New Trump Commission Displays DC’s Religious Power Grid
(ANALYSIS) Despite the disruptions of global economics and trade, and a couple dozen other hot disputes, let's not neglect such perennial realities as the way religion can affect politics and vice versa. As President Donald Trump promised, this is a central aspect of his agenda, underscored by the recent establishment of the new Religious Liberty Commission.
President George W. Bush created the innovative White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, aimed at “strengthening and expanding” religious providers of social services. President Obama continued the concept with his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, as did Trump with the first term’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
In February, Trump 2.0 instead formed the White House Faith Office, with enhanced ideological edge, under the Domestic Policy Council led by Vince Haley (a lay Catholic). The president wants it to “empower” outreach not only by charities but local religious congregations — and to recommend policy changes “to better align with the American values.”
Part of that is working with Attorney General Pam Bondi to enforce “protections for religious liberty,” following past “failures” to do so. A Trump executive order created the related Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, chaired by Bondi (who does not discuss her religious beliefs or affiliation). The task force assembled notable power-brokers for its first meeting.
Now Trump creates the RLC to advise the White House office on policy and “produce a comprehensive report” on religious liberty, including “current threats,” to mark next year’s 250th anniversary of American independence. Among specific concerns will be health care “conscience protections” (see “vaccine mandates”), fostering of “voluntary prayer and religious instruction at public schools” and of “religious imagery” in government displays. The commission will be guided by several dozen religious leaders, lay leaders and lawyers chosen by the president.
The context of these actions is Americans’ deep disagreement over how to apply the First Amendment’s ban on government “establishment of religion” and its guarantee of “free exercise” of religion, which are often thought to conflict. To simplify matters, major religious and secular groups believe liberty requires strict “separation of church and state,” and they oppose “religious right” activists and so-called Christian nationalists. Trump sides with the opposite forces that champion religion’s prerogatives and presence in public life and typically defend religious freedom claims while shelving “establishment” concerns.
Trump’s appointments to the evangelical-heavy RLC are revealing. He pointedly excluded separationists and chose no membership to represent the nation’s actual religious makeup. There is no pastor from the mainline Protestant or the Black Protestant denominations, and no Conservative or Reform Jewish rabbi. For that matter, there is no scholarly expert on church-state law from whatever viewpoint, and no leaders from the growing flocks of Hispanic Catholics and Protestants, Latter-day Saints or Muslims.
The RLC's lone non-Christian is notable Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, an honoree of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He leads the nation's oldest synagogue, Shearith Israel, in New York City, and Yeshiva University's Center for Torah and Western Thought. His latest Commentary magazine column charges that ¡the most elite academic institutions in the land teach that the Founding and the country it produced are an embodiment of evil.”
The Catholic situation is complicated and made more so by the election of Pope Leo XIV, an American who suddenly rivals Trump in global fame and sets up an intriguing dynamic. U.S. Catholics, so long solidly Democratic, have evolved into providing loyal Republican majorities. Leo, like many U.S. bishops and priests, have opposed Trump’s handling of immigration and deportation, yet the American church leans Trumpward on religious liberty, gender identity and abortion.
The president was able to recruit two visible hierarchs for his RLC: New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who manages amiable relations with Trump, and Minnesota’s Bishop Robert Barron, whose Word on Fire multimedia organization champions doctrinal orthodoxy. Lay Catholic member Ryan T. Anderson (a Notre Dame doctorate holder) is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and co-authored articles against the mifepristone abortion pill.
The RLC’s tone is exemplified by its chair, former talk radio host now Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, an outspoken Southern Baptist and Republican firebrand. Patrick likes creationism in school, school choice, gun rights, Ten Commandments displays and Confederate monuments. He dislikes abortion, gay marriage, faculty tenure, sanctuary cities, DEI and CRT.
The commission’s vice chair is Ben Carson, the celebrated neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate who then served in Trump’s first Cabinet. Like many devout Seventh-day Adventists, he is conservative on marriage and abortion and a critic of evolutionary theory.
Another central RLC personality is Paula White-Cain, the senior advisor with the new White House Faith Office. She is a longtime Trump friend and advisor, a star in the independent Charismatic movement, and a pastor at StoryLife Church in suburban Orlando. White-Cain is a problematic figure for those evangelicals concerned about female clergy, the “prosperity gospel,” her debatable “prophecies” announcing God’s present truths, and her three marriages.
Two more mainstream evangelicals on the Trump team and on the RLC are author Eric Metaxas, who hosts a radio show and Socrates in the City events, and the Rev. Franklin Graham, heir to father Billy’s organization and president of the Samaritan’s Purse disaster response ministry.
RLC celebrityhood includes evangelical-turned-Catholic beauty queen Carrie Prejean Boller, who was Miss California USA 2009 and first runner-up for Miss USA 2009. She faced attacks for endorsing traditional marriage when answering a pageant question. Her autobiography says that hubbub caused the cancellation of her pageant contract, though officials blamed revelations of a sex tape and a semi-nude photo.
Another RLC celebrity is controversial TV psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw. He recently spoke about a teenage commitment to Christ but is mum about religious affiliation. McGraw believes “faith is under attack in America” and for the American founders, church-state separation meant there would be no single official religion. But they “felt religion in general was essential if we were going to have good and decent citizens” and thereby “a successful country.”
Two prominent Texas attorneys who litigate cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts round out RLC membership. Kelly Shackelford, president of the First Liberty Institute, has led strategic religion rights wins at the Supreme Court, listed here. For instance, Shackelford’s institute represented the American Legion in the 2019 case on Maryland’s “Peace Cross,” placed on public land to honor fallen World War I soldiers.
The Supreme Court deemed this no illegal “establishment of religion” due to its historical status. Allyson Ho, working as a First Liberty volunteer, was the lead attorney defending the cross at California’s Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial, which honors living and deceased veterans of all wars. After two Supreme Court petitions, this dispute finally concluded in 2016 with a swap from federal to private land ownership. Ex officio RLC members are Bondi, Haley and Trump’s new HUD Secretary Scott Turner, a former NFL player who is the associate pastor of a Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.