Trump Brings Weaponizing Religion to a New and Dangerous Level
Trump is temporarily done railing against DEI and the FBI and he’s back to an old cause, promoting a holy war as he vows to protect Christians from “woke” Democrats.
His latest antics have raised the hackles of the one member of Congress who does not believe in God along with a Democratic caucus that has the extraordinary goal of promoting “policy solutions based on reason and science, and to defend the secular character of government.”
Most recently trump said he now “much more strongly” believes in God and unity as he proceeded to call for unity and peace and motherhood and apple pie and Joe McCarthy and destruction of Democrats.
“Democrats are going to be able to have lunch again with Republicans,” he said at a recent National Prayer Breakfast gathering. “I remember growing up, I revered senators and congressmen, something special, but they were out to dinner all the time. We really have to get together. We all know what’s right and wrong and there’s going to be compromise on both sides.”
Trump is again taking up the sword to fight for the Lord. In speaking to the powerful religious figures at the breakfast, trump made short shrift of peace between the parties while he trampled the line between church and state as he proclaimed that support for Christianity has been faltering because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Democrats.
“People of religion are going to be happy again. I really believe you can’t be happy without religion,” trump said. “I just think our country has been so badly hurt. We’re very hurt by what COVID did to religion, it really hurt it badly. People couldn’t go to church for a long period of time.”
He made a thinly veiled attack on orders issued by the Biden administration at the height of the pandemic to rein in the virus by avoiding places of large gatherings, like churches.
“Even going outside, they were given a hard time — and I’m not blaming anyone for that — but it was very hard to gather, so they started using computers, if that. When they come back, it’s just a whole new experience they have to get used to, but it is starting to come back,” trump said.
Trump is defending the rights of the downtrodden Christians who make up a whopping 63 percent of the U.S. population and an overwhelming 88 percent of the voting members of the new 118th Congress. Poor downtrodden Christians, indeed.
That is only a few percentage points lower than the Christian share of Congress in the late 1970s. In the 96th Congress, which was in session in 1979–1980, 91 percent of members of Congress identified as Christian, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Only one member of the new Congress, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., identifies as religiously unaffiliated. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., is the one self-described humanist who openly rejects the existence of God and has said he doesn’t believe in life after death. Another 20 lawmakers are categorized as having unknown religious affiliations.
Freethought Caucus
The all-Democratic Congressional Freethought Caucus was formed in 2018 by Huffman, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., and Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., soon joined by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Mich. It was created in the middle of the first trump administration in reaction to the influence of religion, especially that of the Christian right, in public policymaking in a secular government. The caucus advocates for more non-religious representation in Congress and opposes state promotion of religion. The caucus has 22 members whose goal is to “promote policy solutions based on reason and science, and to defend the secular character of government.”
The Congressional Freethought Caucus was unveiled by Huffman during the Secular Coalition for America annual awards dinner in Washington, DC. The Secular Coalition for America describes itself as “protecting the equal rights of nonreligious Americans.” The coalition has chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, holds an annual lobby day and policy conference, publishes yearly Congressional report cards and voter guides and in 2013 issued its first Model Secular Policy Guide for Legislatures.
The coalition advocates complete separation of church and state in American politics which it claims is clearly established in the Constitution under the First Amendment. Issues the coalition considers inappropriate for the political process include government funding of religious ministries, the “faith-based initiative” or “charitable choice,” in which the government funding of religious organizations to provide social services. Other subjects include tuition vouchers for religious schools; federally funded abstinence-only sex education; limits to embryonic stem cell research; constitutional marriage protection amendments; and access to birth control and emergency contraception.
Prayer Breakfast
The National Prayer Breakfast is held each year in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday in February. It was formed in the 1930s to oppose the Democratic New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The breakfast founder, Abraham Vereide, was a Norwegian-born American Methodist minister and founder of International Christian Leadership (ICL) group.
The breakfast is yearly attended by around 3,500 guests, including 100 people invited from more than 100 countries. Until 2023 it was hosted by members of Congress and organized on their behalf by the Christian organization Fellowship Foundation. Since 2023, the event has been run by the private, non-profit, National Prayer Breakfast Foundation. It is designed to be a non-partisan forum for the political, social, and business elite to assemble and pray together.
The event is a series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners that since the 1980s have been held at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW. This year, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a Christian nationalist, moved the breakfast to the Capitol. Huffman claimed after the prayer breakfast that Johnson violated the constitutional separation of church and state when he changed the venue of the breakfast.
Huffman posted on X that “Speaker Johnson’s National Prayer Breakfast is yet another example of MAGA Republicans taking a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state.”
The “breakdown of church-state separation is a big part of the dystopic, authoritarian agenda,” Huffman said.
Huffman claimed the speaker refused his request to move the prayer session out of the Capitol.
“I have serious concerns about institutionalizing a religious ceremony in the heart of our secular Capitol and about its ties to extremists who advocate for laws to kill all gay people,” said Huffman, a member of the Congressional Equality Caucus.
The Congressional Equality Caucus, formerly the Congressional LGBTQ+ Caucus, was formed in 2008 by openly gay Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. and former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. The caucus was formed to advance LGBT+ rights. With 195 members, the Congressional Equality Caucus is the largest caucus during the 118th United States Congress session.
After the breakfast, Huffman condemned “Christian nationalist trolls” on X, linking to an inflammatory pro-white nationalist comment to underscore his point. Huffman said that angry comments he received from one Christian nationalist underscored the importance of separating church and state. In the post, @ForthHorseman61, wrote “GFY (Go xxx yourself)…this is OUR nation now…so either step up or shut up…Your little grandstanding means nothing…This will be a WHITE Christian nation again…and not a f…g thing you can do about it.”
Huffman said in a 2017 interview that he identified as a humanist and that “I suppose you could say I don’t believe in God.” Secular humanism is a philosophy that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making. Secular humanists believe that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or belief in a deity.
Fundamental to the concept of secular humanism is that any religious or political ideology must be thoroughly examined by each individual and not simply accepted or rejected on faith. Secular humanism is part of Humanists International, world union of more than100 humanists and other similar believers. From four million to five million people in 31 countries call themselves humanists.
Anti-Christian Bias
At the prayer breakfast, trump announced that the newly appointed attorney general, Pam Bondi, will lead a new Justice Department task force to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government.
Trump said his newest brainchild will “protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.” The task force will target the previous administration for having “engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”
The executive order for the new task force was overflowing with lies and exaggerations.
It said that the Biden administration attempted to “to squelch faith in the public square” by bringing Federal criminal charges against nearly two dozen “peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.”
The convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother, as well as an 87-year-old woman and a father of 11 children who were arrested 18 months “after praying and singing hymns outside an abortion facility in Tennessee as a part of a politically motivated prosecution campaign by the Biden Administration.”
Trump was referring to six anti-abortion protesters who were convicted in January 2024 of violating federal laws after they blocked the entrance of a reproductive clinic in Mount Juliet, Tenn., outside Nashville, Tenn. The protesters blockaded the clinic which was organized by anti-abortion supporters who used social media to promote and live-stream actions that they hoped would prevent the clinic from performing abortions, according to court documents.
At the time, abortion was still legal in Tennessee but it is now banned at all stages of pregnancy under a law that has very narrow exemptions.
Trump said he “rectified this injustice” on January 23, 2025, by issuing pardons to the convicted “peaceful pro-life Christians.”
The executive order also claims that the Biden administration “largely ignored” reports by Catholic churches, charities, and pro-life centers of “violence, theft, and arson.” It claimed that after more than 100 attacks, the Congress passed a resolution condemning the violence and calling on the Biden Administration to enforce the law.
The Biden administration said the incidents were largely reports of graffiti and broken windows that were investigated by local authorities because the Justice Department does not get involved in such petty crimes.
“The number of vandalism incidents against churches remains small compared with incidents targeting abortion clinics documented annually by the National Abortion Federation, an abortion rights group,” USA Today reported.
Trump’s order referred to a 2024 FBI memo, which the FBI later withdrew, that claimed that “radical-traditionalist” Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as “threat mitigation.”
The memo did not denigrate Catholics but rather it noted that FBI investigations have found a “growing overlap” between the far-right white nationalist movement and “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” or RTCs. The Jan. 23 memo notes that RTCs are a small minority of the Catholic Church and that they adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT and white supremacy” ideology.
The memo included a list of Catholic organizations that are defined as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), including the Catholic Apologetics International in Pennsylvania and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in New Hampshire.
Catholics Apologetics International was founded by Dr. Robert Sungenis, a Catholic apologist. In 2002, Sungenis said it was never proved that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust and that demographic statistics show no real difference in the number of Jews living before and after World War II. The Southern Poverty Law Center said that Sungenis also “repeated a series of ancient anti-Semitic canards” and later wrote about the involvement of Jews and Israel in a Zionist Satanic conspiracy aimed at Satan ruling the world.
The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located in Richmond, N.H. is not recognized by the Catholic Church. It was formed in 1945, by Leonard Feeney a Jesuit Catholic priest who was later excommunicated by the church. Of all the groups that embraced Feeney’s theology, the chapter in Richmond, Va., is “the most radical faction” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC classifies the center in Richmond and the group’s publishing arm Immaculate Heart Media, as an anti-Semitic hate group.
The SPLC wrote that the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary “continue to endorse Feeney and to defend him from charges of anti-Semitism, despite his well-documented hatred of the Jews.,” The SPLC reported that in 2004, the group was rebuked as “blatantly anti-Semitic”, and in 2005, a brother of the Slaves had given a speech calling out the “Jewish nation” as “the perpetual enemy of Christ.”
The FBI has removed the memo from its systems because it does not meet the “exacting standards of the FBI.”
The executive order claims that the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to “force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.” By declaring March 31, 2024, as a Transgender Day of Visibility, the Biden administration “sought to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster-care system.”
Transgender Day of Visibility, however, is not a creation of the Biden administration and has been a bi-partisan commemoration on March 31 for the past 15 years.
“My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians. My Administration will ensure that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified,” trump said.
He said the task force will “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide. You’ve never had that before, but this is a very powerful document I’m signing. You get it now. First time you’ve had it. If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country. We probably don’t even have a country.”
During the speech at the Washington Hilton, trump interchanged the word God and trump, and claimed his political opponents “oppose God” and “oppose religion” and made other attacks before telling the audience how he would like to be remembered.
“After years of decline, Americans are reasserting our true identity as a people ordained by God to be the freest and most exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said. “But we weren’t that for four years. I don’t believe we were. And we’re getting there very soon. Very quickly, I’ll be able to say it and we’ll be able to say it again. As I said in my inaugural address two weeks ago. A light is now shining over the world, the entire world.”
“And as the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers. And in that end, I hope my greatest legacy, when it’s all finished, will be known as a peacemaker and a unifier. I hope that’s going to be true,” trump said.
One outspoken believer in trump is the Dominionist pastor Ché Ahn who declared on the Christian nationalist program “FlashPoint” last week that those who oppose trump or anyone in his administration are “fighting God.”
“Concerning all the [cabinet] candidates, I really believe we’re seeing Daniel 2 played out where God says I’m going to remove leaders and replace them,” Ahn said.
With trump and his cabinet in place, Ahn proclaimed that America will “have incredible revival and reformation as a result of that for four years and beyond.”
Ahn was referring to the second chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament which tells how Daniel related and interpreted a dream of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.
In it Daniel tells the king, “Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.”
Ahn is a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation and head of Harvest International Ministries based in Pasadena, Calif. He was active in the effort to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. Speaking at the Stop the Steal rally on the day before the Jan.6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by trump supporters, Ahn proclaimed that trump would stay in power and told the rally that they would “rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
Ahn told an audience, “I believe that this week we’re going to throw Jezebel out and Jehu’s gonna rise up, and we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
Ahn is a Korean-American pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, Calif. He leads Harvest International Ministry and is part of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
On January 7, 2021, after returning from the Capitol attack, Ahn said that trump supporters were ripe for “harvesting” or bringing into the fold the Christian supremacist movement. Christian supremacy asserts that Christians are superior and are therefore better suited to rule.
The “FlashPoint” program was launched ahead of the 2020 elections to rally Christian conservative support for trump. Trump was interviewed in one of the first FlashPoint programs on the Victory Channel, a television network founded by trump backer and televangelist Kenneth Copeland.
“FlashPoint” played a key role in spreading lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection at the Capitol. Host Gene Bailey regularly welcomed right-wing “prophets” and evangelists like Mario Murillo who declared in November 2020 that he “will never accept” that Joe Biden is president and that Christians “cannot accept the results of this election.” He warned that any Christian who accepts Biden’s presidency will be judged by God.
“God is going to judge you,” Murillo proclaimed. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a test.”
White House Faith Office
Trump also told the breakfast gathering that he’s forming a White House faith office which will be led by Paula White, a pastor at StoryLife Church in Apopka, Fla., who was an adviser to trump in his first term.
Trump’s pick of White was quickly condemned by pastors, priests, and Christians of all denominations. Critics said White should not lead the White House Faith Office because she has been divorced twice. Most Protestants and Eastern Catholics believe a pastor should not be divorced while Roman Catholics believe a pastor should remain celibate.
White has also been accused of being a proponent of the prosperity gospel, which teaches that God will bless believers with health and wealth. She has denied the allegation but preached that if a viewer donated $1,144 to her ministry they would receive “resurrection life.”
White was investigated by the Senate Finance Committee for allegedly inappropriate spending of ministry donations in 2007. According to the report, White’s “Without Walls” church spent $900,000 in tax-exempt ministry funds to pay the mortgage on the couple’s waterfront mansion, paid salaries to extended family members and also paid for their private jet. No additional action was taken on the issued report.
Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today magazine, described White as “a charlatan and recognized as a heretic by every orthodox Christian, of whatever tribe.”