Debunking Trump's Religious Liberty Commission
"This commission is an outright assault on our country’s promise of church-state separation."
Summary
Religious freedom is a core American value and a foundation of our democracy. Religious freedom means everyone is free to live as themselves and believe as they choose. Church-state separation is the shield that protects religious freedom for everyone, ensuring it is not used as a sword to discriminate or exclude.
Religious extremists are misrepresenting and misusing religious freedom to favor one religion above all others.
The greatest threats to religious freedom today come from Christian Nationalists and their political allies, who are working to erode the separation of church and state. Their goal is to impose their religious beliefs on all Americans, undermining individual rights and our country’s promise of freedom without favor and equality without exception.
Resources
The Real Agenda
Destroying church-state separation
The Commissioner Files
The who, the what and the why
The facts are clear
About Church-State Separation
AU Statements & Comments
Setting the RLC straight
Media
AU in the news
Take Action
Get involved and fight back
Watch the Religious Liberty Commission Hearings Here
Trump's Religious Liberty Commission's Real Agenda
President Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission wasn’t created to protect religious freedom for all Americans—it’s about securing religious privilege for a select few by eroding the separation of church and state. Rooted in Christian Nationalist myths and rhetoric, the Commission pushes a warped version of religious freedom that privileges one specific version of Christianity above all other faiths and the nonreligious.
When Trump announced the creation of the Religious Liberty Commission during a White House National Day of Prayer ceremony on May 1, he dismissed the importance of the separation of church: “They say separation between church and state … I said, ‘All right, let’s forget about that for one time…”
When viewed in conjunction with Trump’s “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force,” his renaming of the “White House Faith Office,” and numerous executive orders and proposed policies that give preference to one narrow, conservative Christian viewpoint while rolling back the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women, religious and racial minorities, public school students, the nonreligious, and others, it’s clear the Religious Liberty Commission is part of an administration-wide effort to advance Christian Nationalism – the dangerous belief that our laws and policies must reflect the lie that America is, and must remain, a Christian nation founded for its white Christian inhabitants.
Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission & Project 2025
Trump is weaponizing “religious liberty” to reward the Christian Nationalist groups, billionaires and politicians backing his administration. This Shadow Network not only created Project 2025 – the playbook for dismantling our democracy that the Trump administration is implementing at record speed – but also handpicks U.S. Supreme Court justices and strategizes court cases for those justices to decide.
The Religious Liberty Commission is another tool to implement Project 2025’s goals to impose religion in public schools and government institutions, roll back women’ s rights, strip LGBTQ+ people of basic freedoms and create a theocratic state that favors white, cisgender, straight, evangelical Christian men over everyone else.
The Commissioner Files
Meet the handpicked Religious Liberty Commissioners Trump is using to weaponize religious freedom
Separating truth from Spin
These are the facts
The separation of church and state ensures that everyone enjoys true religious freedom in this country.
- We have the right to a government that does not fund or promote religion.
- We have the right to believe whatever we want about God, faith, and religion.
- We have the right to act on our religious beliefs, so long as those actions don’t harm others.
- We have the right to have no belief at all and to not be forced to believe or engage in religious activity.
Setting the record straight on church-state separation
- America is not a Christian Nation
- Our government was not based on the Bible
- George Washington was not an Evangelical or Christian Nationalist
- "In God We Trust" was put on our money in 1956
- "Under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954
- The separation of church and state is absolutely in our Constitution
- Christian Nationalism is not the same thing as patriotism
- School prayer is allowed and protected by church-state separation
- The U.S. is not God's favorite nation
- Christian nationalists are trying to destroy church-state separation
AU Comments
Americans United is speaking out
Media
Americans United in the news
Americans United Blogs
Take Action
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