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Christian Nationalism Resurrected as Trump Promotes Prayer in Public Schools
"President Trump is using religion to promote his self-aggrandizement and political agenda, all the while perpetuating the lie that America is a Christian nation and that religion is under attack," said one critic.
Sep 08, 2025
Proponents of separating church and state on Monday decried US President Donald Trump's pledge to protect prayer in public schools, warning that the administration is advancing the agenda of far-right Christian nationalists seeking to impose their religious beliefs upon everyone.
Speaking at a meeting of the president's so-called Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, Trump announced upcoming Department of Education guidance "protecting the right to prayer in our public schools, and it's total protection."
"We're defending our rights and restoring our identity as a nation under God," Trump said. "To have a great nation, you have to have religion. I believe that so strongly. As president, I will always defend our glorious heritage, and we will protect the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding."
The president added that it is "ridiculous" that the nation's public school students are "indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda, and some are even punished for their religious beliefs."
Trump also launched his "America Prays" initiative, which asks the faithful to "join with at least 10 people to meet each week for one hour to pray" for the country.
In response to the president's speech, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) said on social media: "We've never been 'one nation under God.' There's nothing to restore. Our true identity is freedom of conscience—the right to believe in any faith, or none at all."
"A great nation isn't built on religion—it's built on equality, liberty, and justice for all," FFRF added. "Our strength comes from We The People, not belief in a god."
Rachel Laser, president of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement that Monday's event "once again demonstrated that this commission isn't about religious liberty; it's about rejecting the nation's religious diversity and prioritizing one set of Christian beliefs."
"From the professions of Christian faith to the chorus of 'amens' during Christian prayers to the exclusively Christian speakers this morning, this government hearing was more like a church service," Laser noted. "Once again, President Trump is using religion to promote his self-aggrandizement and political agenda, all the while perpetuating the lie that America is a Christian nation and that religion is under attack."
Laser continued:
The Trump administration is advancing this Christian nationalist agenda with the launch of his 'America Prays' initiative, which calls on Americans to pray for our country. People who care about religious freedom don't need to be told when or how to pray; they need leaders who are committed to separation of church and state.
At a hearing focused on religious freedom and public schools, the commission ignored the most serious threats. From mandates to display the Ten Commandments and teach from the Bible to Christianity-infused curriculum and the installation of school chaplains, Christian nationalists and their political allies are trying to impose their personal religious beliefs on America's public school children.
"Our country's promise of church-state separation means that families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide how and when children engage with religion," Laser added. "Yet many of the organizations represented at today's meeting and members of the Religious Liberty Commission have tried to undermine this fundamental American principle and turn our public schools into Sunday schools."
Monday's event came as some GOP-led states push forward with plans for more overt displays of religiosity in public schools. Most notably, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—a US Senate candidate—is urging schools to display the Ten Commandments in spite of a federal judge's recent injunction on a law requiring the Judeo-Christian religious and ethical directives to be displayed in all classrooms.
Paxton is also urging all schools "to begin the legal process of putting prayer back in the classroom and recommending the Lord's Prayer for students."
Responding to Paxton's push, gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg said last week on social media: "Hey Ken, many have said that you committed adultery. Shouldn't you worry about your own morality before imposing this on others? Looks like you are using religion for personal gain."
Recent polls have shown a significant drop in the number of Americans who identify as Christian in recent decades, an all-time low in belief in "God," and a steady overall decline in religiosity among younger Americans.
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Reclaiming God from Empire: Nonviolence in an Age of Religious Nationalism
The world doesn’t need more interfaith conferences. It needs a defiant, loving, spiritually alive army saying, “No” to every lie told in God’s name and “Yes” to every human being whose dignity is at risk.
Aug 27, 2025
I didn’t set out to study nonviolence. Like many, I stumbled upon it in fragments, quotes that refused to leave me, the persistent sense that some ancient wisdom was trying to cut through the noise of our modern world.
Over time, through teaching, crisis counseling, community organizing, and meditation, I’ve come to a radical realization: Nonviolence is not merely a political tactic or a personal ethic. It is a global resistance movement against the fusion of religion and empire. It is how we reclaim God from the powers that abuse the sacred to justify violence.
We live in an age of rising religious nationalism. From Hindu majoritarianism in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, to Christian nationalism in the United States, to theocratic impulses behind Israeli settler expansionism, to Islamist authoritarianism across parts of the Middle East, violent ideologies drape themselves in sacred flags. Across continents, politics does not just use religion, it deifies power itself.
These movements, despite differences in theology, share a dangerous logic: God belongs to the nation-state. Dissent is heresy. Violence in defense of faith is holy. From Trump rallies invoking Jesus as a warrior against “wokeness,” to mobs in Sri Lanka attacking Muslim businesses under Buddhist banners, the message is the same: We are the faithful, and they are the enemy.
This is not faith. It is idolatry.
Nonviolence is not weakness, it is moral imagination.
The through line is the same everywhere: Political machines manipulate our spiritual longing—our desire for meaning, belonging, and moral clarity—into instruments of fear. Fear of invasion, moral decay, the other. Religion fused with nationalism offers an intoxicating narrative: You are chosen, your suffering righteous, your violence divinely sanctioned.
The consequences are stark: genocide in Myanmar, insurgencies in Nigeria, mass protests in Iran led by women chanting “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”—Woman, Life, Freedom.
Yet, wherever God is weaponized, people of conscience rise to reclaim the sacred.
The prophets of scripture were never courtiers to kings. Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Guru Nanak—they stood outside the gates, shouting warnings. They taught that God is never found in empires but in the poor, the exiled, the occupied.
Jesus did not die because he preached love; he died because he preached a love that refused Caesar. His nonviolence was not meekness; it was resistance. To “love your enemies” was to forgive Roman soldiers, tax collectors, collaborators, a revolutionary courage that unsettled empires.
Mahatma Gandhi understood this deeply. His weapon was truth; his discipline, nonviolence. His target: the British Empire, which fused God, king, and commerce into one colonial theology. Gandhi’s Ahimsa was a spiritual rebuke to every religion that justified oppression in God’s name. He was not just a nationalist, he was an exorcist.
The world has changed. Weapons are faster. Propaganda is louder. Failures now risk climate catastrophe, nuclear war, genocide. Yet the core dynamic remains: Empire seeks to baptize its violence. In President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Orthodox priests bless missiles. In Gaza and southern Israel, both Hamas and Israeli extremists quote scripture to justify massacres. In the US, Bible verses are wielded to demonize LGBTQ+ communities and suppress reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the poor remain poor, the Earth burns, and God’s name is dragged through bloodied streets.
Resistance requires more than interfaith talk or symbolic gestures. We need a global, spiritually rooted movement connecting every site of conscience. Pastors, imams, rabbis, monks, Indigenous elders, atheists, spiritual seekers, anyone refusing the false choice between extremism and moral apathy.
Such movements exist, though rarely in headlines:
- In Iraq, Muslim and Christian activists march together for water rights and anti-corruption.
- In Nigeria, interfaith committees interrupt cycles of revenge violence.
- In the US, Jewish and Christian leaders occupy Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, practicing faith in action.
- In India, Dalit Buddhists and Sikhs resist Hindutva ideology with solidarity, not hatred.
- In Brazil, Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners confront evangelical persecution through ritual, music, and protest.
These are the prophets of our time, not famous, not always safe, but always faithful.
Nonviolence may seem fragile in a world of drones, deepfakes, authoritarian surveillance, beheadings, bombings. Hunger strikes against indifferent governments can feel meaningless. Yet, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi,” organized 100,000 Pashtun men into a nonviolent army, declaring, “It is cowardice to kill. It requires courage to be nonviolent.”
I recall historical images of Black Panthers feeding children, monks lying before tanks in Myanmar, Standing Rock, grandmothers chaining themselves to border fences, Iranian women burning hijabs in defiance. Nonviolence is not weakness, it is moral imagination. It refuses empire the power to define our dignity.
It is difficult. I fail daily. My thoughts are not always peaceful; my rhetoric sometimes sharp. I am still unlearning the myth that power requires domination. Yet we must try. The alternative is annihilation.
As a counselor and teacher, I witness the spiritual devastation of religious violence, not only physical, but emotional: shame, fear, exclusion. A woman fleeing an evangelical cult. A gay teen rejected by his mosque. A veteran praying for forgiveness nightly after deploying drone strikes.
Reclaiming God is urgent. Pastoral. Political. Global. The world doesn’t need more interfaith conferences. It needs a defiant, loving, spiritually alive army saying, “No” to every lie told in God’s name and “Yes” to every human being whose dignity is at risk.
Yes to Palestinians and Israelis. Yes to Muslims and Hindus. Yes to atheists and fundamentalists. Yes to victims—and, if they seek it, to the redeemed.
The God I follow does not wave flags. Does not draw borders. Is found in the faces of those who show up unarmed. If faith is real, it must be revolutionary. If God is just, God must be liberated from every flag, every bomb, every distorted sermon.
This is the work. And it requires all of us.
Nonviolence or nonexistence. Gandhi and King made their choice. What will ours be?
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1,000+ Nonprofits Tell Trump: Cancel Plans to Let Churches Endorse Politicians
"The Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of this federal law is a flagrant, self-serving attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy," said one supporter of the Johnson Amendment.
Jul 30, 2025
As The New York Times reported on how an Easter dinner may have given "Christian conservatives their most significant victory involving church political organizing in 70 years," over 1,000 charitable nonprofits on Wednesday collectively urged President Donald Trump not to allow churches to endorse political candidates.
A provision of the U.S. tax code named for former President Lyndon B. Johnson conditions tax-exempt status on an organization not participating or intervening in campaigns for public office. However, in a bid to settle a federal lawsuit earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed an exemption for houses of worship.
As the proposed exception to the Johnson Amendment awaits court approval, groups including the American Humanist Association, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), Freedom From Religion Foundation, Independent Sector, Interfaith Alliance, National Council of Nonprofits, and Public Citizen on Wednesday launched the sign-on letter to Trump.
"For more than 70 years, it has ensured that all tax-exempt charitable nonprofits—including houses of worship—do not become conduits for partisan politics, protecting public trust in religious institutions and preserving the integrity of elections," the letter says of the Johnson Amendment. "Weakening the provision threatens to erode public trust, risk policy capture by special interests, and dilute regulatory oversight."
The letter warns that "if the court approves this settlement, houses of worship would be subject to intense political pressure to engage in electoral politics from downballot races and primaries to the presidency, distracting them from their missions. It would also create a loophole for the political donors to enjoy tax-deductible donations for their political campaign contributions, exploiting houses of worship for political gains."
As Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert put it in a Wednesday statement, "We are witnessing in real-time the creation of a new and dangerous dark money channel."
The coalition warned that "weakening the Johnson Amendment would jeopardize the integrity of the entire nonprofit community," not just houses of worship.
"This is not a matter of religious freedom or speech. It is about fundamentally reshaping how political money flows through our system," the letter states. "Charitable nonprofits are among the last institutions where people from all walks of life come together to tackle local challenges. Undermining the legal safeguards that preserve their neutrality could seriously erode public trust and compromise the sector's ability to carry out its mission."
The groups urged the Trump administration "to immediately end its attempt to ignore the Johnson Amendment, reaffirm clear limits on partisan politicking in houses of worship, ensure impartial enforcement across sectors, and protect civil society."
Although the IRS already often does not enforce the Johnson Amendment against houses of worship, killing it has long been "one of the biggest political goals for conservative Christian activists," as the Times detailed Wednesday.
The Times reported that Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, attended an April dinner with the president and evangelist Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham. According to the newspaper:
At Mr. Trump's request, Mr. Jeffress' church sent the White House Faith Office a seven-page letter outlining what it called "wrongful weaponization" of the law and the "unlawful targeting of our church." The letter, obtained by The New York Times, included recommended actions, and a mention of a Texas lawsuit, which offered a vehicle to declare that the law was wrong.
Three months later, conservative Christians scored a major victory.
In a signal of how the new letter may be received, a White House spokesperson told the Times that "President Trump is very proud of this victory for leaders of faith across the country protecting their First Amendment rights."
Still, nonprofits that oppose weakening the Johnson Amendment are working on various fronts to stop the settlement. In addition to promoting the letter, AU has requested to intervene in the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
"This long-standing, commonsense rule protects the integrity of both our elections and nonprofits, including houses of worship. The majority of Americans don't want their charities and churches embroiled in the corrupting influence of partisan politics," the group's president and CEO, Rachel Laser, said Wednesday.
"The Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of this federal law is a flagrant, self-serving attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy by plunging houses of worship into partisan battles," Laser added. "AU is committed to fight the administration's brazen ploy to use our houses of worship as political campaign tools."
The letter comes two days after the Trump administration issued a memo allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, widely seen as another move to further erode the separation of church and state. Responding on social media, the American Humanist Association said that "this is what Christian Nationalism looks like."
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