Less than a week later, an incident at the U.S. Capitol made clear that the Trump administration has zero interest in promoting “religious liberty.” As the Reverend William Barber and other faith leaders opposed to Republican budget cuts gathered to pray at the Capitol Rotunda, they were swiftly surrounded by Capitol Police officers, one wearing a “crime scene” vest. The press was expelled from the building, and the pastors were arrested.
In the United States, attacks on Christians continue to occur at far lower rates than those targeted at other religious groups, including Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs. The Task Force’s exclusive focus on Christian victims exposes its rhetoric about defending “religious liberty” as transparently insincere.
The irony of “anti-Christian bias,” as the Trump administration defines it, is that it is not, in fact, directed at Christians per se. After all, the Reverend Barber, like many American Christians, appears to anchor a commitment to equality, social justice, and concern for the poor in his faith. Rather, the alleged victims of bias are those Christians who endorse reactionary positions in the culture wars and support Trump’s agenda unconditionally.
But there is still more to make George Orwell proud. The most insidious aspect of this “anti-Christian bias” program is that it refers not primarily to actual crimes, such as acts of discrimination or violence, but to thought crimes. The reason the administration can’t let go of the FBI memo on terrorist threats from “radical-traditionalist” Catholic extremists is not that it proves discrimination—it does not—but that it serves as evidence that someone somewhere in the FBI had a negative thought about some reactionary people who happen to identify as Catholic.
So, if your office holds the “unofficial understanding” that LGBTQ people or the nonreligious or progressive Christians, for example, should have equal rights—an understanding clearly hostile to the views of the subset of Christians who believe that “woke Christians,” the nonreligious, and LGBTQ Americans deserve no such equal protections—do you rat out the office for rampant anti-Christian bias? If your agency promotes racial equality, concern for the poor, or the protection of the earth from climate change—views apparently at odds with the ideas of those who characterize “DEI” as an “ungodly agenda,” who promote “biblical economics” or regard environmentalism as a “cult of the green dragon” and, conveniently for the fossil fuel interests that fund many of their operations, deny the reality of climate change—should you turn them in too?
This kind of thought-crime demagoguery, which panders to the persecution complex of Trump’s Christian nationalist base, has been tremendously successful. A 2023 survey, conducted by the Survey Center on American Life, reported that nearly 60 per cent of white evangelicals in America say they face “a lot” of discrimination. Other surveys show that Republicans and those who lean Republican now say that discrimination against white people and evangelicals is more common than discrimination against Black people.
The public has little difficulty in figuring out the real message too: that there is one group in America that is authentically American and deserving of rights and privileges. The autocrat in power will defend them and their tribe against all others who fail to conform. If those “others” step out of line, they will be punished, no matter what the law and the Constitution says.
Majoritarian grievance is the energy drink of all fascist movements, but the Task Force is more than just a propaganda stunt to shore up the base. It is weaponizing the constitutional guarantees on the free exercise of religion. Trump’s Task Force is turning a legitimate concern—that no one should suffer discrimination on the basis of belief—into a pseudo-legal foundation for the prosecution of those whose thoughts are “hostile” to the ideology of the regime and its preferred, protected class of people. This is how it starts.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How Trump Will Use “Anti-Christian Bias” to Entrench His Power )
Also on site :