President Donald Trump has rewarded his loyal religious-right base with executive orders creating a “Religious Liberty Commission” and a “Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias.” Together they will put the force of the federal government behind the conspiracy theories, false persecution claims, and reactionary policy proposals of the Christian nationalist movement, including its efforts to undermine separation of church and state. In announcing the commission, Trump dismissed church-state separation and made the simultaneously ludicrous and messianic claim that he is “bringing religion back to our country.”
The religious right’s weaponization of religious liberty is a years-long campaign that has too often succeeded in turning religious liberty from a shield protecting Americans’ religious freedom into a sword used to attack abortion rights, LGBTQ equality, public education, and church-state separation. While Trump postures as a defender of Christianity, many Christian leaders and millions of American Christians oppose his actions and agenda.
The members of the religious liberty commission announced on May 1 are overwhelmingly conservative Christians, including its chair, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and vice chair Ben Carson. Patrick, who has been honored by Texas publications as "assclown of the year" and "bum steer of the year," gushed to Trump at the announcement ceremony that there's "never been a president who invoked the name of Jesus more than you.”
Other commission members include:
- Paula White, serving again as Trump’s faith advisor in the White House, has used her position to elevate the influence of dominionist preachers and Christian nationalist activists. A preacher of the prosperity gospel, White has repeatedly denounced Trump’s opponents as demonic. When Trump announced the Religious Liberty Commission, White made the startling assertion, “Prayer is not a religious act, it’s a national necessity.”
- Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who developed the Heritage Foundation’s “road map” for overturning marriage equality and was the face of Heritage’s anti-trans activism.
- Franklin Graham, the more-political son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, is a MAGA activist and fan of Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay policies who backed Trump in 2016 as the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGTBT agenda. After the 2020 election Graham promoted Trump's stolen-election claims and blamed the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol on "antifa."
- Eric Metaxas, a once somewhat reputable scholar who has devolved into a far-right conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist, emceed a December 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes threatened bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power.
- Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who helped lead U.S. Catholic bishops’ opposition to legal abortion and LGBTQ equality, was an original signer of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declared that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”
- Kelly Shackleford, president of First Liberty, who works to undermine church-state separation via the courts; Shackleford has endorsed a Christian nationalist effort to block conservative judges from joining the Supreme Court if they do not meet the faith and worldview standards of the religious right.
- Allyson Ho, a lawyer and wife of right-wing Judge James Ho, has been affiliated with the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ equality religious-right legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute.
Other commission members include Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire ministry; 2009 Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean Boller; TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw; and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.
Late last week, the White House announced a spate of advisory board members divided into three categories: religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The list is more religiously diverse than the commission itself; in addition to right-wing lawyers and Christian-right activists, it includes several additional Catholic bishops, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim activists.
Notable among the new advisory board members:
- Kristen Waggoner, president of the mammoth anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which uses the courts to make "generational" wins like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has been named as a possible Supreme Court Justice by the Center for Judicial Renewal, a Christian nationalist project of the American Family Association’s advocacy arm. The ADF is active around the world.
- Ryan Tucker, senior counsel and director of the Center for Christian Ministries with Alliance Defending Freedom.
- Jentezen Franklin, a MAGA pastor, told conservative Christians at a 2020 Evangelicals for Trump rally, “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”
- Gene Bailey, host of FlashPoint, a program that regularly promotes pro-Trump prophecy and propaganda on the air and at live events. Bailey has said the point of FlashPoint's trainings is to help right-wing Christians "take over the world." FlashPoint was until recently a program of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel.
- Anti-abortion activist Alveda King, a niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., once dismissed the late Coretta Scott King’s support for marriage equality by saying, ‘I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t.”
- Abigail Robertson, CBN podcast host and granddaughter of Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.
According to the White House, the religious liberty commission will also address the protection of religious liberty around the world. While religious persecution is a real problem in many countries, the Trump administration and its religious-right allies have used religious liberty claims to promote “traditional” views on family, sexuality, and gender roles, and to limit the legal rights of women and LGBTQ people globally.