The Freedom From Religion Foundation is sounding the alarm about President Trump’s newly announced “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force” to fight the so-called “persecution of Christians.”
Trump announced earlier today during the National Prayer Breakfast that he will be launching a presidential commission on religious liberty and signing an executive order putting Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge of the initiative, which he said he is creating to confront the purported “weaponization” and “religious persecution” of Christians in the United States. He said that the task force will be directed to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI — terrible — and other agencies.”
Trump, as he promised his Christian evangelical base, is taking steps to redefine and weaponize religious liberty to allow discrimination in the name of religion and the privileging of Christianity. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and a secular government — not special privileges for any one faith. Trump’s executive order is nothing more than a political ploy to advance Christian nationalism and undermine the separation of church and state.
“Christianity is not under attack in this country — if anything, it enjoys overwhelming privilege,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We stand ready to fight back against this attack on our secular democracy and the rights of nonbelievers and others.”
This order was issued to benefit conservative Christians in the United States, creating a privileged class for certain Christian churches and followers under the Trump presidency. The Christian nationalists backing Trump have long depicted U.S. evangelical or Catholic Christians as being persecuted, arguing that Christian “traditional values” and Christianity itself are under attack. This is all part of the Christian nationalist crusade to remake our country.
FFRF will monitor the implementation of this order in the coming months and work on behalf of all Americans to oppose this unconstitutional overreach and demand that the government uphold its duty to remain neutral on matters of religion. The First Amendment protects against both religious persecution and religious favoritism. Trump’s latest order fails that test.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 40,000 members and several chapters across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
