Having faith? Trump’s religion agenda to benefit conservative Christians most
Washington: White House Faith Office. A Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. A Religious Liberty Commission.
President Donald Trump has won plaudits from his base of conservative Christian supporters for establishing multiple faith-related entities.
“We’re bringing back religion in our country,” Trump said at a recent Rose Garden event, on the National Day of Prayer, when he announced the creation of the Religious Liberty Commission. “We must always be one nation under God, a phrase that they would like to get rid of, the radical left.”
But others, including some Christians, are alarmed by these acts — saying Trump isn’t protecting religion in general but granting a privileged status to politically conservative expressions of Christianity that happen to include his supporters.
Critics are even more aghast that he’s questioning a core understanding of the First Amendment. “They say ‘separation between church and state,’” Trump said at the prayer day gathering, when he talked about establishing the White House Faith Office. “I said, all right, let’s forget about that for one time.”
Trump’s creation of these various bodies is “definitely not normal, and it’s very important to not look at them as individual entities,” said the Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, a progressive Christian advocacy organisation.
“They are indicative of an entire system that is being constructed at the national level,” she said. “It’s a system specifically designed to guide and shape culture in the US.”
Fleck worries about the combined effect of Trump administration actions and a spate of decisions by the US Supreme Court in recent years. The court, now with three Trump appointees, has lowered barriers between church and state in its interpretations of the First Amendment’s ban on any congressionally recognised establishment of religion.
“My freedom of religion runs right up to the point when yours begins, and if I am then trying to establish something that’s going to affect your right to practice your faith, that is against the First Amendment,” Fleck said.
But religious supporters of Trump are happy with his expansion of religion-related offices.
“We were a nation birthed by prayer, founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic to ensure that people could worship as they wished,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, at the Rose Garden ceremony where he was announced as chair of the Religious Liberty Commission.
Many members are conservative Christian clerics and commentators; some have supported Trump politically. The event featured Christian praise music along with Jewish, Muslim and Christian prayers.
