Religious Liberty in the Age of Trump #1 Lets Make America Great Again by Pastor Stephen Bohr

Pastor Paula White, left, and other organized religion leaders pray with President Donald Trump, center, during a rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry building church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami.

Lynne Sladky, Associated Press

Table salt LAKE Metropolis — President Donald Trump cites his defense of religious freedom as a reason why Christians should back up him in the 2020 election. But some critics say his approach to faith-related policies has done more harm than good.

Yes, he's stood up for religiously affiliated adoption agencies that, for religious reasons, don't desire to screen same-sex couples. Notwithstanding, in the process, he's made it possible for some agencies to turn abroad people of faith who don't share their beliefs.

Yes, he'south enabled most employers with a moral objection to birth control to exclude information technology from company wellness plans and supported the Cosmic sisters who brought their contraception concerns to the Supreme Court. Simply his administration likewise rejected a Cosmic diocese's efforts to retain control of land forth the U.South.-United mexican states edge since it would interfere with border wall plans.

And yes, he'south committed more government resource to preventing religious persecution around the globe. Yet he's made harmful remarks about religious minority groups within the U.s.a..

Information technology's left room for both critics and supporters to stake positions on the president and religious liberty.

"Far from protecting religious freedom, he's undermining it at every plow," said Maggie Garrett, the vice president for public policy for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Garrett and other religious and political leaders hope to erode support for the president by highlighting his at-times inconsistent arroyo to religious freedom. Simply his religious supporters, especially in the evangelical Christian community, won't be piece of cake to convince.

"In the Trump administration, religious freedom isn't simply a priority. In many circumstances, it's their top concern," said Johnnie Moore, i of the president'south evangelical advisers, to the Deseret News last year.

Trump and religion

While running for office, Trump promised to abet for people of religion, and almost of his religious supporters believe he's stayed true to his word. He'south appointed conservative judges, expanded legal protections for religiously affiliated organizations and repeatedly urged policymakers to pay attention to the needs of people of organized religion.

"The mean solar day I took office ... the federal government's war on religion came to a very sharp end," Trump said at the launch result for his reelection entrada's "Evangelicals for Trump" coalition earlier this month, according to NPR.

These remarks allude to what many of Trump'south religious supporters encounter as his most important accomplishment: Undoing Obama-era policies that put pressure on people of religion who object to same-sex union. Unlike his predecessor, Trump has embraced religious exemptions to LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws.

"For the past 50 to 60 years, at that place'due south been a wholesale crusade against Christian values in our country led by leftist courts," said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of Starting time Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, to the Deseret News in November. "Many Christians believe that needs to exist reversed, and I think that'due south why you encounter such overwhelming support for President Trump from evangelical Christians."

It'southward not an overstatement to say that support is "overwhelming." More than 3-quarters of white evangelical Protestants (77%) approve of the president'southward job performance, and nearly one-3rd (31%) say in that location's "nigh nothing" he could practise to lose their blessing, co-ordinate to Public Religion Research Institute.

Despite the data, critics of pro-Trump evangelicals haven't given up hope to change their minds. But rather than argue about the value of the president's religion-related policies, they typically focus instead on the grapheme issues they believe should disqualify him for a second term.

For example, in a contempo, high-profile editorial calling for Trump'southward removal from office, Mark Galli, the former editor of Christianity Today, said the president's "defense force of religious liberty" doesn't excuse the times he's "betrayed his constitutional oath."

"None of the president's positives can residual the moral and political danger we face up under a leader of such grossly immoral character," he wrote.

Arguments like these typically fall apartment among Trump's most agog religious supporters. The Rev. Jeffress and others say no one expected the president to exist perfect.

"The whole basis of the Christian message is nosotros're all sinners," the Rev. Jeffress recently told NPR.

Questioning Trump's tape

Rather than focus on the president's perceived moral indiscretions, some religious and political leaders are trying to brand a instance against Trump using the same evidence that Moore and others cite in calling for his reelection. They agree he's fabricated religious freedom a priority, but say his policy arroyo volition injure people of faith in the long term.

"No religious liberty abet should hail President Trump equally a champion," wrote Melissa Rogers, who served every bit executive managing director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships under President Barack Obama, in a Jan. iii cavalcade for Religion News Service.

In the column and in an interview with the Deseret News this week, Rogers offered a diversity of prove to support this claim. She criticized the administration'south efforts to ban travelers from some Muslim-majority countries and interest in prioritizing Christian refugees. She argued that new protections for religious organizations haven't been paired with protections for people who might be harmed every bit a result.

Overall, Trump has favored Christians over other people of religion and sure types of religious freedom claims over others, said Rogers, who is the author of "Religion in American Public Life."

For instance, he stood upwardly for religious employers who don't want to provide nascence control in their health intendance plans, merely not religious activists who cite their religion as the reason they provide water to migrants at the U.South.-Mexico edge.

"My sense is that the Trump administration has ... a pattern of hostility toward gratis practise claims that cut against its policy priorities," Rogers said.

The administration also seems to care more about the concerns of religious organizations than individual people of organized religion, Garrett said. When it granted a faith-based foster care agency a waiver to federal nondiscrimination law, information technology enabled the agency to continue to decline to work with Christians and non-Christians who wouldn't sign its belief statement.

"Trump is favoring the beliefs of institutions seeking coin from the taxpayer over individuals in need," Garrett said.

Even so, by supporting faith-based foster care agencies, the Trump administration helps everyday people, as Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention'southward Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission pointed out when the administration appear plans to permit religious organizations to receive some federal funding without post-obit nondiscrimination rules.

"This new regulation from the Trump administration is a welcome point that the child welfare system is about the welfare of children — not proxy culture wars," he said.

At the very least, Trump's religious freedom policies take increased polarization on important topics, making it harder to work on related legislation, Garrett said.

"When you talk near religious liberty now, and then many people immediately assume what you're proposing will be anti-woman or anti-LGBTQ," she said.

When religious freedom is seen as a special privilege for one religious grouping, it puts everyone at adventure, Rogers said.

"Governmental favoritism for any organized religion, including favoritism for the Christian religion, is not religious freedom. It'southward non good for the organized religion that'south favored either," she said.

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Source: https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/1/12/21058736/president-donald-trump-religious-freedom-evangelical-christianity-today-election

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