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Ray Vensel is president of the Maine chapter of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. He welcomes comments at [email protected].
The mix of religion and politics is always toxic -- that's why the Founders took such care to separate them. But with policies that he has described as "Christian-focused," President Trump has brewed the most toxic mix of the last 249 years.
He has created the White House Faith Office, the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias and the Religious Liberty Commission. He has, on a government website, called for Americans to gather for weekly prayers ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary (a two-fer, since the page not only promotes Christianity but violates the Hatch Act).
In July, the IRS announced pastors can openly endorse political candidates from the pulpit. The so-called Religious Liberty Commission is holding hearings, allegedly to report on, among other things, threats to religious liberty and strategies to preserve and enhance protections for future generations.
The focus areas are "parental rights in religious education, school choice, conscience protections, attacks on houses of worship, free speech for religious entities and institutional autonomy."
A Religious Liberty Commission protecting the right to follow a religious tradition -- or none at all -- would be a great thing. Well, 13 of the 14 members are: Dr. Phil, a former Miss USA runner-up and 11 conservative Christians. Among the organizations represented are the American Cornerstone Institute, the Becket Fund and the First Liberty Institute.
The hearings are in the Museum of the Bible, and all but one of the witnesses so far have been Christian. We have testimony that government's proper role is to promote "public recognition of truths about divine realities."
The deck is stacked in favor of increased merging of politics and one religious perspective. Religion has, more than ever, become a political tool to serve the goals of one person and one worldview.
Witnesses related to education included Maine's own Carroll Conley, who testified on Sept. 29. He said that he wanted to "give every family the chance I had as a result of Christian education."
I do not doubt his sincerity. I paraphrase his testimony as: we need to return to violating the Constitution because correcting the violation was so recent. He also sees resistance to religious privilege as "hostility," which is a position of the current Supreme Court. He enthusiastically supported the Carson v. Makin decision.
Carson v. Makin, renamed in the appeal to Crosspoint Church v. Makin, had oral arguments at the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in January, with the ruling expected by June. Whenever it happens, it will be appealed to the Supreme Court -- a part of federal government not mentioned in Project 2025 except as a goal to appeal lower court decisions they didn't like.
Recently, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7). Its stated intent is to crack down on "domestic terrorist organizations" that are, among other things, anti-Christian. What's a domestic terror organization? What's anti-Christian? Those and other terms are vague enough to give enforcers all kinds of latitude to violate the First, Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendments, and enable attacks on nonprofits that the enforcers do not like.
The goal is to silence critics and to place all branches of federal government under the sway of one particular class of one particular religion. Of course, non-Christians are against this. So are some Christians, such as the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
Simple arithmetic says that Christian nationalists are therefore in the minority, but they have been strategic in laying the groundwork for the policies this administration wants to implement.
The so-called Religious Liberty Commission is making arguments for policies that have nothing to do with religious liberty and everything to do with Christian privilege. There will be new laws supporting that privilege, and claiming "religious" exemptions to existing ones will be even easier than declaring a bone spur deferment.
If you disagree with this direction, simple arithmetic also says: vote.