Donald Trump ran on a pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. After just a few weeks in the White House, it appears that he would also like to tear down a wall – the historic one separating church and state.
In November, Republican candidate Trump won the support of 81 percent of white evangelical voters. Now President Trump is busy trying to keep his campaign promises to them and other conservative Christians with a flurry of executive orders, appointments and proposed changes in the law.
If he’s successful, Trump could become the vessel of change for conservative Christians and alter the relationship between government and religion in the United States. Here, then, are 5 things we could see:
1. Endorsements – of candidates and political parties – from the pulpit
At Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, the new president said the Trump administration would “totally destroy” something called the Johnson Amendment. In place since 1954, this law named for then-Sen. (and future president) Lyndon Johnson prohibits houses of worship and other non-profits from endorsing or campaigning for political candidates. If they do, they could lose their tax-exempt status.
Trump said his intent was to “allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.”
Preachers, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Billy Graham, have always had the right to speak from the pulpit about what they consider moral issues. But, in recent years, some evangelical Christian groups and Republican congressmen like North Carolina’s Walter Jones Jr. have called for allowing pastors to urge their flocks to vote for a particular candidate.
The conservative Alliance Defense Fund has said the Johnson Amendment violates the pastors’ constitutional right to speak “biblical truths” without fear of being punished. The group even recruited dozens of pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit in hopes of triggering an IRS investigation, then challenging the ban in federal court.
Many mainline Christian and Jewish clergy disagree. They have supported the law, saying endorsements would weaken that wall separating church and state.
Every election year, though, there are many churches that find ways to go around the law by signaling their preference for particular candidates. Some African-American churches introduce visiting Democratic candidates in the pews. And some white evangelical churches make available “voter guides” that effectively promote Republican candidates.
But repealing the Johnson Amendment without changing churches’ tax-exempt status would mean taxpayers are subsidizing pastors’ political activity. That wouldn’t sit well with the country’s growing number of “Nones,” those mostly younger Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. According to pollsters, many in this group think churches are already too political.
Despite Trump’s pledge to destroy the Johnson Amendment, he can’t do it alone. And it’s unclear that there are enough votes in Congress to make it happen – at least until 2018, when 33 senators and all 435 House members are up for re-election.
2. Government suspicion of the religion of Islam…
Trump’s two predecessors – Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama – were careful not to cast the United States’ war on terrorism as one pitting Christianity against Islam – a 1,400-year old religion with 1.6 billion adherents. To do so, these past presidents believed, could antagonize predominantly Muslim countries that America needs as allies in going after the terrorists. There was also a concern that such rhetoric could make American Muslims feel like second-class citizens in their own country and be less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. These commanders-in-chief also knew that there were Muslim Americans in the U.S. military who are fighting – and, in some cases, dying – for their country.
President Trump, by contrast, frequently uses the term “radical Islamic terrorists.” He has retreated from his call during the campaign “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” But there are signs his recent executive order restricting refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries will be read by much of the Muslim world as America removing the welcome mat for all Muslims. And some analysts expect ISIS and Al-Qaeda to point to Trump’s order in their recruiting appeals, arguing that it’s proof the United States under Trump is waging war against the religion of Islam.
Is it? Trump has said no and pledged last year that his administration “will be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, and will amplify their voice.”
But the new president has filled some of his key posts with people who are on record as demonizing Islam. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, tweeted a link last year to an anti-Muslim video and wrote: “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” And he told one interviewer that “Islam is not necessarily a religion, but a political system that has a religious doctrine behind it.”
Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has also cast Islam as an enemy. In a 2014 talk at the Vatican, the New York Times reported, he said the “Judeo-Christian West” is at war with Islam. Some evangelical Christians, including North Carolina-based preacher Franklin Graham, share that view. Graham, who has suggested God intervened to give Trump victory in November, read a Bible passage at Trump’s inauguration.
3. … and government embrace of conservative Christianity
On the campaign trail, Trump called himself a proud Presbyterian. And, he told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “Believe me: If I … win, I will be the greatest representative of the Christians that they’ve had in a long time.”
In the White House, Trump has been busy trying to fulfill that campaign promise – at least to conservative Christians.
Trump claims to belong to a denomination – the Presbyterian Church USA – that was more in line with Democrat Hillary Clinton’s liberal agenda. But Trump’s various faith-based pledges – to enshrine “religious liberty” in the law, to nominate Supreme Court justices open to overthrowing Roe v. Wade, even to promote “Merry Christmas” over “Happy Holidays” – resonated with evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics.
At his inauguration, Trump chose six clergy to pray or read sacred texts. Five of them were Christian, but none came from mainline Christian denominations like his own Presbyterianism.
Since his swearing-in, Trump has moved to give noted conservative Christians key posts in his administration. His controversial choice to be Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a Christian philanthropist and charter school advocate who helped fund the socially conservative Family Research Council. She once called education reform a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”
To lead an education reform task force, Trump bypassed potential candidates from Ivy League schools and tapped Jerry Falwell Jr., an early Trump supporter who is president of Liberty University. It’s a large conservative Christian school in Virginia founded by his famous father, Jerry Falwell, who also launched Moral Majority – a faith-based ally of Republicans during the era of President Ronald Reagan.
And last weekend, two of the top figures in Trump’s administration – Vice President Mike Pence, an ardent evangelical Christian, and adviser Kellyanne Conway, a conservative Catholic – welcomed thousands of anti-abortion advocates marching in Washington.
4. A high court that’s friendly to the religious right
Trump’s most lasting contribution to advancing causes important to conservative Christians could rest with his judicial appointments. Especially the Supreme Court. Trump promised to nominate justices who would be open to overthrowing Roe V. Wade, the 1973 high court ruling that ended state laws banning abortion.
It’s too early to tell how Neil Gorsuch would rule on abortion cases. Trump nominated the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge to the nation’s highest court. Gorsuch doesn’t have a record on such cases. But anti-abortion groups lauded the choice, possibly because Gorsuch did write a book that argued against assisted suicide and euthanasia.
“All human beings are intrinsically valuable,” he wrote. “And the intentional taking of human life is always wrong.”
The Supreme Court could soon consider other cases on the radar of conservative Christian groups, including one focusing on the rights of transgender people.
Gorsuch attended Catholic schools, and is now a member of an Episcopal church. American Episcopalians tend to be liberal. But as a judge, Gorsuch has sided with conservative Christians – the owners of Hobby Lobby stores and the Little Sisters of the Poor – in their court challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer-sponsored plans cover birth control.
If confirmed, Gorsuch would be the only Protestant on a Supreme Court that now has five Catholic justices and three Jewish justices. At 49, he could be on the court for decades. And with two of the current justices in their 80s and one in his late 70s, Trump could get a chance to nominate more conservative justices.
5. Legal liberty to refuse service and more to LGBTQ people
President Trump has given mixed signals on issues affecting the gay, lesbian and transgender community.
His administration disappointed some conservative Christians last week when it announced that it would continue a federal order signed by Obama in 2014 that protects federal employees from anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
But during the campaign, candidate Trump said that, if elected, he would sign “religious liberty” legislation favored by Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador that would give new federal protections to those who oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons.
And LGBTQ groups are sounding the alarm over a proposed four-page executive order circulating among members of Congress and advocacy groups. If Trump decides to go ahead and sign the order – not a sure thing –its broad language could allow those acting on religious grounds to deny business service to gays and lesbians and possibly refuse to hire them.
This religious liberty, the leaked proposed order says, “would be guaranteed to persons of all faiths and extends to all activities of life.”
It adds that employees and organizations would not “forfeit their religious freedom” while providing social services, education, health care, earning a living, seeking jobs, employing others, receiving government contracts “or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square or interfacing with federal, state or local governments.”
The McClatchy Washington Bureau and the New York Times contributed.
Tim Funk: 704-358-5703, @timfunk
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