U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he is struggling to fully comprehend the Trump administration’s overwhelming assault on basic freedoms as well as its ongoing attempt to dismantle federal programs and agencies.
Calling the situation a “crisis” would be an understatement, Thompson said during “America in Crisis: Navigating the Dark Road Ahead,” a Feb. 12 webinar hosted by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, The New Republic and the Rachel Carson Council.
“I thought January 6 was the real crisis for this country. And indeed, it was. But little did I know that four years later, that crisis would expand with the election of Donald Trump as president,” said Thompson, former chairman of the House committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.
“This is not the time to sit on the sidelines. This is not the time to let frustration turn into silence.”
To save democracy, Americans must shake the disbelief and distress in order to begin resisting and to remember true power rests with the people, not with one man, he said. “This is not the time to sit on the sidelines. This is not the time to let frustration turn into silence. This is a time to engage, to make sure your voice is heard in every corner of the country. That means showing up at the ballot, in the courts, in the streets, in the halls of Congress. It means organizing, mobilizing and make sure no action taken by this administration goes unchallenged.”
Bennie Thompson
Thompson’s keynote address kicked off discussions on a wide range of topics that included a panel discussion about the role of Christian nationalism in shaping Trump’s actions and its threats to freedom of religion, bodily autonomy and public education.
Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, was asked to explain how Christian nationalism is connected to recent attacks by the administration against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious groups that serve refugees and immigrants.
“The single biggest threat to religious freedom for all people in America today is the rise of Christian nationalism,” said Tyler, lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism and author of How to End Christian Nationalism. “We’re seeing that in real time right now. Christian nationalism suggests that to be a real American, to be a true American, that one has to be a Christian. That obviously sidelines people from other religious faiths and people who don’t claim a faith tradition.”
The ideology also discriminates against Christians who do not hold to a narrow white supremacist ideology, she added. “We’ve seen the violence at Black churches for decades and centuries, including with the burning of Black Lives Matter signs in the lead up to January 6. We’re also seeing this administration take on immigrant churches and churches that serve immigrant populations as part of the rescission of the policy that protected sensitive locations like hospitals, schools and houses of worship from ICE raids.”
The White House’s swift retribution against Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde of Washington, D.C., for asking Trump to have mercy on marginalized people, together with a subsequent House resolution condemning her remarks, are further illustrations of Christian nationalism, she said.
Amanda Tyler
“There is no widespread anti-Christian bias in this country. In fact, they are the ones who are spreading a certain kind of anti-Christian bias.”
The same can be said of the president’s Feb. 6 executive order establishing a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias, Tyler continued. “First, we have to say there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in this country. In fact, they are the ones who are spreading a certain kind of anti-Christian bias through all these attacks, both verbally and on social media.”
The ultimate goal of Christian nationalism is to dismantle the constitutional principle of church-state separation and to inject ultra-conservative Christian beliefs into the law and, from there, attempt to further regulate bodily autonomy, said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“Church-state separation doesn’t just protect your right to believe as you choose, it also protects your freedom to live as your authentic self and have control over your body. There’s a connecting of the dots that we need to do today to illustrate how important church-state separation is to our daily lives.”
The need for such boundaries was illustrated in Trump’s executive order proclaiming the existence of only two genders, mandating the term “sex” replace “gender” and rescinding all federal policies supporting transgender equality, she added. Trump’s language “betrays that is a religious definition that was sneaked into that executive order about how your sex is established from conception.”
Alessandro Terenzoni
The administration’s promised assault on the U.S. Department of Education comes right out of the Project 2025, the Christian nationalist playbook for reshaping government and society, said Alessandro Terenzoni, vice president of public policy for Americans United.
“Education is the biggest threat to Christian nationalism that we have, and isn’t that exactly why Christian nationalists are gunning for public education? For our colleges and universities? Because an informed public has always been a threat to authoritarianism since time immemorial and now is no different.”
“An informed public has always been a threat to authoritarianism since time immemorial, and now is no different.”
Trump’s executive order titled “Expanding Educational Freedom” actually describes his administration’s efforts to redirect federal dollars to faith-based and other private schools and may come in the form of tax credits or vouchers, Terenzoni said.
Another play from Project 2025 is to abolish the U.S. Department of Education in part because of the work the agency performs protecting the civil rights of students, he added. “It’s a civil rights agency in everything it does. It has an office for civil rights that Project 2025 intends to move over to the Department of Justice. That move also abandons all the administrative enforcement of that office.”
Americans opposed to these developments must contact their representatives in Congress, Tyler said. “We (Christians Against Christian Nationalism) are pushing out action alerts about how they can tell their elected representatives to say no to these schemes, because many of these executive orders really will take acts of Congress to fully implement. So, the time is now for people to get more engaged.”
Rachel Laser
Laser urged Americans to look for the relationships between Christian nationalism and abortion, LGBTQ equality and church-state separation. “This is a great issue to unite around. We all have a stake in protecting religious freedom, so don’t just do the pulpit exchange on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Get together and unite around this issue with Muslims, Jews Christians, Hindus and the non-religious, and recommit to church-state separation.”
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said one way to remain undaunted in the moment is to take the long, historical view of it. “Let us never forget that for most of human history, up until the Revolution, and then all the way through up until today, all over the world most people have lived under conditions of tremendous authoritarianism, with monarchs and kings and dictators.”
Raskin listed Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Trump as modern-day examples of that trend.
“That’s been the fate of humanity,” he said. “Democracy has always been the exception and it’s always been a struggle. And if we had the luxury of being able to forget that for a while, we no longer have that luxury. We are in the fight.”
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