At 8:15 a.m. Thursday, President Donald Trump spoke at the Congressional Prayer Breakfast. A few hours later he spoke again at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton. The redundancy is due to the discomfort some had with controversial right-wing religious figures who had gravitated to the National Prayer Breakfast in the past. Under President Joe Biden, there were two separate prayer breakfasts, only one of which he attended. Thursday, there was suggestion there will be — or should be — only one breakfast next year.
In any case, prayer breakfasts are never good eating for secular Americans. Thursday’s doubleheader was no exception.
America’s non-conservative Christians, non-Christians and nonbelievers should take heed.
Tonally, both events were, by Trump’s 2024 tachycardic rhetorical standards, restrained, cool, even calm. The implications of what was proposed at the second gathering, however, are incendiary. America’s non-conservative Christians, non-Christians and nonbelievers should take heed, as should all of those who believe that some form of secular governance is necessary for the well-being of any liberal democracy.
Secular governance, as we all know, is not Donald Trump’s fancy. He made a torrent of statements to this effect at both breakfasts. But none were more alarming than his announcement that he was appointing Attorney General Pam Bondi to head a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias”:
“The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI ... and other agencies. In addition, the task force will work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and Earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide. You never had that before, but this is a very powerful document I’m signing.”
For Trump, the word “Christian” refers to what we might call MAGA Christians, or the types of Christians who voted for him (i.e., evangelicals, Pentecostals, conservative Mormons and traditionalist Catholics). He is not referring to Christians who did not vote for him, such as liberal Catholics, mainline Protestants, members of various African American churches and so forth.
True, Trump did mention “religious believers” would be defended, though given Elon Musk’s attacks on Lutheran charitable organizations and Vice President JD Vance’s jousting with Catholic bishops, not to mention Trump’s repeated criticisms of Jews, I find this hard to believe.
Yet the business end of this executive order centers on the phrase “anti-Christian violence.” What type of violence does Trump have in mind? In attendance at the speech was Paulette Harlow. In October 2020 she illegally entered and barricaded herself in an abortion clinic. A nurse was injured in the ensuing melee. For this, Harlow was sentenced to two years in prison. She was then pardoned by Trump. Will the officers who arrested her and the prosecutors who tried her case be the targets of AG Bondi’s task force (a move we’ve seen with FBI agents who prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters)? Was that anti-Christian violence?
Can speech be a form of violence? The left has made such arguments for decades, and one can always count on the right to appropriate an argument it once disparaged. Is discussing evolution in a public school classroom anti-Christian? Is the recognition of the existence of transgender people an affront to MAGA Christians? Given that the T and the Q of LGBTQ have been removed from the State Department website, one wonders what kind of “liberal” definition of anti-Christian violence the task force will entertain.
A few days ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., referred to Musk’s rampage through the federal government as a five-alarm fire. Yet, Trump’s remarks Thursday confirm my belief that American secularism has already been incinerated.
Trump’s dual breakfasts help us grasp how far we have moved from JFK’s ringing “I Believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”
From the late 1970s forward, the Christian right has waged a masterly judicial campaign to dismantle a form of political secularism known as “separationism.” The wall of separation between church and state was burned down to the ground decades ago. This is evident in a string of Supreme Court decisions that have completely upended the separationist status quo that was set in place during the Warren and Burger courts and peaked in the Kennedy era (see, for example, Justice William Rehnquist’s dissents in Wallace v. Jaffree, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District; and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissents in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Gavin Newsom, The American Legion v. American Humanist Association and Shurtleff v. City of Boston).
Trump’s dual breakfasts help us grasp how far we have moved from JFK’s ringing “I Believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” Compare that with this president’s revival tent proclamation: “Let’s bring religion back. ... Let’s bring God back to our lives.”
Many are calling for new ideas and new leadership in the Democratic Party. As regards church-state issues, I think a similar demand could be made by those secular Americans, believers and nonbelievers alike, who seek a revised game plan from their own movement leaders. The question is no longer how secularists can rebuild the wall of separation. It no longer exists. The new question is: What kinds of innovative judicial approaches and cultural activism can be advanced to stave off the imminent establishment of a certain form of Christianity in the American government?
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