Even as his administration battles with Christian leaders over immigration and ICE raids in churches, President Donald Trump pledged Feb. 6 he will “protect” Christians in America.
“While I’m in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast. “And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God.”
To that end, he announced creation of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” and stop “all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government.” That task force will be led by new Attorney General Pam Bondi.
He cited the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI as examples of government entities that have been “absolutely terrible” toward Christians.
Trump said Bondi would also work to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
He also said he will establish a presidential commission on religious liberty that “will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right.”
Televangelist and personal pastor to Donald Trump, Paula White Cain, speaks during a Trump campaign event courting devout conservatives by combining praise, prayer and patriotism, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Alpharetta, Ga. (AP Photo/John Amis)
And he said he would create a White House Faith Office, led by Paula White, a Pentecostal televangelist who has served as a religious adviser to Trump in the past. White is part of a group known as the New Apostolic Reformation.
At an earlier prayer breakfast the same morning, Trump advocated again for cracking down on immigration and barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ school-sponsored sports.
Church-state separationists immediately raised red flags about Trump appearing to call out special protections not only for Christians but for a specific subset of Christians.
“Rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination and the subversion of our civil rights laws,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “We’ve seen Christian nationalists do this already, claiming that religious freedom is a license to harm others.
“If Trump really cared about religious freedom and ending religious persecution, he’d be addressing antisemitism in his inner circle, anti-Muslim bigotry, hate crimes against people of color and other religious minorities, but instead, he’s abolishing federal programs and protections that address those wrongs. This task force is not a response to Christian persecution; it’s an attempt to make America into an ultra-conservative Christian nationalist nation. This is part of the Christian nationalist crusade to remake our country.”
Trump’s comments parallel language in the Republican Party Platform: “To protect religious liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America.”
MAGA Republicans and Christian evangelicals have been redefining “religious liberty” with an emphasis on protecting their own speech and actions while denying the same liberties to people of other faiths and even to other Christians. One of the most notable examples of this is U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, where the conservative majority on the court said a high school assistant football coach should be allowed to hold prayer meetings on the 50-yard line after games, even though administrators said the Christian prayer services were coercive.
Ralph Reed speaks at a campaign rally for Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker November 30, 2022, in Dalton, Ga.. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Ralph Reed, leader of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a longtime leader in the Religious Right, issued a statement praising Trump’s comments.
“I commend President Trump for announcing at the National Prayer Breakfast his intention to issue an executive order creating a task force headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi that will conduct a review of federal government departments and policies to completely eradicate all targeting or discrimination against Christians,” he said. “In the aftermath of the Biden Justice Department targeting parents attending school board meetings for possible prosecution and the FBI targeting faithful Catholics as a possible domestic threat, it has never been more important to eradicate all forms of targeting, bias and discrimination based on faith at the federal level.”
On the other side, Karli Wallace Thompson, digital campaign director of Faithful America, rejected Trump’s plan as more political posturing.
“Thanks but no thanks,” she said. “Trump’s proposed task force to eradicate so-called anti-Christian bias is really another mechanism through which he and his disciples can enforce their own brand of Christianity on the rest of us. What Trump and his band of false prophets and court pastors don’t want you to know is that some of their most vocal opponents are Christians. Most American Christians recognize the reality that the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda is based on Project 2025 and contradicts Jesus’ teachings at every turn. We will continue proudly exercising our faith and speaking out in support of Jesus’ teaching of love, justice and care for our neighbor.”
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