John Whitehead, an associate of the late Francis Schaeffer, pioneered America’s Christian legal movement nearly half a century ago. He applauds those defending freedom today but says some have become too partisan, too money-driven and too narrowly focused on the rights of evangelical Christians at the expense of Americans in minority faiths or no faith.
And he’s calling Christians in a Trump-induced “trance” to rise up and fight for freedoms being trampled by an authoritarian president.
“I’ve defended every faith,” said Whitehead, a complicated man who founded The Rutherford Institute in 1982. He blazed a path and mentored leaders in a movement (Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty, Liberty Counsel, Thomas More Society, Thomas More Law Center, Pacific Justice Institute, and American Center for Law and Justice) that has reshaped American law.
“I don’t agree with you, but I will defend you.”
Whitehead says the survival of America’s tradition of religious freedom depends on defending the rights of all Americans. His motto is: “I don’t agree with you, but I will defend you.” His favorite phrase is “inalienable rights,” repeated half a dozen times during an October phone interview.
I lost track of Whitehead before reading a September Washington Post profile. He still heads Rutherford, which was named after 17th-century Scottish Presbyterian minister and “troublemaker” Samuel Rutherford, whose arguments for limited government and church-state separation influenced America’s Founding Fathers.
Today, Whithead works with his wife, Nisha, in Florida to produce a Rutherford podcast, books and a stream of research, opinion pieces and reports, including “Religious Liberty Win: Court Limits ICE Raids at Certain Houses of Worship.” Their online store features travel mugs and hoodies reading, “Make America Free Again.”
He still writes legal briefs on threatened freedoms, which recently have included briefs on warrantless border searches of Americans’ cell phones and the Trump administration’s attacks on media and free speech.
“Freedom Amputated” by John Whitehead
When he runs out of words, he paints. “Freedom Amputated” portrays a wounded Statue of Liberty. “What was once a symbol of enlightenment has become a portrait of mutilation” as a result of “authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic ideals,” Whitehead wrote for a 2025 art gallery showing.
In his 1986 book, The End of Man, Whitehead warned that artificial intelligence and other technologies could erode our freedoms and humanness.
Forty years later, he’s warning of threats posed by attacks on the free press, drones, electronic surveillance, “a rapidly growing” and “out of control” police state, and the authoritarianism of Trump.
Rutherford’s recent mid-year report on “The State of Constitutional Freedom” was grim. “Two hundred and fifty years after America declared its independence from tyranny, the constitutional principles on which the nation was founded are being tested on multiple fronts,” it warns. “Emergency powers and executive authority continue to expand. Dissent is increasingly treated as a threat. Militarized policing, warrantless searches, government censorship and attacks on due process are steadily shifting the balance of power away from the individual and toward the state. These challenges transcend politics and political parties.”
His Oct. 20 message to midterm voters was dire: “Vote as If the Constitution Depended on It.”
Whitehead is a conservative who supports much of the work of Trump’s Religious Freedom Commission. But he says Trump is “mentally unbalanced,” increasing the need for Americans to “elect a new Congress that will rein him in” and restrain his abuses of power
“The right to vote means little if the government can manipulate the rules, intimidate those administering elections or cast doubt on legitimate results whenever the outcome threatens those in power,” he said. “Nor should Americans be willing to accept such conduct merely because they support the political party directing it.
“Imagine the reaction if a Democratic president threatened Republican election officials with imprisonment.”
“Imagine the reaction if a Democratic president threatened Republican election officials with imprisonment, deployed federal resources against states controlled by political opponents or suggested that elections producing unfavorable results were inherently illegitimate.”
Whitehead supports the inalienable rights of LGBTQ Americans and says Christians should lend them their support, too. That’s the American way, he says, and Americans should vigorously guard against leaders who exploit us/them rhetoric to drive wedges and fuel fears.
“It’s easy to take a class of people and get people all riled up against them, but we’re not supposed to hate anybody,” he said. “A great majority of (evangelical) Christians are out to lunch” in trying to restrict the rights of LGBTQ Americans. “Homophobia is wrong.”
He opposed Colorado’s Amendment 2, the 1992 measure promoted by James Dobson of Focus on the Family to restrict gay rights. Two years later, Dobson co-founded Alliance Defending Freedom, now the largest Christian legal group.
Whitehead also supports the inalienable rights of cake maker Jack Phillips to decline to create a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Alliance Defending Freedom has won a handful of Supreme court cases on LGBTQ issues and regularly uses LGBTQ scare tactics in its fundraising and promotion.
Instead of promoting hate for out groups, Christians should love their neighbors and help those who need it, Whitehead said. “God is a four-letter word: Love. I just don’t see a lot of it.”