Religious Freedom For Me, Not For Thee
Main Points:
• The “Religious Liberty Commission’s Draft Report” is an attempt to justify the establishment of Christian Nationalism, and replace traditional “freedom of religion” with a schismatic version of Christianity.
• The United States has always been a creedal-based nation from its beginning, not an ethno-centric one.
• The Founding Fathers deliberately created a secular government in the midst of a largely Christian culture to avoid the bloody history of blending religion and politics.
“The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion…”
-Article II of the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, signed by the devout Christian President John Adams, and ratified by a Senate full of Founding Fathers.
No sooner had schismatic MAGA Christian Nationalists got back in the saddle with their win in the 2024 election, did they set about to form a commission to pretend to explore religious discrimination in the United States. You could loosely translate that to mean, “Religious discrimination against us,” because they apparently can’t tell the difference between being “persecuted for righteous’ sake” and suffering for one’s own folly (1 Pet 2:20).
This is why the rest of the country despises the ground they walk on, including other Christians. This extremist, factious group, pretending to represent the interests and convictions of all Christians, “people of faith,” and the rest of the population, drew up a proposal in May of 2025 for the Department of Justice to investigate this tempest in a teapot, previously-known as “freedom of religion in the United States” for over 200 years now.
Donald Trump of course, reciprocated in the form of an Executive Order dictat approving of it, what else?
After a series of staged hearings with orchestrated witness “testimonies,” the report concluded:
“their stories shared a common theme: far too often in our national life, religion is treated not as a protected and valued contribution to public life, but as a problem or annoyance to be managed, restricted, or sidelined.”1
I rest my case. They are a problem and an annoyance. And how much do I wish they could be “managed, restricted and sidelined.”
This oppressive practice of complete religious freedom in the United States, one of the freest in history—two-plus centuries of enforcing religious liberties without fear or favor—was blamed on “previous administrations,” naturally. According to Trump, all that came before him were thieves and robbers (John 10:8), not to mention stupid and incompetent. So why shouldn’t his religious supporters be any different?
What they meant of course was Biden, Obama et.al, prosecuting people for fraudulently registering “religious” 501 C 3s that were little more than covers for political activism, or ways to evade taxes. Or “the persecution of Catholics,” based on an FBI investigation of one suspect making online threats of violence and instigating civil war,2 the very things Timothy McVeigh was into. Or investigating MAGA’s ongoing pattern of death threats against local officials, town hall and school board meetings, all part of their cultural obsession with violence, manhood and guns.
Their “Findings”
On June 26, 2026, they plopped their “Religious Liberty Commission’s Draft Report” on the desk of their Village Idiot-in-Chief, as if he ever actually reads anything. This is the same man of course, who would never have become President twice now without their support.
The commission was stocked by all right-wing partisans in MAGA world including, incredibly, the then-current Attorney General Pam Bondi; Paula White, the evangelist grifter who serves as Donald Trump’s own personal spiritual guide; the Rev. Franklin Graham; and one Orthodox Rabbi.
Graham who increasingly seems to be the poster child for nepotism in Evangelicalism, recently said he thought Trump didn’t realize he was depicting Jesus Christ in an AI-generated image of himself, and who wrote a letter to him to assure him of his salvation. I guess he’s a better judge of justification than the Apostle Paul was (1 Cor 4:3,4; Phil 3:11-14).3
And of course, there had to be a concession to Zionist Israel under the guise of combatting “anti-Semitism” (criticism of Israel):
• “The Commission recommends that all federal Offices of Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission improve Title VI and Title VII enforcement against religious discrimination, including anti-Semitism, by establishing a set, expedited timeline for the investigation and prosecution of credible allegations of religious discrimination, including anti-Semitism, and, as appropriate, tie future federal funding to prompt remediation.”4
Carrie Prejean Boller, a former beauty contest winner appointed to the Commission by the President himself, was ousted after arguing that criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism.5 She was told by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick the commission chairman, “Your job on this commission is to protect the president.” So much for the “findings.”
Let’s let school funding be determined by local property taxes. That way, rich communities will have good schools and poor districts won’t. Why? Because we’re Pavlovian dogs, taught to salivate on command. Because, we’re leopards who can never change their spots (Jer 13:23).
You can rest assured that all other religions, no matter how peacefully practiced, will not get the same level of care and protection as these two factions of these two particular religions. In fact, you can safely assume that any other version of Christianity, such as my own, will be eventually labelled a form of domestic terrorism as I suffer the fate of Luke 21:12-17.
That’s why this has nothing to do with religious freedom, but a common political alliance to subjugate the whole world. Dream on (Rev 17:16,17).
Grifting The American Taxpayer In The Name Of Religious Freedom
Unsurprisingly, some of their other recommendations were to:
• “Guarantee faith-based institutions an equal opportunity to participate on an equal basis in funding opportunities without requiring them to renounce their religious identity; issue guidance that religious discrimination in federal funding programs is unconstitutional.”
“Good news everybody. Free tribute money exacted from our victims because we hate socialism and welfare, in spite of the fact that we’re drowning in prosperity because we’re the apple of God’s eye. This will bring about the beneficial outcome that they will hate us even more.”
And you can be assured that non-Christian and non-Zionist Jewish groups won’t be “guaranteed” the same access. These people will decide whatever they want to.
• “Order the Department of War to update and disseminate religious liberty training for military leaders and JAG officers, maintain full applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the military, reverse Obama and Biden-era restrictions on religious practice and expression, and elevate the importance of spiritual fitness in military readiness.”
Ah, yes. Our “Christian Department of War,” wherein we will ensure “spiritual fitness” for all our Crusader warriors who know just what to think about critics of Israel. Are you getting ready to send your sons and daughters to pick a fight with the whole world to expand Donald Trump and Israel’s imperial designs? Because this is anything but “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”
• “Ensure the constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and parental rights are enjoyed by families of all socio-economic means by promoting a robust and universal system of school choice where funding follows the child.”
Ah, yes. Care for all families, regardless of how poor! How thoughtful. Goes right along with tax breaks for billionaires and allowing Elon Musk, South African immigrant welfare queen, to ravage our government so he can shut down 32 investigations into 11 contracts he has with Washington6 so he can become the world’s first trillionaire. Sounds like God stuff to me (Isa 58:1-7).
Of course, Christian Nationalists would never consider sending tax revenues to the Department of Education for them to distribute the money equally per student on a per capita basis all over the country, so all districts have an equal and proportionate share of education dollars. Why, that would be socialism, God forbid!
No, this is all part of Republicans’ 45 year-long obsession with privatizing everything, then demanding that public dollars fund it all. The one thing they have been dead set on doing is abolishing the Department of Education and destroying public schools, the one institution in America where kids can get to know their neighbors before we all go off to live in the United Balkanized States of America.
Michael Moore, the despised liberal Democrat, once made a documentary called Where To Invade Next? It was largely a tour of European nations and how they’ve fared with ideas Americans threw off long ago.
I’ll never forget his interview with a literal aristocrat somewhere. It might have been Belgium. He asked him why his country decided to abolish all private schools when his class could easily afford them. His answer? “Because when we aristocrats rule someday—because we always do—we want the faces of our childhood classmates staring at us before we do anything to harm them.”
Wow! How’s that for a Christian attitude? The one institution that would guarantee all factions in this “nation of nations” gets a chance to assimilate is public schools. Because youth education, like it or not, is about more than academics. It’s socialization as well. It’s about teaching kids how to get along with others and be good citizens, instead of paranoid malcontents who want to tear everything down and make other Americans cry.
Compare that to the “more of the same” this American commission recommends. Republicans have been so set on this that Ronald Reagan canceled high school “Civics” class 40 years ago, lest American kids understand how their government works and how it came about.
No, nothing has changed over the years about the Christian right’s mania for private schools, school vouchers, home schooling and all the rest, because it never was about education, but about segregation.
For their billionaire paymasters, it’s always been about robbing the American people of their collective wealth (James 5:1-6). According to the Rand Corporation no less, nearly $80 trillion of wealth has been redistributed from the working class into the pockets of the top 1% since 1975, a result of strictly Republican policies!
In fact, this very “finding” begs the question at the heart of all this Christian Nationalist clamor. Is the United States an ethno-centric nation or a creedal-based nation?
What Is Wrong With This Picture?
What’s wrong with it? It’s what’s wrong about the entire premise behind the MAGA movement, and its Christian Nationalist element in particular—the idea that the United States has been an ethno-centric, Christian nation from its beginning. Furthermore, this it must specifically declare itself to be, or the wrath of God will come down upon it. It’s the same fraud used to demand unconditional support for Israel—God will curse us if we don’t (Gen 12:3).7
I have tried to deal with these issues in the past and perhaps didn’t do a thorough-enough job of it. To be sure, there are a lot more subtleties to this debate than meet the eye. They are not things to put into talking points or bumper stickers, although doing so can serve to obscure all that’s really at stake here, and part of what is tearing up this nation. We can break them down into a couple of questions.
1. Is the United States supposed to be an ethno-centric nation with a certain religious heritage, or is it a creedal-based nation?
This is a question that is conveniently by-passed by the MAGA mind, such as it is. The United States as a political entity might have been started by British colonists who spoke English, but ethnically it always has consisted of three groups—white Europeans, a vast array of native Americans, and Africans dragged here in chains.
Thus, from its very beginning, the assumption that only white Americans are “real” Americans and count, simply isn’t factual. And even more to the point, because the Founding Fathers were immigrants themselves, the United States has always had a generous attitude about immigration, perhaps the most generous in history. It’s only certain grousing factions who, from time to time, and despite the fact that none of them are native to the land, get a bee in their bonnet and want to pull up the ladder for anyone else.
Thus, there have always been these moments from time to time when self-righteous and hypocritical8 demagogues like a Donald Trump, will rise up to tap into the most deplorable side of American culture to blame all our problems on this one group. All this to mask the fact that most of our problems are due to the craven policies his own party has promoted since the 1870s.
Of course, there have always been periods when large portions of the population felt threatened by “replacement” theories and other cynical, negative fears, and have wanted to “pull the ladder up” on current asylum seekers and the like. None of this discounts the very real concern that there has to be a certain pace to the immigration process, lest assimilation be incomplete. But these fines distinctions often get trampled upon in the overheated emotions of “the daily brawl,” as I put it.
Stuck On The Civil War
In spite of any mythological origin stories, the United States today is a “nation of nations,” whether you like it or not. You can take that as a glass half empty or a glass half full. I take the latter.
I live in a city where 200 languages are spoken by even more ethnic groups. I find it quite charming, because everyone gets along fine most of the time. Yet MAGA media works overtime to convince their listeners that our cities are hellscapes of crime and chaos.
What holds this country together are not homogenous cultural and religious traditions, but the Enlightenment ideals and values the Founding Father’s envisioned the country to be built upon—a rule of law and not of men (much less dictator kings), consent of the governed, equal justice under law, habeas corpus, due process, innocent till proven guilty, separation of powers (spreading it around), checks and balances, and on and on.
Considering how grateful most immigrants are to live here and how statistically they are the most patriotic and law-abiding Americans, it is amazing to watch MAGA take seriously the siren song of a demagogue and a life-long criminal to convince them otherwise.
The irony I find about “Christian America,” even more so now than ever before under this MAGA recalcitrance towards the civil rights gains of 50 to 60 years ago, is that the Gospel is a promise to all the nations of the earth. Anyone in the New Covenant can be a part of the national covenant God made with Israel without having to become an invited proselyte to that nation.
Indeed, this was a large part of the Pharisees and rabbis’ outrage towards Jesus Christ—His implying Gentiles could become part of the covenant without their permission (Luke 4:25-29; Acts 22:21-23). When God went right around them, they went even further into a race-based concept of Chosen-ness.
It’s not a whole lot different here in America today. God brings members of every “nation, kindred, people and tongue” (Rev 7:9) right to our doorstep, but all Christians here can do is lament the loss of a watered-down white man’s heritage to glory in.
They still want to re-litigate the Civil War, for that is all MAGA is at heart—a revived Confederate Christianity. Why do you think there is such a prevalence in the MAGA world of beards lately? Because they want to imitate Muslim jihadists?
No, it’s because it’s a statement, a throwback to the 19th Century Confederate Army and a not so subtle attempt to try to intimidate groups they simmered against, especially during the Obama years. But just think about the medical profession today. Or law, or politics, or tech, or journalism, or practically any other profession. Think of all the “foreign-sounding” names you encounter. But where would you be today without their expertise?
2. In what sense has the United States “always been” a Christian nation?
This is at the heart of the “wind of doctrine” fraud (Eph 4:14) known as the Christian Nationalist agenda. Under the guise of a pious attempt to “honor God” more pointedly, it serves as a front for the lust for political power, https://donald-trump-antichrist.com/cultural-vs-spiritual-christianity/ to forcibly “Christianize” rather than evangelize the world.
Yes, you could argue that the United States has always been “Christian” (if you narrow it down to just the European settlers), but only in the sense of “a Christian culture,” not an official designation.
It’s not that different than saying that Saddam Hussein had a secular Islamic government over a very religious society that was majority Shiite and minority Sunni. Perhaps because he had a wife who was ethnically Christian, he had a policy of considerable religious toleration. You could start a church or even a synagogue in Iraq, just as long as you obeyed his ruthless rule.
It is one of the reasons the Bush-Cheney propaganda Wurlitzer was so assailed in the run up to the Iraq war twenty years ago. Saddam was a mortal enemy of Islamist groups like Al Queda. The idea that he was behind the 9-11 attacks was absurd on the face of it. Yet by the time their lying propaganda machine was finished, 75% of the American people came to believe it.9
Likewise, you can argue that nearly everyone in those 13 colonies were “Christian” in the cultural sense. Individually they were a spectrum of many different denominations, all vying with one another. “Dissenters” in their midst were treated harshly, even to the point of public hangings. 9 of the 13 had an official “state Church.” It was a nightmare of rivalry and disunity.
This is exactly what the Founding Fathers were trying to avoid, “establishing” (favoring) any given religion or denomination, while not prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Yet they wanted “religion” in American life because they recognized the value of responsible spiritual values for the making of better citizens and a better national mission (to be a light to the world).
Thus, the government they created was intentionally a secular one, not in the modern sense of atheistic (since the Bolshevik Revolution) or hostile to religion, just neutral. All this in spite of the fact that there were many very devout Christians among the Founders. Some even had seminary degrees. But even the mildest of theocracies they were bound and determined to avoid, given the nasty history of such.
How Nasty You Might Ask?
Being students of history, the Founding Fathers were very aware of the track record. I can think of at least three ways in this regard.
1. They were aware of one of the few times religious neutrality worked in human history. For its first three centuries, the Christian Church suffered a series of vicious persecutions under various emperors, especially Nero, Decius and Diocletian. Even during lulls in those traumatic experiences, they were treated as second class citizens and marginalized from full civil rights.
Relief came though finally in 311 AD with Galerius’ Edict of Toleration and Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313. Thereafter for 67 years, the Roman Empire enjoyed complete freedom of religion, exactly what the Founding Fathers created that has served us so well for over two centuries now.
All that changed in 380 when the Eastern emperor Theodosius I, to curry favor to build himself a palace (sound familiar?), made Christianity not just legal, but the official religion of the Empire, completely transformed the motives of people for joining the Faith.
Now it became more nominal, watered-down, and done for social standing and other self-serving motives. Almost immediately, simony10 became a commonplace and an epidemic by the 9th to 11th Centuries. The paradoxes of success.
2. The Founding Fathers were very conscious of the centuries of bloody wars between Protestant groups and the Papacy, and even between various reform factions. It was a history of theocracy they were all-too aware of.
3. The situation of the 13 colonies mentioned above. The irony of MAGA Christianity is that the original colonies had exactly what the Christian Nationalists want now—the government to be specifically identified with a given denomination, claiming anything less is an affront to God.
Now, I ask you. Was the mob of pseudo-Christian “patriots” that Donald Trump, long-time Russian Agent of Chaos and mob money launderer, unleashed on the US Capitol building killing four police officers, evidence of “proper religious instruction”? Are you kidding me?
Keeping Perspective
I know my comments above sound strong and cynical, and it’s true, this whole situation exasperates me on so many levels at once. But it wouldn’t want you to think this religious commission’s concerns are all bogus. It’s easy in a time of great controversy to become absolutist about everything.
One, some of their concerns are valid. Parental rights is a legitimate concern. There are “secular” forces (or whatever their motivation out there) that want to influence and recruit other people’s children into their sex-based obsessions. All those questions are legitimate political and social issues, but they one, can be pursued as lower-level matters. The most important and consequential matters in politics are money and the power, and questions of war and peace.
Two, you’re worried about sexual predation? Then dutifully help Donald Trump protect the Epstein class? Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
And three, there are other issues about religious people’s rights to “express their faith.” There are always going to be battles about zoning laws and Bible studies, religious items on desks, writing papers about Jesus or whatever.
But even there I wonder how much these are Pyrrhic victories. You win a battle and lose the war. The easy part about spirituality is preaching. Everyone loves to do it. The hard part is living it. I am convinced that practically every American knows the basics about the Gospel. What they want to see it someone model it, to make them “hungry and thirsty for righteousness” by an inspirational example.
All this ostentation, all this grievance culture, all these power plays—what doth it profit? How does any of this evangelize the world? It all strikes me as such a “fair shew in the flesh” We might as well bow right over and pray on a street corner, declaring to the world our own righteousness. During this 250-year celebration, you think we could at least have learned that much from our own history.
Notes:
- “Controversial Trump Religious Liberty Commission Releases Its Report,” by BrieAnna J. Frank, USA Today, June 26, 2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/26/trump-religious-liberty-commission-report/90372087007/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us ↩︎
- Talk about a tempest in a teapot! Talk about Republican hypocrisy and “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.” I remember this “crisis” when it arose in early 2023, because Jay Sekulow, ever faithful to demagogue the slightest matter to promote controversy and division in the United States (probably for Israel’s sake), was “talking this up,” and probably got his Republican friends in Congress to make a big stink over it. It involved the “Biden administration FBI” (headed by Christopher Wray, a Republican) doing its job to keep us all safe. You can read all about it in the article linked above, if you want to waste your time, even though it is a case study of how Republicans are, as Noam Chomsky once put it, “The most dangerous force in the world.” (Because of their climate denial and tearing up of nuclear treaties). ↩︎
- “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (RSV). That’s not a promise; it’s a warning. ↩︎
- USA Today, op. cit. ↩︎
- She also had the effrontery of pointing out that it was the Judean leadership that engineered the death of Christ, not just the Romans (the Zionist argument). ↩︎
- “Corruption in plain sight: How Elon Musk has benefited from the first 100 days of the Trump administration,” Economic Policy Institute, May 8, 2025. ↩︎
- Gen 12:3 is a personal promise God made to Abram, not some kind of iron-clad promise/threat to all the world thereafter. Indeed, He pointedly threatened Israel in Deut 28:15ff with twice as many literal curses as blessings if they failed to keep the covenant, and made good on that threat many times in history. It’s the reason there’s only one effective tribe left today. ↩︎
- Trump himself is surrounded by immigrants including his own mother, his first and third wives, and his favor towards craven South African imports like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Russian mobsters, etc. Largely, anyone who will put money into his craven pockets. ↩︎
- It was actually Israel who masterminded 9-11, an easily-proven fact if we weren’t a virtual colony of that little cult. ↩︎
- Named after Simon the Sorcerer who tried to buy the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 8:9-24). It referred to selling or rewarding people with bishoprics of great wealth, political power, tax exemptions and land. Over centuries it resulted in even the Papacy being bought and sold, and served as one of the main grievances leading to the Reformation. ↩︎
