While President Trump’s executive orders to establish the White House Faith Office may seem like “deja vu all over again,” his tandem order to create a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” signals his overt intent to privilege the Christian religion.
“We don’t need a task force to root out ‘anti-Christian bias,’ but one that will finally go after those who flagrantly violate the constitutional separation between religion and government,” asserts Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
Trump’s first order has renamed the current White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives the White House Faith Office and (no surprise) has installed Rev. Paula White-Cain, who led Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative in 2019, as its head.
The goal is not only to aid faith-based groups in obtaining government grants but also to influence policies in a broad range of social areas. This is a clear signal that the White House appears to favor funding faith-based programs related to adoption and foster care and that faith-based groups that discriminate, such as against LGBTQ clients, will be able to receive government grants.
Trump’s subsequent “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” executive order establishes a one-year task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” which Trump announced will be led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself a Christian nationalist, to investigate the “targeting” of Christians.
Trump’s policy will “protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.” The order absurdly and explicitly attacks previous President Biden, a devout Catholic, for running an administration that “engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.” This harkens to Trump’s pardoning of two dozen Christian anti-abortion harassers. The order goes on in that vein, repeating a series of alleged grievances against the Biden administration that Trump often brought up in campaign speeches, among these that Biden declared Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility.” (The day of visibility occurs every year on March 31, which happened to fall on Easter in 2024).
The task force is ordered to identify unlawful policies, practices or conduct by all executive departments and agencies and recommend additional presidential or legislative action. All heads of cabinets and other key officials are required to sit on the task force, where they are to review activities of the Departments of Labor, State, Justice, FBI, Health and Human Services, Education, Homeland Security, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and “identify any unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct by an agency contrary to the purpose and policy of this order.”
The order tasks the force with spotting groups or individuals “affected by anti-Christian conduct,” among other things. Trump said Bondi would 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.”
The White House released a fact sheet about the Faith Office geared to evangelical supporters, bragging, “Promises made, promises kept,” listing what Trump has called actions to safeguard religious freedom but that mainly privilege religion.
FFRF will be monitoring the White House Faith Office and the attorney general’s task force to ensure that the rights of conscience of all Americans — especially the growing number of nonbelievers — are upheld by the federal government and that freethinkers and religious minorities are not persecuted.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With nearly 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
