Trump says at prayer breakfast he wants to root out ‘anti-Christian bias,’ urging: ‘Bring God back’
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WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that he wants to root out “anti-Christian bias” in the U.S., announcing that he is forming a task force to be led by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to investigate the “targeting” of Christians.
Speaking at a pair of events in Washington surrounding the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump said the task force would be directed to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the [Department of Justice], which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI — terrible — and other agencies.”
Trump said Bondi would also work to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
The president’s comments came after he joined the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol, a more than 70-year-old Washington tradition that brings together a bipartisan group of lawmakers for fellowship. He told lawmakers there that his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, and he urged Americans to “bring God back” into their lives.
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An hour after calling for unity on Capitol Hill, Trump struck a more partisan tone at a second event across town, announcing that, in addition to the task force, he was forming a commission on religious liberty. He criticized the Biden administration for what he called “persecution” of believers for prosecuting antiabortion advocates.
And Trump took a victory lap over his early administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to limit transgender participation in women’s sports.
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“I don’t know if you’ve been watching, but we got rid of ‘woke’ over the last two weeks,” he said. “Woke is gone-zo.”
Trump’s new task force drew criticism from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The group’s president and chief executive, Rachel Laser, said that “rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws.”
Trump said at the Capitol that he believes people “can’t be happy without religion, without that belief. Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and head of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, accused Trump of hypocrisy in claiming to champion religion by creating the task force.
“From allowing immigration raids in churches, to targeting faith-based charities, to suppressing religious diversity, the Trump Administration’s aggressive government overreach is infringing on religious freedom in a way we haven’t seen for generations,” Raushenbush said in a statement.
Trump also announced the creation of a White House faith office led by Paula White-Cain, a longtime pastor in the independent charismatic Christian world. An early supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign, she led his Faith and Opportunity Initiative in 2019, advising faith-based organizations on ways to work with the federal government.
At Thursday’s prayer breakfast, she praised Trump as “the greatest champion” of any president to date “of religion, of faith and of God.”
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two dueling events, the one on Capitol Hill largely attended by lawmakers and government officials, and a larger private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom. The split occurred when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, due to questions about its organization and funding.
Trump, at both venues on Thursday, reflected on having a bullet coming within a hair’s breadth of killing him at a rally in Butler, Pa., last year, telling lawmakers and attendees, “It changed something in me, I feel.”
“I feel even stronger,” he continued. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it.”
Speaking later at the separate prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group at a hotel, he said, “It was God that saved me.”
The Republican president, who identifies as a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life.”
Trump and his new administration have already clashed with religious leaders, including when he disagreed with the Rev. Mariann Budde’s sermon the day after his inauguration, when she called for mercy for members of the LGBTQ+ community and migrants who are in the country illegally.
Vice President JD Vance, who is Roman Catholic, has sparred with top U.S. leaders of his own church over immigration issues. And many clergy members across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list, allowing federal officials to conduct immigration crackdowns at places of worship.
Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Holly Meyer in Nashville and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
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