Latest news with #ReligiousLibertyCommission
USA Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Attorney General Pam Bondi vows to preserve religious freedom against 'emerging threats'
Attorney General Pam Bondi vows to preserve religious freedom against 'emerging threats' Some critics worry the commission lacks a diversity of thought, and a small number of people walked out of the attorney general's speech in protest. Show Caption Hide Caption Trump tells Christians they won't have to vote after this election The GOP presidential nominee delivered the comments during a keynote speech at Turning Point Action's Believers' Summit. President Donald Trump created the Religious Liberty Commission with a May 1 executive order. The commission met for the first time at the Museum of the Bible on June 16 in Washington, D.C. WASHINGTON −U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said religious liberty has 'come under attack' in the nation during the inaugural meeting of President Donald Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. The commission met at the Museum of the Bible and Bondi referenced Trump's May 1 executive order, which established the panel and said Americans must work to 'preserve (religious freedom) against emerging threats.' 'The federal government became complicit in sheltering these threats, becoming the greatest threat itself,' Bondi said before listing events under former President Joe Biden's administration. She mentioned the nearly two-dozen anti-abortion activists whom Trump pardoned in January and claimed Biden 'marked Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, as Transgender Day of Visibility.' As USA TODAY previously reported, the latter commemoration has long been celebrated on March 31, and Easter also landing on that date in 2024 was coincidental. Bondi said the administration has dropped cases that stemmed from the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, under which anti-abortion activists have been arrested, and has supported the 'rights of parents to protect their children from transgender books" in public schools. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on a case involving the latter issue. Bondi's message didn't sit well with Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons of Interfaith Alliance, who was one of a half dozen people who left the museum's theater during what he described as Bondi's 'very extreme' remarks. 'To see the attorney general use her short remarks to just act aggrieved was disturbing, but expected,' he said. Graves-Fitzsimmons was already skeptical of the commission before June 16, and he found the meeting affirmed his suspicion by having 'very little diversity of thought.' A theme among numerous speakers was a belief that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment doesn't prevent the government from promoting religion and that it can and should do so. South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman said posting the Ten Commandments in a public school classroom, for example, does not violate the clause. Mark David Hall, a Regent University professor who served as a witness at the meeting, said the founders didn't believe religion must be 'scrubbed from the public square.' Such sentiments reflect what Graves-Fitzsimmons described as the commission's 'misuse of religious liberty.' 'I think most Americans believe separation of church and state is good for both, and their voices aren't being heard at all by this commission,' he said. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik supported what he described as the Supreme Court's shift to a 'more accurate' understanding of religious freedom in recent years. Several speakers referenced legal concepts and court cases that they hoped would be revisited in the years to come. Alliance Defending Freedom President Kristen Waggoner, for example, supported challenges to the so-called Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches from getting involved in politics. Bondi, who previously led the inaugural meeting of the 'Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias,' said the Department of Justice will use 'every legal and constitutional tool available' to uphold religious liberty. 'Let this commission serve as a reminder – elections have consequences,' Bondi said. 'And this president and this administration are fully committed to restoring and defending religious liberty for all Americans.' The commission's next meeting will be held in September. BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
USA Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission meets for the first time: What to know
Show Caption President Donald Trump has said during his second term "religion is coming back to America" and has launched a new Religious Liberty Commission in his administration. The creation of the commission followed the establishment of the White House Faith Office in February, which replaced former President Joe Biden's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. According to the White House, the commission will advise the faith office and will reflect a "diversity of faith traditions, professional backgrounds and viewpoints." But some groups and experts are skeptical, suggesting the commission could serve as a platform for a specific Christian agenda. The commission will have its first meeting, which is open to the public, at the Museum of the Bible in Washington on Monday. Here's what to know about the group ahead of the event: What is the commission? The commission is a group of up to 14 people appointed by Trump who are tasked with advising the government on religious liberty issues. The executive order says the members' terms, and the commission itself, will end on July 4, 2026 – the 250 th anniversary of American independence – unless Trump extends it. Members are not paid for their work, though they may receive travel expenses. The commission also has three advisory boards composed of religious leaders, legal experts and lay leaders. Who's involved and on the commission? Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who offered up to $1 million to individuals who could provide proof of Trump's baseless claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, and Dr. Ben Carson, who ran for president in 2016 and later served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Trump's first administration, were appointed to serve as the commission's chair and vice chair, respectively. Other longtime Trump allies are on the commission, including the Rev. Franklin Graham and pastor Paula White, who leads the White House Faith Office. The commission also includes Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York whom Trump recommended for the papacy after Pope Francis' death, and Carrie Prejean Boller, who stirred controversy by saying 'marriage should be between a man and a woman' during the Miss USA 2009 competition. The religious advisory board includes Christian and Jewish members from traditions including Catholicism, evangelicalism, Greek Orthodox Christianity and orthodox Judaism. They include: Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros, who attended Trump's inauguration and later offered the president a holy cross as a sign of 'divine guidance,' according to the Catholic News Agency. Pastor Jack Graham, who leads Prestonwood Baptist Church in the Dallas area and previously served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Graham has referred to Trump as a 'warrior for the word of God.' Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, who has criticized 'wokeism' and said that Judaism 'teaches the principles that made America great' in an April interview with the Orthodox Jewish media outlet VIN News. Legal experts include Jason Bedrick, a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, which crafted the Republican policy playbook known as Project 2025, South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman, and Alliance Defending Freedom president, CEO and general counsel Kristen Waggoner. Lay leaders include Alveda King, an anti-abortion advocate and niece of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and 'Heaven Meets Earth' podcast co-host and Christian Broadcasting Network reporter Abigail Robertson Allen. Also on the board is activist Sameerah Munshi, who has supported Maryland parents seeking a right to opt their children out of reading books with LGBTQ characters in public schools in a case before the Supreme Court. What will the commission do? The commission's purpose is to 'safeguard and promote America's founding principle of religious freedom," according to the White House. Trump's May 1 executive order that established the group said Americans 'need to be reacquainted with our nation's superb experiment in religious freedom in order to preserve it against emerging threats.' More hearings will follow its initial June 16 meeting over the next year, the White House said, and the commission is tasked with publishing a report on the history and state of religious liberty in the nation by July 4, 2026. That report will highlight 'parental rights in religious education, school choice, conscience protections, attacks on houses of worship, free speech for religious entities and institutional autonomy," according to a White House fact sheet. What is the 'anti-Christian bias' they're referring to? The fact sheet also accused the Biden administration of '(targeting) peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.' When asked for further details about the claim, a White House spokesperson referenced the nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists whom Trump pardoned in January. The group included individuals charged with conspiring to storm a reproductive health clinic in Washington in October 2020. Among their charges were violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits individuals from interfering with another's access to reproductive health services 'by force, threat of force or physical obstruction.' The Office of the Associate Attorney General said in a Jan. 24 letter that charging individuals under the act '(has) been the prototypical example of this weaponization.' In a speech following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, which revoked a woman's constitutional right to an abortion and prompted nationwide protests, Biden said he '(calls) on everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision, to keep all protests peaceful.' Why are some experts concerned? The White House touted what it described as the diversity of the commission. "President Trump welcomes, honors and celebrates people of all faiths in the White House,' the White House spokesperson said, pointing to the president's commemorations of the religious holidays of Ramadan, Easter and Passover. The commission includes Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but no Muslims or members of other minority religious groups. There is Muslim representation on the advisory board of lay leaders. Given that composition, some experts were skeptical that the commission's work would uphold religious liberty for all in practice. 'Saying, 'we have a Catholic and a Protestant and a Jew on the committee' does not mean that we have balanced viewpoints or a wide array of viewpoints if you've gone through and chosen people who share and reflect the administration's favored religious beliefs and favored political beliefs, and that's what we have here,' Duke University law professor Richard Katskee said. Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor and dean of Berkeley Law, noted the commission appears to be 'an extremely conservative group' primarily focused on 'using government to advance religion,' particularly a Trump-friendly branch of Christianity. That, he said, is 'very troubling.' Eugene Volokh, a professor of law emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said time will tell if the commission lives up to its stated goal of protecting all religious groups and practices in the United States. "I think the commission's job is to protect everybody and they may very well take quite seriously that job," he said. "We'll see." BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@
USA Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission meets for the first time: What to know
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution President Donald Trump has said during his second term "religion is coming back to America" and has launched a new Religious Liberty Commission in his administration. The creation of the commission followed the establishment of the White House Faith Office in February, which replaced former President Joe Biden's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. According to the White House, the commission will advise the faith office and will reflect a "diversity of faith traditions, professional backgrounds and viewpoints." But some groups and experts are skeptical, suggesting the commission could serve as a platform for a specific Christian agenda. The commission will have its first meeting, which is open to the public, at the Museum of the Bible in Washington on Monday. Here's what to know about the group ahead of the event: What is the commission? The commission is a group of up to 14 people appointed by Trump who are tasked with advising the government on religious liberty issues. The executive order says the members' terms, and the commission itself, will end on July 4, 2026 – the 250th anniversary of American independence – unless Trump extends it. Members are not paid for their work, though they may receive travel expenses. The commission also has three advisory boards composed of religious leaders, legal experts and lay leaders. Who's involved and on the commission? What will the commission do? The commission's purpose is to 'safeguard and promote America's founding principle of religious freedom," according to the White House. Trump's May 1 executive order that established the group said Americans 'need to be reacquainted with our nation's superb experiment in religious freedom in order to preserve it against emerging threats.' More hearings will follow its initial June 16 meeting over the next year, the White House said, and the commission is tasked with publishing a report on the history and state of religious liberty in the nation by July 4, 2026. That report will highlight 'parental rights in religious education, school choice, conscience protections, attacks on houses of worship, free speech for religious entities and institutional autonomy," according to a White House fact sheet. What is the 'anti-Christian bias' they're referring to? The fact sheet also accused the Biden administration of '(targeting) peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.' When asked for further details about the claim, a White House spokesperson referenced the nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists whom Trump pardoned in January. The group included individuals charged with conspiring to storm a reproductive health clinic in Washington in October 2020. Among their charges were violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits individuals from interfering with another's access to reproductive health services 'by force, threat of force or physical obstruction.' The Office of the Associate Attorney General said in a Jan. 24 letter that charging individuals under the act '(has) been the prototypical example of this weaponization.' In a speech following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, which revoked a woman's constitutional right to an abortion and prompted nationwide protests, Biden said he '(calls) on everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision, to keep all protests peaceful.' Why are some experts concerned? The White House touted what it described as the diversity of the commission. "President Trump welcomes, honors and celebrates people of all faiths in the White House,' the White House spokesperson said, pointing to the president's commemorations of the religious holidays of Ramadan, Easter and Passover. The commission includes Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but no Muslims or members of other minority religious groups. There is Muslim representation on the advisory board of lay leaders. Given that composition, some experts were skeptical that the commission's work would uphold religious liberty for all in practice. 'Saying, 'we have a Catholic and a Protestant and a Jew on the committee' does not mean that we have balanced viewpoints or a wide array of viewpoints if you've gone through and chosen people who share and reflect the administration's favored religious beliefs and favored political beliefs, and that's what we have here,' Duke University law professor Richard Katskee said. Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor and dean of Berkeley Law, noted the commission appears to be 'an extremely conservative group' primarily focused on 'using government to advance religion,' particularly a Trump-friendly branch of Christianity. That, he said, is 'very troubling.' Eugene Volokh, a professor of law emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said time will tell if the commission lives up to its stated goal of protecting all religious groups and practices in the United States. "I think the commission's job is to protect everybody and they may very well take quite seriously that job," he said. "We'll see." BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@ USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Vox
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Donald Trump is building a strange new religious movement
is a research associate at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in the United Kingdom and the author of Holy Russia? Holy War?: Why the Russian Church Is Backing Putin Against Ukraine. President Donald Trump hands out pens to faith leaders after signing an executive order on the establishment of the Religious Liberty Commission during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 1, 2025. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images For over six decades, the 'religious right' in America was boomer 'Christian nationalism,' straight out of The Handmaid's Tale. It was about 'keeping God in the schools' and the National Prayer Breakfast. It was traditionalist, mindful of theology, and, well, theocratic, which is to say it wanted to take the standards of a religious tradition and apply them to the secular law. They wanted the books of Scripture to replace the statute books. But President Donald Trump is trying to create a new religious right, one that is not just illiberal but fundamentally different and opposed to traditional religion as we've known it. The faith of the MAGA movement is not one in which the state conforms to the church, but one in which the church is bent to the will of the strange beast that is American nationalism — the belief that the American project is an exercise in freedom and prosperity like the world has never known, but also the sole possession of those who are white, heterosexual, and unquestioningly loyal to the nation. It's a model of church-state relations that has less in common with post-revolutionary Iran, where an Islamic cleric known as the supreme leader and his council of religious jurists preside over government, and more in common with Soviet (and arguably contemporary) Russia, where the Russian Orthodox Church is subject to the whims of the Kremlin, acting as everything from propaganda tool to spy center. This is the displacement of the trappings of religion with America First alternatives. It's not coherent in a religious sense. It's coherent in a political sense. This is evident from the members and mission of Trump's new Religious Liberty Commission, as well as its three advisory bodies of religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The commission is tasked with preparing a report on the history and current state of religious liberty in America. By contrast, Trump's three immediate predecessors maintained an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to advise on how faith-based organizations and the government could collaborate on issues like human trafficking, climate change, or global poverty. Called 'Community Initiatives' under Bush, this model reflected the church coming to the aid of the state to address issues arising from the collective moral failings of secular society. Trump abolished this office at the beginning of his second term. His new plan — the commission charged with producing an 'official account' of American religious liberty past and present — is not only unprecedented in American history; it is the product of a very different view of the church-state relationship. In this formulation, faith is not a balm for the moral ills of a nation. Here, the United States, its history and institutions, is the means by which religion can sustain itself. And therefore religious institutions prosper or fail in proportion not to their own morality or faithfulness but to the extent to which America is 'American' enough. This strategy was one of the founding tactics of the old religious right, a tactic it shares with this new religious movement. But the MAGA religious right has taken this strategy to a new level. And this new movement is far more complex. If we believe that these ideological architects are simply 'conservative Christians' or even 'Christian nationalists' in the old vein, we are fundamentally misreading both the religious character of the MAGA movement and its broader ideological and practical aims. If, however, we perceive and understand the difference, we are much better situated to combat the radical remaking not just of American religion but of America itself. The strange makeup of the Religious Liberty Commission Nothing makes this new religious movement more clear than a quick survey of whom Trump has appointed to serve. Of the 39 appointments made to the Religious Liberty Commission and its related advisory boards, not a single mainline Protestant is among them. Instead, the board is dominated by evangelicals. Evangelicals' emphasis on personal salvation, biblical literalism, and emotive worship made them much more popular among America's least wealthy and least educated, in contrast to the more theologically flexible mainline Protestants who once dominated the country's political and cultural elite. These differences also made the evangelicals naturally more politically conservative than their mainline counterparts. The evangelicals on the commission are joined by conservative Catholics, Orthodox Jews, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America, and Dr. Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-Day Adventist. Significantly, two of the three Muslims appointed by Trump, are white, American converts to the faith. These are both inclusions and omissions that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, when American civic religion — that is, the collective and largely unspoken religious values of a nation — was dominated by the mainline denominations while Catholics, Jews and Muslims remained on the periphery. That's not to say that this exclusion was a good thing. But who is invited to the table does tend to reveal the values of the people and nation doing the inviting. The reign of mainline Protestants and WASPs reflected a certain set of principles about both religion and politics: moderation in religion and a separation of church and state in politics that not only maintained the neutrality of the government but also the independence of the churches. Not surprisingly then, as the old religious right rose to power, their enemies included not only secular liberals but also the mainline churches by whom they had long felt belittled. The simple explanation for the omission of mainline Protestants now is that these denominations and their members have become more progressive and are simply too liberal for Trump. They are 'victims' of the sensibility, good education, and pragmatism that defined them for generations and then lured them leftward. But this is only part of the truth. High-profile splits among Episcopalians and Methodists, as well as the existence of deeply conservative mainline churches like the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, demonstrate that there are still plenty of socially and politically conservative mainline Protestants in America, even if they are now a minority within their own tradition (which might also be said of politically conservative Jewish Americans). These religious and political conservatives would seem like natural allies to include in a coalition interested in traditional religion and traditional society. Moreover, the evangelical leaders of this new coalition might, in theory, be far more comfortable with a fellow Protestant Christian than with a Muslim, a Jew, or even a Catholic. And yet, they have been excluded. The old American civic religion is dead. Instead, we are confronted with a cross-faith coalition united not by theology, but by a shared sense of cultural siege. This coalition has manifested not only in the Religious Liberty Commission, but on podcasts, in rallies, and in a growing number of organizations. Trump even touted the alliance in his now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally on the eve of the 2024 election. This is not to say that the traditions included are themselves devoid of theological content or that every member of these traditions is part of the new coalition. That is clearly not true. But the individuals and institutions entering this coalition are willing to put aside theological concerns, even subsume them completely, in the interest of the coalition's nation-building project. This project, born from that shared sense of threat (largely around issues of gender, sexuality, and race), is not, as they would have you believe, a concerted effort to return society to some earlier state. Trump 2.0 has made clear that it is seeking to reshape America in unprecedented ways. That's the opposite of being traditional and conservative. The goal of the new movement is to radically transform American life and society. Related The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies How the new American religion works While the religious right of the 1980s and 1990s was political because of their theology, this is a group doing the opposite: constructing a theology that fits their politics. Take, for example, the defense by evangelical leaders of Trump's sexual transgressions. Trump's sins are excusable because he is a messianic figure, they say, sent not to save our souls but America. It's not coherent in a religious sense. It's coherent in a political sense. You can't counter this kind of movement the same way you would more traditional 'believers.' He also penned a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post titled 'Muslims Like Me Don't Have Theological Beef with Evangelicals. It's the Prejudice Against Us That's the Problem' in which he recounts how 'at home' he and his wife felt at the anti-abortion Washington March for Life among 'fellow believers.' He also bemoans the greater welcome Muslims have received on the American left, arguing it has caused American Muslims to abandon hardline positions on issues like sexuality. Of course, Royer ignores that, as a white man, he is in the minority (in a way that matters) among American Muslims. But he is also making a fairly innovative argument: In claiming he wants to restore Christian principles and complaining against Muslims being welcomed by the left, he says theology doesn't matter; only politics does. Because in the end, America (not God) — and specifically America as it is imagined by the MAGA movement and Trump — is the source of liberty and human flourishing. With respect to the things that matter most to him, Royer does have more in common with the evangelicals at the March for Life than he does with those Muslims whom he mourns being 'secularized' by the tolerance of the left. It appears that Royer shares a political vision of America with those evangelicals and does not care about sharing a theological vision with Muslims. Royer might become fast friends with fellow commission member Eric Metaxas. Raised Greek Orthodox, Metaxas has existed in a sort of denominational gray area for the whole of his adult life. He attended an Episcopal Church in Manhattan (where he served in the vestry) and has written bestselling biographies of the two most famous Lutherans ever: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther himself. But he is now comfortably described as an 'evangelical intellectual.' All suffice to say, Metaxas probably doesn't care all that much about the deep theological issues that have divided Christendom. What he cares about is politics. This movement seeks power not to preserve a spiritual order or influence their own or anybody else's afterlife but to reshape society in the here and now. This is the only world they really care about. In fact, one of the most shocking differences between the old religious right and the MAGA religious right is how little the afterlife comes up. Where Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Pat Buchanan never ceased talking about the threat of eternal punishment, both for individuals and the nation, these new guys never bring it up. They are, for all intents and purposes, metaphysical atheists, occasionally invoking vague theological language only because it still holds cultural sway. Finally, there's the seemingly endless celebrations of the state and its power. In the brief time since he returned to office, Trump has planned a military parade and established two new holidays. Now, with the commission, he has ordered a hagiographic recounting of the nation's history, placing the story of the country within a sacred narrative by official channels. That is big imperial cult energy (and if you don't believe me, read the 'Aeneid'). This is the displacement of the trappings of religion with America First alternatives. Related The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies The old methods of resistance won't work All this should matter to anyone who wants to stop them. First, you can't counter this kind of movement the same way you would more traditional 'believers.' Combating the religious right in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s was in many ways as simple as pointing out hypocrisy and holding leaders to the same standards they held others. And it worked. Many of the figures of the old religious right have simply been shamed from public life, making way for their new, more pernicious, replacements. But MAGA is pretty impervious to shame. You can't just appeal to theological humility or scriptural counterpoints. And you can't rely on their own sense of conscience. What animates them is political utility. If we understand how the MAGA religious movement is different from the old Christian nationalists, those who wish to combat Trump and his ilk might find some new allies. All of those traditionalist conservative believers — the Latter-day Saints, the conservative mainline Protestants, Catholic bishops without Instagram — might be the key to taking down the Church of MAGA. This doesn't mean that progressives have to agree on everything or anything or even like them. But it does mean recognizing that the enemy of your enemy might be your political frenemy, especially when they are alarmed for different but equally serious reasons. Many traditional conservative believers remain committed to some basic moral architecture, to rules that bind even their leaders, and to a God who ultimately cannot be manipulated. The administration's draconian immigration policy is now disquieting some evangelicals, concerned about co-religionists who have sought refuge in America from real religious persecution. And the Trump administration's pronatalist advocacy for IVF has many conservative Christians, including conservative Catholics, on edge. These groups may not like the world as it is, but they don't like the world MAGA's new civic cult seeks to build either. And in this light, they may wish to fight it out on the old terms. If progressives can make the idea of the last war appealing, there is hope for a viable coalition. Trump and MAGA have declared a religious war, not just against secularism or progressive forms of religion, but also against traditional religion that refuses to serve their radical vision for the world. This is not a theocracy in the making. This is not The Handmaid's Tale. It's something newer, stranger, and much more difficult to fight: religion of nation and identity disguised in the trappings of familiar faiths. We won't defeat it with scripture or appeals to conscience. We'll need to name it, unmask it, and forge unexpected alliances with those who (whatever their doctrine) still believe in a higher power than Donald Trump.
Vox
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The old 'religious right' is dead. The new one is stranger — and harder to fight.
is a research associate at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in the United Kingdom and the author of Holy Russia? Holy War?: Why the Russian Church Is Backing Putin Against Ukraine. President Donald Trump hands out pens to faith leaders after signing an executive order on the establishment of the Religious Liberty Commission during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 1, 2025. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images For over six decades, the 'religious right' in America was boomer 'Christian nationalism,' straight out of The Handmaid's Tale. It was about 'keeping God in the schools' and the National Prayer Breakfast. It was traditionalist, mindful of theology, and, well, theocratic, which is to say it wanted to take the standards of a religious tradition and apply them to the secular law. They wanted the books of Scripture to replace the statute books. But President Donald Trump is trying to create a new religious right, one that is not just illiberal but fundamentally different and opposed to traditional religion as we've known it. The faith of the MAGA movement is not one in which the state conforms to the church, but one in which the church is bent to the will of the strange beast that is American nationalism — the belief that the American project is an exercise in freedom and prosperity like the world has never known, but also the sole possession of those who are white, heterosexual, and unquestioningly loyal to the nation. It's a model of church-state relations that has less in common with post-revolutionary Iran, where an Islamic cleric known as the supreme leader and his council of religious jurists preside over government, and more in common with Soviet (and arguably contemporary) Russia, where the Russian Orthodox Church is subject to the whims of the Kremlin, acting as everything from propaganda tool to spy center. This is the displacement of the trappings of religion with America First alternatives. It's not coherent in a religious sense. It's coherent in a political sense. This is evident from the members and mission of Trump's new Religious Liberty Commission, as well as its three advisory bodies of religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The commission is tasked with preparing a report on the history and current state of religious liberty in America. By contrast, Trump's three immediate predecessors maintained an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to advise on how faith-based organizations and the government could collaborate on issues like human trafficking, climate change, or global poverty. Called 'Community Initiatives' under Bush, this model reflected the church coming to the aid of the state to address issues arising from the collective moral failings of secular society. Trump abolished this office at the beginning of his second term. His new plan — the commission charged with producing an 'official account' of American religious liberty past and present — is not only unprecedented in American history; it is the product of a very different view of the church-state relationship. In this formulation, faith is not a balm for the moral ills of a nation. Here, the United States, its history and institutions, is the means by which religion can sustain itself. And therefore religious institutions prosper or fail in proportion not to their own morality or faithfulness but to the extent to which America is 'American' enough. This strategy was one of the founding tactics of the old religious right, a tactic it shares with this new religious movement. But the MAGA religious right has taken this strategy to a new level. And this new movement is far more complex. If we believe that these ideological architects are simply 'conservative Christians' or even 'Christian nationalists' in the old vein, we are fundamentally misreading both the religious character of the MAGA movement and its broader ideological and practical aims. If, however, we perceive and understand the difference, we are much better situated to combat the radical remaking not just of American religion but of America itself. The strange makeup of the Religious Liberty Commission Nothing makes this new religious movement more clear than a quick survey of whom Trump has appointed to serve. Of the 39 appointments made to the Religious Liberty Commission and its related advisory boards, not a single mainline Protestant is among them. Instead, the board is dominated by evangelicals. Evangelicals' emphasis on personal salvation, biblical literalism, and emotive worship made them much more popular among America's least wealthy and least educated, in contrast to the more theologically flexible mainline Protestants who once dominated the country's political and cultural elite. These differences also made the evangelicals naturally more politically conservative than their mainline counterparts. The evangelicals on the commission are joined by conservative Catholics, Orthodox Jews, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America, and Dr. Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-Day Adventist. Significantly, two of the three Muslims appointed by Trump, are white, American converts to the faith. These are both inclusions and omissions that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, when American civic religion — that is, the collective and largely unspoken religious values of a nation — was dominated by the mainline denominations while Catholics, Jews and Muslims remained on the periphery. That's not to say that this exclusion was a good thing. But who is invited to the table does tend to reveal the values of the people and nation doing the inviting. The reign of mainline Protestants and WASPs reflected a certain set of principles about both religion and politics: moderation in religion and a separation of church and state in politics that not only maintained the neutrality of the government but also the independence of the churches. Not surprisingly then, as the old religious right rose to power, their enemies included not only secular liberals but also the mainline churches by whom they had long felt belittled. The simple explanation for the omission of mainline Protestants now is that these denominations and their members have become more progressive and are simply too liberal for Trump. They are 'victims' of the sensibility, good education, and pragmatism that defined them for generations and then lured them leftward. But this is only part of the truth. High-profile splits among Episcopalians and Methodists, as well as the existence of deeply conservative mainline churches like the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, demonstrate that there are still plenty of socially and politically conservative mainline Protestants in America, even if they are now a minority within their own tradition (which might also be said of politically conservative Jewish Americans). These religious and political conservatives would seem like natural allies to include in a coalition interested in traditional religion and traditional society. Moreover, the evangelical leaders of this new coalition might, in theory, be far more comfortable with a fellow Protestant Christian than with a Muslim, a Jew, or even a Catholic. And yet, they have been excluded. The old American civic religion is dead. Instead, we are confronted with a cross-faith coalition united not by theology, but by a shared sense of cultural siege. This coalition has manifested not only in the Religious Liberty Commission, but on podcasts, in rallies, and in a growing number of organizations. Trump even touted the alliance in his now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally on the eve of the 2024 election. This is not to say that the traditions included are themselves devoid of theological content or that every member of these traditions is part of the new coalition. That is clearly not true. But the individuals and institutions entering this coalition are willing to put aside theological concerns, even subsume them completely, in the interest of the coalition's nation-building project. This project, born from that shared sense of threat (largely around issues of gender, sexuality, and race), is not, as they would have you believe, a concerted effort to return society to some earlier state. Trump 2.0 has made clear that it is seeking to reshape America in unprecedented ways. That's the opposite of being traditional and conservative. The goal of the new movement is to radically transform American life and society. Related The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies How the new American religion works While the religious right of the 1980s and 1990s was political because of their theology, this is a group doing the opposite: constructing a theology that fits their politics. Take, for example, the defense by evangelical leaders of Trump's sexual transgressions. Trump's sins are excusable because he is a messianic figure, they say, sent not to save our souls but America. It's not coherent in a religious sense. It's coherent in a political sense. You can't counter this kind of movement the same way you would more traditional 'believers.' He also penned a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post titled 'Muslims Like Me Don't Have Theological Beef with Evangelicals. It's the Prejudice Against Us That's the Problem' in which he recounts how 'at home' he and his wife felt at the anti-abortion Washington March for Life among 'fellow believers.' He also bemoans the greater welcome Muslims have received on the American left, arguing it has caused American Muslims to abandon hardline positions on issues like sexuality. Of course, Royer ignores that, as a white man, he is in the minority (in a way that matters) among American Muslims. But he is also making a fairly innovative argument: In claiming he wants to restore Christian principles and complaining against Muslims being welcomed by the left, he says theology doesn't matter; only politics does. Because in the end, America (not God) — and specifically America as it is imagined by the MAGA movement and Trump — is the source of liberty and human flourishing. With respect to the things that matter most to him, Royer does have more in common with the evangelicals at the March for Life than he does with those Muslims whom he mourns being 'secularized' by the tolerance of the left. It appears that Royer shares a political vision of America with those evangelicals and does not care about sharing a theological vision with Muslims. Royer might become fast friends with fellow commission member Eric Metaxas. Raised Greek Orthodox, Metaxas has existed in a sort of denominational gray area for the whole of his adult life. He attended an Episcopal Church in Manhattan (where he served in the vestry) and has written bestselling biographies of the two most famous Lutherans ever: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther himself. But he is now comfortably described as an 'evangelical intellectual.' All suffice to say, Metaxas probably doesn't care all that much about the deep theological issues that have divided Christendom. What he cares about is politics. This movement seeks power not to preserve a spiritual order or influence their own or anybody else's afterlife but to reshape society in the here and now. This is the only world they really care about. In fact, one of the most shocking differences between the old religious right and the MAGA religious right is how little the afterlife comes up. Where Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Pat Buchanan never ceased talking about the threat of eternal punishment, both for individuals and the nation, these new guys never bring it up. They are, for all intents and purposes, metaphysical atheists, occasionally invoking vague theological language only because it still holds cultural sway. Finally, there's the seemingly endless celebrations of the state and its power. In the brief time since he returned to office, Trump has planned a military parade and established two new holidays. Now, with the commission, he has ordered a hagiographic recounting of the nation's history, placing the story of the country within a sacred narrative by official channels. That is big imperial cult energy (and if you don't believe me, read the 'Aeneid'). This is the displacement of the trappings of religion with America First alternatives. Related The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies The old methods of resistance won't work All this should matter to anyone who wants to stop them. First, you can't counter this kind of movement the same way you would more traditional 'believers.' Combating the religious right in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s was in many ways as simple as pointing out hypocrisy and holding leaders to the same standards they held others. And it worked. Many of the figures of the old religious right have simply been shamed from public life, making way for their new, more pernicious, replacements. But MAGA is pretty impervious to shame. You can't just appeal to theological humility or scriptural counterpoints. And you can't rely on their own sense of conscience. What animates them is political utility. If we understand how the MAGA religious movement is different from the old Christian nationalists, those who wish to combat Trump and his ilk might find some new allies. All of those traditionalist conservative believers — the Latter-day Saints, the conservative mainline Protestants, Catholic bishops without Instagram — might be the key to taking down the Church of MAGA. This doesn't mean that progressives have to agree on everything or anything or even like them. But it does mean recognizing that the enemy of your enemy might be your political frenemy, especially when they are alarmed for different but equally serious reasons. Many traditional conservative believers remain committed to some basic moral architecture, to rules that bind even their leaders, and to a God who ultimately cannot be manipulated. The administration's draconian immigration policy is now disquieting some evangelicals, concerned about co-religionists who have sought refuge in America from real religious persecution. And the Trump administration's pronatalist advocacy for IVF has many conservative Christians, including conservative Catholics, on edge. These groups may not like the world as it is, but they don't like the world MAGA's new civic cult seeks to build either. And in this light, they may wish to fight it out on the old terms. If progressives can make the idea of the last war appealing, there is hope for a viable coalition. Trump and MAGA have declared a religious war, not just against secularism or progressive forms of religion, but also against traditional religion that refuses to serve their radical vision for the world. This is not a theocracy in the making. This is not The Handmaid's Tale. It's something newer, stranger, and much more difficult to fight: religion of nation and identity disguised in the trappings of familiar faiths. We won't defeat it with scripture or appeals to conscience. We'll need to name it, unmask it, and forge unexpected alliances with those who (whatever their doctrine) still believe in a higher power than Donald Trump.
