Having purged and ostracized its dissenting members, President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission held its final hearing on Monday amid a storm of faith-based controversies.
After a weekend in which the president launched a puerile political attack on Pope Leo XIV and later posted an image in which he appeared as Jesus, the commission’s final session amounted to little more than idolization of Trump and rambling complaints about the constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state.
To give you a sense of the tone, the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, went on a rant calling the separation of church and state “the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding.” Each speaker after him parroted a similar line, framing liberals as some kind of threat to free religious expression. Among the speakers was far-right evangelical influencer Eric Metaxas, who said faiths are “not all equal.” Metaxas has played a role in planning religious-based celebrations that the Trump administration is coordinating around the United States’ 250th anniversary.
The final meeting made no reference to the brazen Nazi sympathizing, antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Hindu bigotry that is metastasizing throughout the MAGA movement. There were no rebukes of the president in response to Christian church leaders who have said that fear of Trump’s immigration raids have deterred some parishioners from attending services. There was no reference to the arrests and assaults on faith leaders who were protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions over the past year.
And no one — neither the Catholic nor the evangelical members of the commission — said a mumbling word about Trump’s social media post on Sunday depicting himself as Jesus (Trump dared the public to believe that he “thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross”). Prior to its deletion Monday, the image garnered accusations of “blasphemy” from some of the president’s supporters in conservative religious communities and drew public calls from some others for the commission’s Catholic members to address it. But those members let it pass.
Instead, the attendees, speakers and audience participated in what was basically a pro-Trump worship session.
Trump spiritual adviser Paula White, who herself faced backlash weeks ago for comparing Trump to Jesus, claimed it was “absolutely divine providence” that led to the creation of the zealot-filled commission. Patrick struck a similar tone with his remarks praising Trump as a divine instrument:
Thank the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, for establishing this commission. And we said it in the first hearing, but God has his hand in all things. And it all started when the president called me thinking I had called him — which I would not have done — and talking about a lot of things. And I said, ‘ Here’s an idea.’ And he said, ‘We’re going to do it.’ President Trump, I believe, this will be one of his greatest legacies at the end of the day. And I’m just so thankful to the president for allowing all of us to serve here and introducing all of us to all of you.
“That was a God thing,” Patrick said of Trump’s purportedly fortuitous call. “‘I hear you called.’”
“No, I didn’t call,” he said — with the implication being that this phone conversation was divinely inspired.
Needless to say, the commission didn’t do much to quell the mounting allegations of blasphemy being lobbed at the president.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.