WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The newly established White House Religious Liberty Commission held its first public hearing this week, launching its mission to help guide President Donald Trump to secure domestic religious liberty at a time when it has long been under violent attack.
“Our founders called religious liberty our first freedom, because they understood that if you lose this freedom, you will lose all of your freedoms,” noted Kelly Shackleford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute.
“The one thing a totalitarian regime will never allow are citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government,” he added.
“We are in a cultural war and not one among us can afford to be a non-combatant as we fight for the soul and sanity of these United States,” said TV talk show host, “Dr. Phil” McGraw.
“If the ideologues are able to pull the rug out from under religious liberty, everything else comes tumbling down,” he warned.
“Who would’ve ever thought President Trump would have to pardon 23 pro-lifers for standing outside an abortion clinic and praying silently? Or that the FBI would spy on our traditional Catholic Church? Or that a coach who would kneel on the side of a football field would have to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court to silently pray?” asked Paula White, senior adviser to the White House Office of Faith, the first such office ever established by a U.S. President.
“We have a lot of work to do,” she concluded.
The ‘real cost’ of government anti-religious tyranny
Perhaps the most salient testimony of the day, at least for those without law degrees, came from Kristen Waggoner, CEO, president, and general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
Under her leadership — first as head of U.S. litigation and now as CEO — ADF played a role in nearly 80 U.S. Supreme Court victories and won 15 of its own cases before the Court, including serving as legal counsel with Mississippi in the landmark Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Today’s tyrants don’t wear crowns, they aren’t kings, but they do often sit on our school boards, on our civil rights commissions, and on our city councils. And they’re openly hostile to freedom, and unmoored from objective truth,” Waggoner began.
“They censor, they fine, they even threaten jail time to Americans who dare to hold different beliefs than they do, especially if those beliefs have anything to do with the dignity of life, God’s design for marriage, or the simple truth of what it means to be a woman,” she said.
“Truth is the first casualty of tyranny. But the real cost?” she asked. “It is always human.”
Waggoner described the heartbreaking human cost due to heavy-handed government actions to people who have had their constitutional right to religious liberty trampled:
Imagine being so inspired by your faith that you dare to open a homeless shelter and give your life to it only to have the state tell you that you either abandon that faith or cease serving those in need.
Or fostering children for years at a time, and you’re the health department’s first choice to place newborns that are addicted to drugs, until you say that ‘boys are not girls,’ and the department then revokes your license.
Or what if you escape 20 years of sex-trafficking and faced an unexpected pregnancy, only to be later targeted by your own state attorney for general helping other women in similar situations.
Or you’re ministering to widows and orphans, only to have your bank account shut down and to be denied access to capital, because of your faith.
Or during COVID, your daughter chooses to wear a “Jesus loves me” mask to school, but school officials force her to remove it even though (they) allow students wearing other messages in school.
Or perhaps you’ve served your country in uniform, risking your life to defend freedom, only to have officials deny you a public grant that is available to all other students but not to you because your desire to become a military chaplain and pursue that degree is simply too religious.
Or your home state calls your faith a ‘despicable piece of rhetoric,’ and then compares your timeless beliefs about marriage to perpetrators of the holocaust.
“These stories are not from nations that are ruled by authoritarian regimes,” she said. “Each of these — every single one of them — has happened in real time on our own soil.”
“No nation can survive or can its people flourish if its officials believe that they can regulate the soul, and excise beliefs that are held sacred by all the Abrahamic faiths,” Waggoner declared. So we must ensure that the United States remains that refuge for religious freedom, and it’s why we gather today because political and cultural winds should not shift. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue, it is a moral and cultural imperative.”
“As President Trump has said, in America ‘We don’t worship government; we worship God.’ We need leaders at every level of our government with the courage to resist the tyranny and respect the bedrock of American life: Every citizen’s absolute right to peacefully live according to the teachings of their faith, and the convictions of their heart.”
Waggoner offered for recommendations:
First: Restore the conscience and religious freedom division at HHS (the Department of Health and Human Services), and establish similar divisions within other departments’ civil rights offices, and insure equal access to federal funding is consistent with recent Supreme Court precedent that’s been mentioned today and enforce — enforce, enforce, enforce — all federal conscience laws, holding accountable recipients that violate those laws.
Support the Conscience Protection Act and support the Families Rights and Responsibilities Act. We’ve heard today about the importance of parental rights in protecting religious freedom. There is an act pending, and introduced right now that can do that.
Second: We must end the financial targeting of people of faith and insure the IRS doesn’t discriminate against houses of worship or religious organizations, and protect these entities from unjust penalties under the Johnson Amendment.
Guarantee that prior weaponization of financial regulations and markets against people of faith never, ever happens again.
Support the Safeguarding Charity Act that protects the independence and tax-exempt status of charitable organizations.
Third: Protect people of faith from the regulatory state. Develop rules that prevent future administrations from labeling as domestic terrorists Americans who simply purchased a religious text, or spoke at a school board meeting, and require religious training for FBI agents.
Fourth: Promote religious freedom on the international stage in collaboration with the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. Implement President Trump’s 2020 executive order on advancing international religious freedom to ensure that religious freedom remains a central priority of U.S. foreign policy.
Finally: A president’s most lasting legacy, as we have heard so much indirectly about today, is the men and women that he appoints to the judiciary.
President Trump must continue to do more than appoint originalists to the bench but to appoint judges with an established record of courage, character, and conviction who will apply the law without fear of public opinion.
Our rights under the Constitution become meaningless without an independent and a virtuous judiciary.
“Religious freedom built America,” Waggoner said, “and it has sustained it through war, through depression, through dangerous division.”
“Faith-filled leaders founded this nation, they abolished slavery, they ended segregation, and even today they continue to champion women, and families, and the most vulnerable,” she said. “It is that same faith expressed freely and lived boldly that will lead America to renewed greatness.”
“Why? Because we can stand confidently that religious liberty is the essential way to pursue the truth, it’s rooted in a love of neighbor, and empowers every person, regardless of faith, or party to pursue truth without coercion,” she explained.
“Along with free speech, we must recognize that it is the engine of self-governance and a bulwark against tyranny. It also fuels human flourishing, breathing oxygen into a free society because where it is honored we also need to recognize that families are strengthened, churches and communities can better cultivate virtue in citizens,” she said. “That’s not the government’s job.”
“Religious liberty is the American rebellion against every regime that has ever tried to own the human soul,” Waggoner said. “Undermine it, and we don’t just violate the constitution: we deny humanity its most sacred right, and we frankly will jeopardize all of western civilization.”
Ten Commission members were present: Chairman Dan Patrick, former Governor of Texas; Vice-Chair Dr. Ben Carson; Ryan Anderson; Bishop Robert Barron; Carrie Prejean Boller; Allyson Ho; Kelly Shackleford; Pastor Paula White, and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Eric Metaxas, and Franklin Graham were unable to attend.
