Religious “Liberty” Commission Just Another Buffoonish Trump Reality Show

As a kid, I’d ask to stay up late to watch the Celebrity Apprentice.

Donald Trump was a master of putting washed-up celebrities in absurd situations: Kevin Jonas fighting with Geraldo Rivera over a TV commercial for a digital scanner. Clay Aiken and Penn Jillette arguing over how to manage a distracted and frenetic Lou Ferrigno while trying to film a viral video to promote a spray mop.

Trump’s latest celebrity sideshow—featuring Dr. Phil and a former Miss USA runner-up, is the federal government’s “Religious Liberty Commission.” It’s about religious liberty in the same way the Celebrity Apprentice was about business. Which is to say, in name only.

It’s sad, because as someone who runs a nonprofit that protects atheists, agnostics, and other religious minorities from discrimination, I can imagine a Religious Liberty Commission that could actually do something useful. Houses of worship have to deal with the constant threat of gun violence. People still get discriminated against at work for not participating in group prayers. Kids still get proselytized in public school.

A Religious Liberty Commission that was truly interested in ensuring that every single person in America has the right to follow whatever religious tradition is right for them—or none at all—could be a great thing.

When Trump says he wants America to be “more religious”... What he wants, it appears, is more people who worship a specific type of Christianity—the kind of conservative Evangelical Christianity that is increasingly loyal to and organized behind him.

But that’s not the Religious Liberty Commission we got. Instead, we have Dr. Phil rambling about a “cultural war,” former Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean bemoaning that “morality has dropped across America” since we took a 430-year-old Christian textbook called the New England Primer out of schools, and eleven other right-wing Christians (and one right-wing rabbi) interviewing guest speakers who call atheists “demonic” and insist that government’s proper role is to promote “public recognition of truths about divine realities.”

In other words, it’s the state’s job to tell you God is real.

This isn’t new. Even before he started trying to plug a Christian prayer app with in-app purchases in his speeches, Trump said "we’re bringing religion back to America” and has explicitly written that he wants to make America “more religious.”

On Trump’s commission, Dr. Phil and Miss Not-Quite-USA are flanked by third-rate religious scholars who insist our Founders—who fought a war to break away from an empire with a state religion and immediately declared that America would have no such thing, ever—intended for America to be a religious nation from the very beginning, citing a vague reference to a “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence.

That would have been news to the Declaration’s author, Thomas Jefferson, who coined the term “wall of separation between church and state” and famously said “the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.”

To understand why the Founders were so preoccupied with protecting religious freedom, it’s worth considering what exactly Trump means by “more religious.” This is, after all, a man who called an Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde a “so-called Bishop” and “not very good at her job” when he disliked her sermon, who publicly agreed with one of his cronies that Doug Emhoff was a “crappy Jew,” who misquotes the Bible and compared it to “a great, incredible movie.”

When Trump says he wants America to be “more religious,” he doesn’t mean more of Mariann Budde’s Christianity, or Doug Emhoff’s Judaism. What he wants, it appears, is more people who worship a specific type of Christianity—the kind of conservative Evangelical Christianity that is increasingly loyal to and organized behind him.

We’re going to see the right-wing Christians on the commission argue that our tax dollars should be used to push their religion on other people’s kids.

The Commission’s membership tells the story. Thirteen right-wing Christians and a token right-wing rabbi. No effort to include any of America’s other minority faiths—Islam, Unitarian Universalism, Buddhism, or Hinduism. And absolutely no representation for the 30% of Americans who aren’t religious at all, but face discrimination for their nonbelief. Trump put Penn Jillette—a famous atheist and advocate for church-state separation—on the Celebrity Apprentice twice, but somehow lost his number when it was time to cobble together the Religious Liberty Commission.

So if the Religious “Liberty” Commission is a sham, why make a big deal about something so asinine?

Because just as the Celebrity Apprentice helped Trump make the argument that he was a successful businessman people could trust, the Religious Liberty Commission is designed to make arguments for several key policies that have nothing to do with religious liberty—and everything to do with making America a Christian Nationalist hell on earth.

For instance: multiple speakers at the first Religious Liberty Commission meeting, including Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick, argued that historically—before things like Social Security and Medicare—social services were provided not by the government but by religious institutions. The subtext was clear: the government shouldn’t be doing things like taking care of the sick and elderly; the church should.

Rather than focusing on how to teach kids math and science, we’ll focus on teaching them that gay people and religious minorities—maybe even their own families—are going to Hell.

Multiple other speakers used the specific language of “unjust laws.” But religious institutions have claimed—and Trump’s Supreme Court has backed them up—that “unjust laws” include things like…paying into unemployment benefits for their own employees. We’re going to see the Trump administration create more and more “religious” exemptions to laws that are meant to protect consumers or employers—where anyone’s claim to being religious becomes a “get out of jail free card” to mistreat your workers or discriminate against consumers.

Finally, the first Commission meeting was hyper-focused on prayer and Christian teaching in schools. We’re going to see the right-wing Christians on the commission argue that our tax dollars should be used to push their religion on other people’s kids. Rather than focusing on how to teach kids math and science, we’ll focus on teaching them that gay people and religious minorities—maybe even their own families—are going to Hell.

The commission’s latest meeting took place Monday, September 29th—150 years, to the day, after President Ulysses S. Grant gave a speech declaring that America should “leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school…keep the church and state forever separate”—what can we do now?

We can’t stop Trump from putting on celebrity sideshows. It’s what he’s done his whole career.

But we can call it what it is: a sham, a joke, a mendacious misuse of the fundamental American principle of religious liberty meant to lay the groundwork for the obscene Christian Nationalist policies this administration wants to implement, which would fundamentally change America by making us the kind of religious government our founders fled and fought.