Increasingly, “anti-Christian” is functioning less as a description of legitimate bias against Christians and more as a way to criminalize any views that diverge from or disagree with a particular strain of White Christian Nationalism.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice released a report from President Trump’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. It accuses former President Biden, a Roman Catholic, of weaponizing the federal government to systematically ‘devastate’ Christians.
According to the report, “The Biden administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview and burdened traditional religious practices. These conflicts frequently arose over abortion, gender ideology and sexual orientation.”
It’s a familiar claim that’s based on well-worn and deliberately distorted talking points — and is rooted in the false notion that civil rights protections should be subordinated to religious beliefs. The report claims that a wide range of these protections are violations of religious liberty, arguing that Christian individuals and institutions — and only Christians — are being punished for their beliefs.
But there is thin evidence for this. What’s more, the report leans heavily on partisan, Christian Nationalist groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, and the First Liberty Institute, alongside interviews with Trump appointees. Like the similarly one-sided Religious Liberty Commission, the task force reaches the exact conclusion it was ordered to.
In an accompanying press statement, the acting attorney general and chair of the task force, Todd Blanche, pledged to “restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”
What about Americans of no faith?
In 197 pages, the report mentions atheists just twice… in footnotes.
Despite branding itself an “exhaustive analysis” and “thorough review,” it excludes millions of Americans, including the 29% who identify as nonreligious or religiously unaffiliated.
Even the principle of religious pluralism that was so central to our nation’s founding barely registers. Instead, the report advances a far narrower view: that the United States is a Christian nation, that rights come from God, and that neutrality — or even equal treatment under the law — is actually hostility.
Which raises another question: What qualifies as “anti-Christian”?
We’ve already seen how loosely and choosy this administration applies that label. Just last week, President Trump claimed the gunman at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner “hates Christians” and was driven by “strongly anti-Christian” motives. And yet, the attacker’s own writings reveal he was a faithful Christian who thanked his church family.
Increasingly, “anti-Christian” is functioning less as a description of legitimate bias against Christians and more as a way to criminalize any views that diverge from or disagree with a particular strain of White Christian Nationalism.
That rhetorical shift will have very real consequences, particularly for nonreligious Americans.
Americans of all political persuasions rightly criticize authoritarian countries that criminalize dissent or theocracies that elevate one religious doctrine above all others. We recognize the freedom to think and speak is what distinguishes democratic societies. We’re quick to see the danger when governments elsewhere tie their policies to other dominant religions, whether through blasphemy laws or under Sharia.
And yet here in the United States — 250 years after breaking from a state religion — the boundary is blurring, as the powers-that-be frame disagreement with a dominant religiopolitical agenda as hostility toward religion itself.
The task force plans to issue another report next year with policy recommendations, which will no doubt include rolling back key civil rights protections, expanding religious exemptions, weakening the Johnson Amendment, and directing public dollars to religious institutions.
As atheists and advocates for church-state separation, we must be clearer than ever that disagreement is not discrimination. We nonbelievers are Americans, too, guaranteed the right to live free from someone else’s religious beliefs and biases.
We have a choice here: we can watch, appalled at the brazen powergrab of White Christian Nationalists, or we can make our voices heard. Make the right choice, and join us in this fight by supporting our work today. Once our rights have been revoked, and our voices have been silenced, it will be too late to fight back.
In solidarity,
Nick Fish
President
We’re lead the charge to correct the lies and reclaim our country from the oligarchs and special interests behind the Christian Nationalist movement.
Our tax dollars should not be used to support religious instruction, weaken public education, or undermine the separation of religion and government.
No other secular civil rights organization that is more committed than American Atheists to organizing people at the state level and equipping them with all the tools, resources, and knowledge they need.
