I just saw this ad on telly: The U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, in con­junc­tion with the Ad Coun­cil (both orga­ni­za­tions about which I have noth­ing pos­i­tive to say), has funded and pro­duced an adver­tise­ment fea­tur­ing reli­gious fig­ures endors­ing and pro­mot­ing gov­ern­ment pro­grams. No men­tion of the fea­tured anthro­po­mor­phic veg­eta­bles’ reli­gious affil­i­a­tion is men­tioned. Some­thing about using explic­itly reli­gious char­ac­ters to encour­age chil­dren to fol­low gov­ern­ment health advice strikes me as some­thing less than neu­tral to reli­gion, despite the sec­u­lar pur­pose. But because pro­mot­ing the health of chil­dren is a “legit­i­mate sec­u­lar pur­pose”, this kind of thing doesn’t vio­late the [ . . . ]

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