combine the two even now.
“Lately, the idea of religious freedom has been completely captured by the religious right, by a majority of the Supreme Court,” he said on “Feminist Buzzkills.” “If you don’t keep a decent distance between the institutions of government and those of religion, we are in bad, bad shape. And the Supreme Court, thanks to its majority of barely cognizant individuals, it ain’t looking too good right now.”
