Believe it or not, I’ve been reluctant to come out swinging about Donald Trump’s record on religious freedom.   It’s not that I don’t have strong opinions (which I’ll soon share).  Frankly, I wanted this book to be encountered as a history book not an “anti-Trump” current events book – a) because it’s not one and b) I really want Trump supporters and/or conservatives to read and absorb the first 90% of the book (before I get to the Trump bits) without discounting it. Much of this has nothing to do with Trump and I wanted to avoid the tendency of everything being processed through that lens.

So, with those caveats out of the way, I’d like to frontally tackle the topic: what is Donald Trump’s record on religious freedom?  The short answer is, he’s the worst president in at least 139 years and probably in American history.  

First, it’s important to understand just how unprecedented Trump’s attacks on American Muslims are. 

We have never had a President propose that our immigration policy should be explicitly based on religion.  In truth, it was a hidden motivation of efforts to restrict immigration in the 1830s (Catholics) and 1920s (Jews).  Tellingly, even in those eras of grotesque anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism, it did not occur to the President of the United States that he could explicitly cast restrictionist policies on religious grounds – in part because it would have seemed such an obvious and flagrant violation of our principles of religious freedom.

It’s worth reminding ourselves: his original proposal was not ban Muslim radicals but all Muslims entirely on the basis of their faith.  And there was another less controversial provision which was also an erosion of religious freedom principles. It said that applications from would-be refugees who were Christians would be given preference over those of other religions.  Two people: equally in jeopardy of murder or rape.  The policy of the United States would be to make that decision by determining their religion and then going with the Christian. That violates a core premise of America’s model, which is that the government shouldn’t favor one religion over another.

We also have never had a President propose creating a special registry just for Americans practicing a particular religion. The closest thing was the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Of course that was ethnic, not religious; it was in the middle of a life and death struggle; and it is viewed in hindsight as a massive mistake.  Except maybe not by Donald Trump. Justifying his Muslim ban policy, Trump explained that Muslim refugees were “trying to take over our children and convince them how wonderful ISIS is and how wonderful Islam is.”  As proof that the Muslim ban was not be- yond the pale, he pointed to Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II as justification. “So, you’re for intern- ment camps?” ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos asked. No, he said, but “what I’m doing is no different than FDR,” who was “a president highly respected by all.”

We have never had a President who so proactively and publicly attempted to demonize and stigmatize a particular religion within America. He did this in a few ways, each of which followed a pattern we saw in earlier attacks on other religions.

First, he blurred the lines between Muslim terrorists and regular American Muslims.  While insisting that he was going after extremists, he also routinely equated radical Islam with Islam per se. “I think Islam hates us,” he said. Asked if he meant all Muslims, he said, “I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.” Just as some in earlier eras had claimed that Jews, Mormons, and Catholics would not assimilate, Trump maintained, “They come—they don’t—for some reason, there’s no real assimilation.”

Chillingly, he promoted the idea that American Muslims generally support the terrorists. While Jehovah’s Witnesses were cast as Nazi supporters during World War II, Muslims were deemed insufficiently patriotic and maybe even dangerous. Trump claimed, falsely and repeatedly, that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11. He claimed, falsely, that American Muslims avoid reporting suspicious activity. “They’re not turning them in,” he said. He renewed the suggestion, after the San Bernardino attack, stating, falsely, “If you look at San Bernardino as an example, San Bernardino, they had bombs all over the floor of their apartment. And everybody knew it, many people knew it. They didn’t turn the people over. They didn’t do it.” (Police never found any evidence that Muslim neighbors or friends knew. The closest thing: a local news station inter- viewed an out-of-town visitor who claimed that a friend of his who lived near the attackers had noticed the couple working a lot in their garage and receiving large packages but didn’t report it because she didn’t want to racially profile.)

Most important, in December 2015, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Gone was the idea that we should focus on Islamic fundamentalists or terrorists. No Muslims of any kind could be trusted. “It’s obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension,” said Trump.

Trump had taken the rhetorical conflation of Muslim terrorists and Muslims in general and turned it into policy. Restriction of immigration on the basis of religion was unprecedented. Although the Immigration Act of 1924 had been designed in part to reduce the number of Jews entering the country, its advocates rarely said so publicly, and that position was not championed by the president. Even in the 1830s, when anti-Catholic nativism was rampant, or in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was winning elections, successful presidential candidates did not come out and call for the banning of a particular religious group from America’s shores.

Trump also surrounded himself with anti-Muslims extremists who simply would not have been tolerated if they had exhibited that level of hostility toward Jews or Catholics. Michael Flynn, his first national security advisor, dismissed Muslims’ claims that they should be protected by the First Amendment as a treacherous tactic. “It will mask itself as a religion globally because, especially in the west, especially in the United States, because it can hide behind and protect itself behind what we call freedom of religion.” And he warned that groups friendly to the terrorists had infiltrated the American government.

Steve Bannon, chief strategist during the campaign and senior advisor in the early part of the Trump administration, played a major role in promoting the anti-Muslim activists. Bannon called Frank Gaffney “one of the senior thought leaders and men of action in this whole war against Islamic radical jihad” and Pamela Geller “one of the top world experts in radical Islam and Shariah law and Islamic supremacism.”

Mike Pompeo, who would become director of the Central Intelligence Agency and later secretary of state in the Trump administration, suggested that mainstream American Muslims were soft on terrorism, un- American, or both. After two Muslim Americans exploded bombs at the Boston Marathon, every major Muslim group quickly denounced the attack, but Pompeo subsequently claimed that the “silence of Muslim leaders has been deafening” and that therefore “these Islamic leaders across America [are] potentially complicit in these acts.” He was also a frequent guest on the radio show of Frank Gaffney, a leading anti-Islam activist whose group proposed banning many American Muslims from being able to hold office.

John Bolton, Trump’s third national security advisor, was a fan of Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, and other anti-Muslim activists. He endorsed Geller’s book Fatwa and Spencer’s book Stealth Jihad. As his chief of staff, Bolton appointed Fred Fleitz, the senior vice president of Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, the same group that said Sharia-supporting American Muslims should not be allowed to hold public office.

Ben Carson, the brain surgeon appointed to be secretary of housing and urban development, said during his own presidential campaign that he could not support a Muslim ever being president: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that. . . . I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country.” Those statements did not disqualify him from being in Trump’s cabinet.

All of this has had consequences.  Attacks against Muslims have risen.  And in the 2016 campaign we saw this astonishing poll result: half of Republicans were not willing to declare that Islam should be legal in America.

The only thing that keeps Trumps record from being even more egregious is that the system has beaten back his most anti-Muslim efforts.  His Muslim ban was modified to focus on geography rather than religion. They were forced to drop the preference for Christian refugees. He so far has not proposed the Muslim registry.  He makes anti-Muslim comments with less frequency as president than he did as a candidate.

How does his treatment of Muslims compare with other presidents? James Buchanan sent the army to Utah to remove Brigham Young from power, but the conflict never materialized. Millard Fillmore received the presidential nomination from the overtly anti-Catholic nativist party the Know-Nothings, but he lost. Ulysses S. Grant dog-whistled against Catholics by pledging that “not one dollar” would be appropriated for “any sectarian schools,” but he also wanted the government to avoid funding Protestant groups. Rutherford B. Hayes may be Trump’s closest competitor, having argued that the United States Congress should attempt to “destroy the temporal power of the Mormon Church.” But he did not hit that note persistently, did not make it a major theme of his election campaign, and was not a decisive player in the anti-Mormon efforts. Richard Nixon was a raving anti-Semite, but only in private. Notably, most of the presidents with comparably poor records were in the nineteenth century.   

What about the other side of the ledger?  He speaks about religious freedom a lot has taken a number of steps ostensibly to strengthen religious freedom. 

Let’s consider those.

Let’s start with the positive steps he has taken. Trump created a HHS’s new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to better enforce conscience exceptions.  I disagree with the idea on the left that the government becoming more sensitive to conscience objections is damaging to religious freedom. In fact, Congress has long provided – appropriately – the ability for health care workers to opt out of certain procedures if they violated their religious beliefs.  The most obvious is that people who are pro-life should not be forced by the government to literally perform abortions if that violates their conscience or faith.  This is an important principle that progressives should support too. It’s the same principle that allows Quakers to avoid military service as conscientious objectors.  To the extent the administration has attempted to beef up enforcement of conscience claims, that may be a good thing. We don’t know yet how they will implement their recent new rules.  Now there is an argument that by broadening the language, the Trump administration has made it possible to discriminate against Transgender or LGBT people on religious grounds.  That will depend on how they choose to enforce it. Potentially bad but not bad yet.

They also appointed a high powered ambassador for religious freedom. This is not a new position (Obama filled it too). But they did put a bit more muscle behind it by giving the job to Sam Brownback, the conservative former government of Kansas.  Although he’s a conservative Christian, the early signs are that he has not approached his job as boing entirely an ambassador for the religious right.  For instance, he has at least rhetorically called out the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar and China.

Trump’s  administration has taken a few positive steps to make sure that religion isn’t disadvantaged in public policy.  For instance, they ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could give disaster relief to houses of worship. He made it easier for people to take off for religious holidays.

The rest of Trump’s domestic “religious freedom” has ranged from symbolic pandering to dangerous demagoguery.    First, it’s clear that he uses the term “religious freedom” to mean things that are supported by religious Christians. The White House website on July 15, 2018, laid out the evidence that “President Donald J. Trump Stands Up for Religious Freedom in the United States.” Examples included various elements championed by religious conservatives on abortion, same-sex marriage, the Johnson Amendment, and conscience exemptions plus these achievements:

He spoke at several prayer breakfasts.

He “declared several days of prayer, including a National Day of Prayer for the Victims of Hurricane Harvey and for America’s National Response and Recovery Efforts.”

He addressed the March for Life anti-abortion rally and thus “became the first President to address the March for Life rally live via satellite.”

Mike Pence addressed the March for Life rally in 2017, becoming the first sitting vice president to do so in person.

He blocked foreign aid from going to organizations that perform abortions.

He made it easier for states to defund abortion clinics.

On October 13, 2017, President Trump spoke at the Values Voter Summit. (There, he declared victory in the “war on Christmas.” “You know, we’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word ‘Christmas’ because it’s not politically correct. You go to department stores, and they’ll say, ‘Happy New Year’ and they’ll say other things. And it will be red, they’ll have it painted, but they don’t say it. Well, guess what? We’re saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” “Remarks by President Trump at the 2017 Values Voter Summit,” WhiteHouse.gov, October 13, 2017, accessed July 18, 2018,

And then there are his two biggest domestic religious freedom achievements: the repeal of the “Johnson amendment” and overturning the Affordable Care Act’s attacks on religious freedom.

Trump recently crowed that “We got rid of the Johnson amendment,” Trump said today (referring to the rule preventing nonprofits from endorsing candidates). “One of the things I’m most proud of.”  So, point one: he did not.  Congress rejected his effort. 

But let’s pretend he did, and evaluate his position on the merits.  He certainly tried to get rid of it. As a senator, Lyndon Johnson added a rule to the tax code that tax-exempt nonprofits could not endorse political candidates. In the 1990s, the IRS revoked the tax benefit of the Church of Pierce Creek in Binghamton, New York, after it placed a newspaper advertisement saying it would be sin- ful to vote for Bill Clinton—and then told readers that donations to help

defray the cost of that ad would be tax-deductible. The courts upheld the IRS position, but the rule proved so controversial that the IRS has rarely enforced it. Still, it’s theoretically possible that the government could re- move a tax benefit on the basis of words spoken from a pulpit, so it became a cause among religious conservatives around 2016. In attempting to scale back the rule, President Trump falsely declared, “For too long, the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people of faith, bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs.”

The issue became significantly distorted, with activists and the press reporting that the rule prohibited churches from engaging in “political activity” or “political speech.” The law never prohibited houses of worship from expressing political views; it put a limit on their ability to endorse candidates. Even then, they could do it, but only if they sacrificed their tax benefit. What’s more, the rule applied to all nonprofits, including liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, not just churches. The Trump administration’s proposed solution would have made James Madison cringe. Someone who gives a campaign donation to a church that has endorsed a candidate would get a tax deduction, while those who give to a political party would not. That would strongly incentivize the creation of bogus religious institutions to act as financing vehicles for political campaigns, or entice existing religious organizations to become more partisan. The overhyping of a minor problem led to a solution that would do far more harm to the integrity of both our politics and our religious institutions than the ailment it was supposed to cure.

Then there’s the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. The Obama administration issued a rule in 2012 stating that contraception needed to be covered by health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. They exempted houses of worship from the requirement but did not extend that exemption to religiously oriented nonprofits such as schools and hospitals. That was a thumb in the eye of religious groups, which would have been forced to pay for health cover- age for their employees that might conflict with their religious teachings. Religious believers were right to jump on this, and progressives proved clueless, ethically and politically, when they dismissed these concerns as frivolous or bigoted.

But then something happened that neither side likes to fully acknowledge: the administration capitulated and issued a sensible new rule. Under the new proposal, religiously oriented organizations could also opt out of the contraceptive requirement, and the insurer would pay for the service instead. While some religious groups declared victory, most pro- nounced this to be a mere accounting gimmick and escalated their attack. They found the perfect plaintiffs, a kindly group of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor, who sued to block the rule. When he became president, Donald Trump issued an executive order reversing the Obama policy. He gave the Sisters the good news that he was thereby “ending the attacks on your religious liberty” and “your long ordeal.”

To understand how the term “religious liberty” was being misused, let’s consider the nature of the “attacks” on the Little Sisters of the Poor. The revised rule maintained that religious organizations did not have to pay for or provide coverage for contraception in the health insurance plans of their employees. They were excused from having to abide by that law. They merely had to inform the insurance company that they wanted out. They did not have to pay a penny toward providing contraception. The Little Sisters’ attorneys argued that it was nonetheless unconstitutional because they were still involved in the system as a whole; nonreligious employees at the organization could choose to get contraception (at their own expense); and the government could have found even less burden- some ways of exempting them. That’s it. The government imposed a tiny burden but maybe could have found a teeny tiny burden instead. Rather than an example of religious oppression—“the attacks against the Little Sisters of the Poor”—the case was an arcane argument about the right ways to balance different interests. And to state the obvious, none of those ways bore any resemblance to the heinous violations of religious freedom that Catholics had themselves suffered in this country in the past—or that Muslims are experiencing in this country today.

Which leads us to the most important point. He mostly uses religious liberty as a way to further divide people – not only by attacking Muslims but by making Protestants, Catholics and even Jews believe that Democrats hate them.

During the campaign, at the Al Smith dinner, Trump declared, “Here she is, pretending not to hate Catholics.” Recently, he said “the Democrats hate Jewish people.”

And throughout the campaign and his presidency he has told conservative Christians that they are being persecuted and only he can defend them.

“Christianity is under tremendous siege,” said Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. “The Christians are being treated horribly because we have nobody to represent the Christians.”

Trump pledged that with his election, “the Christians” would at long last have a champion. “As long as I am your president no one is ever going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching what’s in your heart.”

Trump even claimed that he had been persecuted for his deeply held faith. When asked why his businesses had been audited by the Internal Revenue Service, he didn’t mention the voluminous evidence of shady practices and instead suggested it was “Maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian.” After all, he reminded us, he has “a great relationship with God.”

More recently, he said that Democrats and liberals had wanted to stop believers from uttering the word “God.” He said that “people are so proud to be using that beautiful word ‘God.’ And they’re using the word ‘God’ again, and they’re not hiding from it. And they’re not being told to take it down, and they’re not saying, ‘We can’t honor God.’ In God, we trust. So important.”

Trump claimed that before he took office “people were not allowed or in some cases, foolishly ashamed to be using on stores ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas.’ They’d say ‘Happy Holidays.’ They’d have red walls, and you’d never see ‘Christmas.’ That was four years ago.”

“Take a look at your stores nowadays. It’s all ‘Merry Christmas’ again. They’re proud of it. I always said, ‘You’re going to be saying “Merry Christmas” again.’ And that’s what happened.”

In other words, he doesn’t just pit Christians against Muslims, he pits Christians against everyone.

Taken together it’s pretty clear that for Trump uses the concept of religious freedom primarily as a cudgel against political opponents – and in so doing helps to rob it of some of its ‘sacred’ status. He has made the concept of religious freedom partisan instead of universal, a way to divide rather than unite.