Last month, I wrote about the Lost Cajun Kitchen, a small, mom-and-pop restaurant located in Pennsylvania. The restaurant made news, because it offered a discount on Sundays to anyone bringing in a church bulletin, and a particular atheist decided to sue them over it. Little did the restaurant owners know just how good that action would be for business!

As I noted in my July 6 posting, “John Wolff, who is an atheist, filed the complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against Prudhomme’s Lost Cajun Kitchen in Columbia.” Here’s more from the York Daily Record:

Wolff said the practice discriminates against him because he does not attend church.

“I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” said Wolff, a retired electrical engineer.

Sharon Prudhomme, one of the co-owners of the restaurant, said she is not discriminating because diners don’t have to actually attend a church or synagogue service to get a bulletin. She said area religious leaders told her that anyone can walk in a religious building and obtain a bulletin, without attending services.

Prudhomme added that she has no intention of changing the discount program, which she created to bring more traffic into her restaurant on a traditionally slow day.

So what happened next? Just like with Chick-fil-A, the attention has resulted in big business for the restaurant. As reported in The Christian Post, “Owner Sharon Prudhomme explained that business has been up and support has poured in from all over the country and even the world.”

“It has definitely picked up,” said Prudhomme to the York Daily Record, adding that “everybody that comes in [offers] a lot of handshakes, hugs. Everybody is offering a lot of support.”

Here’s what John Wolff had to say in his own words:

So… the man says he has no animosity toward the owners of the restaurant, yet contacts an organization in order to take legal action against it? Come on! No one is being discriminated against and no one is showing intolerance in this situation except for Wolff.

The local newspaper hit the nail on the head with their op-ed about Wolff by writing, “It seems, like so many atheist complaints are designed more to draw attention to oneself than to right a serious constitutional wrong.”

So church folks can come on a Sunday and get a 10 percent discount on their mess of crawfish if they hand over a church bulletin. Big deal.

Restaurants offer all sorts of discounts based on debatable criteria – to senior citizens, to youth sports teams, to people who buy the newspaper and clip out the coupons.

Wolff and the Freedom from Religion Foundation should find something better to do with their time. It seems the more attention they draw to blasting organizations that have Christian principles, the more it helps the organizations. Hmmm… maybe they should keep it up! Chick-fil-A and the Lost Cajun Kitchen seem to be doing just fine.

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