Church & State Separ 2
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'Deeply alarming': Christian fundamentalists see Trump’s military policies as biblical war
After U.S. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the country's far-right Shiite fundamentalist leader since 1989 — was killed, a long list of other countries were drawn into the conflict. Iran launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. installations in Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iranian drones.
Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah (a pro-Iran Shiite militia in Lebanon) fired missiles at once another. From Riyadh to Beirut to Dubai, the Middle East is on pins and needles.
Trump is claiming that going to war with Iran is necessary from a national security standpoint. But MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem, in an opinion column published on March 4, argues that Trump's Christian nationalist allies view the conflict as a holy war for evangelical fundamentalist Christianity.
"President Donald Trump can't get his story straight on why he launched a war against Iran," Aleem argues. "But some commanders in the U.S. military are apparently telling service members that they're on a mission to fulfill biblical prophecy. The independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received more than 110 complaints from service members about their commanders' religious gloss on the war on Iran."
Aleem continues, "These complaints, according to Larsen's report, came from every branch of the military, across more than 40 different units, situated in at least 30 military installations…. MRFF President Michael Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints from service members shared a common feature: Commanders are describing the war as 'biblically sanctioned' and 'clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian End Times as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation."
Weinstein told Larsen, "Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology."
When military commanders "are reportedly selling American aggression on Iran as a holy war," Aleem warns, it is "deeply alarming."
"Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints violate the Constitution's separation of church and state," Aleem explains. "But regardless of its legality, telling American troops that they're fighting for a Christian god against a Muslim country is medieval madness. It isn't the role of the U.S., per the Constitution, to promote any religion over another. Furthermore, the reported remarks from these commanders is likely to prompt U.S. service members to dehumanize Iran's population, and help set the stage for viciousness in combat and human rights violations. The military is not supposed to be a crusading political-theological movement, but a professional defense force."
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People are growing increasingly uneasy as President Donald Trump's attacks on Iran are looking more and more like they could be part of a right-wing religious fanatic's fantasy for the apocalyptic.
The Cradle Media's Jonathan Larsen wrote that American soldiers were given a pep-talk about the war in Iran. A U.S. combat-unit commander told them that the attack is part of “God’s divine plan." He said that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus” for the specific purpose to ignite Armageddon.
“U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for 'Armageddon,' Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military," Larsen wrote.
The comments come as part of a lawsuit brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; however, it is only one of "110 lawsuits brought in 48 hours from over 40 units across 30 installations," the report said. The complaints came from Christians, a Muslim and a Jewish soldier.
The Christian nationalist theory that Israel has a God-given right to much of the Middle East is one espoused by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In a speech at a Christian Zionist church in Jerusalem in December, Huckabee conveyed his " purpose is to convert Israeli Jews to belief in Jesus in order to bring about the End Times," explained Religion Dispatches.
The concept is bad for anyone seeking peace in the Middle East, one 2024 report by Forward explained.
The sect of Christianity that Huckabee believes in holds that if they are able to remove Palestinians from the Holy Land, then Jesus Christ will return. He believes in “dispensational premillennialism,” which Forward describes as a belief that “the Rapture will come,” and deliver all evangelicals to Heaven as Israel is invaded by the armies of the world. It will cause Armageddon and prompt the return of Jesus Christ.
The language is making some fearful that the war waged wasn't really about Iran never obtaining nuclear weapons, which Trump claimed he destroyed last summer. It's a holy war, desperate to force Armageddon.
"Maybe it’s a bad idea to put people in charge of government who are eager for the rapture," lawyer and self-described nerd John Collins commented.
"Love when I'm in the military and my boss is, like, 'Time for Armageddon!'" commented author and journalist Emily St. James.
Writer and former Cato Institute policy analyst Will Wilkinson wrote, "Personally, I don’t think we should bring about Armageddon."
"One thing about the U.S., we definitely do not have insane religious zealots in charge,"said Heidi N. Moore, previously of the Wall Street Journal business side.
Writer and elections lawyer at the Cato Institute, Walter Olson, quoteda line from the 1965 song "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" with lyrics by Tom Lehrer: "And this is what he said on/ His way to Armageddon.”
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A political activist group that has long supported President Donald Trump, the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, is reportedly struggling with its identity as Christian nationalism has become an increasingly potent influence within its ranks.
"Jonah Scott became president of the University of Central Florida’s Turning Point chapter within months of arriving on campus in the fall of 2024, after previously founding a chapter at Seminole State College," reported The Dispatch's Eli Kronenberg on Thursday.
"He said the chapter’s meetings in his first year took place in a small conference room that held 30 to 40 students, but after Kirk’s death, the chapter had to start booking the campus’s largest meeting room in order to accommodate more than 200 students."
Kronenberg added that "with a growth in attendance came a shift in tone. When Scott stood for reelection as president this spring, some new members sought to push the chapter in a different direction, and Scott lost." Scott told Kronenberg that "I think Turning Point became a lot more of a Christian organization since Charlie passed, and they wanted more Christian leadership. I myself am Jewish, so there was a lot of that. Though we did incorporate a lot of Christian stuff into the group, I think a lot of people wanted it to be a more explicitly Christian organization.”
A former chapter president also told Kronenberg that "Everything’s like, ‘Oh, God did this, God did this. If you don’t support us, you’re not a God-loving person.’ That kind of feels like the vibe. It feels like it’s more like Christian extremism now.”
Kronenberg added that "several students" who he spoke to echoed that critique. Additionally, as right-wing influencer Candace Owens spreads conspiracy theories about Kirk's death, the organization has fought radicalization from that angle too.
"Most chapters have taken a big-tent approach to discussions surrounding Owens’ criticism of Turning Point," Kronenberg wrote. "Van Lemay, a high school student who leads a Club America group at West Michigan Aviation Academy, said it was 'sickening' to hear lies about Turning Point leaders, but cited Kirk’s support for the free exchange of ideas as a reason to hear critics out in meetings. 'I think that it’s really good actually to bring these conversations into real life, because most of this is online rhetoric and kind of lives within social media,' Lemay told The Dispatch. 'When you have something completely online, that’s often when it gets spun to the more extreme.'"
He added, "Asked how he would encourage chapters to handle discussions surrounding Owens’ conspiracy theories, Kolvet pointed out that today’s high school and college students came of age during the COVID pandemic, which he said led to a collapse in trust of authority figures. 'I’m super sympathetic to young people that question … official narratives or information from government authorities,' Kolvet said. 'Yes, it’s okay to ask questions. It’s quite another thing to engage in warrantless, reckless character assassination of people who themselves are victims, in this case Erika Kirk.'"
Kirk was assassinated one year ago as of Thursday, a moment that galvanized a Christian nationalist movement that has already largely rallied behind Trump.
“The religious right has been ascendant during the second presidency of Donald Trump, and they’ve harnessed his disdain for rules and norms to blur the lines between church and state,” reported Vox's Christian Paz in May. “Inside the White House, the secretary of defense has framed the war in Iran and American military action abroad as sanctioned and guided by God. Outside the government, this alliance between church and state often skirts near the edge of outright idolatry. Conservative pastors are erecting golden statues of Trump (but insisting it does not mirror the infamous golden calf of the Old Testament). They’re extending their hands over the president in prayer after comparing him to Jesus and standing by him, with some mild criticism, after he cast himself as an AI-slop Messiah.”
Despite Christian nationalist claims, America was not founded as a Christian country.
President Thomas Jefferson, who also co-authored the Declaration of Independence, famously wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists during his administration arguing that “believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
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10/06/2025 RWW
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- Liberty Counsel declares that "the 'queer' movement seeks to silence and punish ALL Christians for their faith, and Obergefell is the source of their attacks": "Obergefell is the cancer, and it must go. It is incompatible with reality, biology, and religious freedom."
- Todd Starnes claims that Democrats "wish they could kill Republicans, piss on their graves and then force Republican mothers to watch as their children are slaughtered": "The Democrat Party is the Party of Satan."
- Mario Murillo says that "convincing preachers to stay out of politics was the masterstroke of the Devil."
- Tyler O'Neil of The Daily Signal reports that he has been speaking with member of Congress about launching investigations into the Southern Poverty Law Center, which MAGA has been targeting in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk.
- Finally, Hung Cao, who asserted that Wiccans had taken over California and brought "a lot of witchcraft" to the state while warning that "we can't let that happen in Virginia" during his failed Senate campaign in 2024, is now Under Secretary of the Navy.
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'Not a theocracy': Internet erupts after court blocks Louisiana's Ten Commandments law
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Trump’s unofficially re-named "Department of War" likes to post clips of military personnel performing outdoor training as Bible verses play across the screen. In early August, Religion News reports the Department of Defense posted a video on X showing military aircraft and soldiers in operations as the words, “I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed” from Psalm 18:37, appear onscreen.
Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and the author of the upcoming book “The Bible According to Christian Nationalists,” said the videos thwart the original intent of these words.
“Those verses were not about the United States military,” Kaylor told RNS. “They weren’t really even about any imperial military force, and quite the opposite. These were passages about marginalized people, people under attack. It’s a very dangerous conflation of scriptural ideals with the U.S. military.”
READ MORE: 'Is that really necessary?' Psaki gives her take on Leavitt's 'crazy' White House briefing
By Wednesday, the video was shared 1,600 times on X and received 8,100 likes.
Kaylor told Religion News that the DOD’s videos, like the Department of Homeland Security’s Bible-quoting social media posts, promote a literal interpretation of Scripture, a key feature of Christian nationalist rhetoric.
“Christian nationalism is itself selectively literal,” said Kaylor, who is also president and editor-in-chief of Word&Way, a Christian media company in Missouri. “… The irony about this Christian nationalism is that they’re justifying themselves with the Bible, but they’re only able to do it because they’re being very selective on what verses they choose.”
Religion News reports one post, shared on the [DOD] Rapid Response X account on Aug. 24, quoted Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for YOU are with me.” The video shows U.S. military members equipping each other, firing weapons and jumping out of helicopters.
Kaylor said the inclusion of this prayer, written by King David, which is asking God for support and guidance in difficult times, was particularly inappropriate, as the passage actually talks about God leading someone away from a fight.
READ MORE: 'One of the loudest voices on the right' hammers Trump — and WH stays quiet 'out of fear'
Michael Weinstein, a Jewish former Air Force officer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the posts suggest that non-Christian military members aren’t “worthy or honorable or trustworthy human beings to be able to fight for your country.”
The U.S. Constitution bans religious tests for positions in the federal government, including military personnel, but Weinstein’s organization has flagged examples the DOD’s “evangelization efforts” in events like the lunch break with “Christian prayer and worship service”
“This is nothing more than a fast-ticking time bomb that will blow up in our faces,” said Weinstein, adding “… It is encouraging a tremendous response by our enemies who are out there, many of whom follow their own extremist religious views.”
Read the full Religion News report at this link.
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an 9 25
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the Department of Education will soon release updated guidelines to safeguard “the right to prayer” in public schools.
Speaking before the White House Religious Liberty Commission, Trump reaffirmed his strong religious convictions and criticized how he sees the separation of church and state as being used to marginalize devout students.
He declared, “To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” adding, “I believe that so strongly.”
READ MORE:'Irreconcilable with our constitutional guarantees': Sotomayor slams SCOTUS in stunning dissent
During the ceremony, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner delivered a prayer.
"Father, we thank you for our president, Donald J. Trump, whom you have anointed and appointed for this time, for such a time as this. Lord, thank you that the president prioritizes prayer," he said.
Turner's prayer led to strong reactions on social media from the president's critics.
Author Jennifer Valent wrote on the social platform X: "This brash taking of the Lord's name in vain by claiming His favorable anointing over a man with an unrepentantly blackened soul will never cease to make me feel physically ill. Nor should it."
READ MORE:Revealed: Wall St. giant erupted into intense clashes over Epstein's 'heinous crimes'
The X account @AntiToxicPeoplewrote: "What an insane cult. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sick. The last line is the best."
Journalist Michael McGough said: "What was that line about God not being mocked?"
Writer Paul Hughes-Cromwicksaid:"Interesting that the Father would anoint someone who abuses woman, lies with nearly every word, and is fond of bullying people of color. Must have been a slow day for anointing. Oh, and the Antichrist prioritizes prayer? Well, that's news!"
The account @RepublicansAgainstTrump reacted to the video and wrote: "It's a cult."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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RWW
07/09/2025
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- Faith Wins celebrates the IRS decision to allow churches to endorse political candidates, declaring it to be "an opportunity to reawaken the Church’s role in shaping the future of our communities and our country."
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GOP 'voucher scheme for the wealthy' would hand $5 billion to religious, private schools
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You’d be forgiven if among all the scary national and international headlines of the past few weeks you missed the first meeting of the newly formed Religious Liberty Commission.
You may not have even heard of this Trump-appointed commission of almost entirely Christian Nationalists tasked with “safeguard(ing) and promot(ing) America’s founding principle of religious freedom.” If religious freedom is something you value, you need to add this to your list of things to follow, because the first meeting made it clear that we are headed towards the end of religious freedom for all in our country. As an atheist, that really scares me.
President Donald Trump announced the commission during the National Day of Prayer event May 1. It is responsible for creating a report with recommendations for the president, due on July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of our independence, just in case their intent to push the falsehood that the USA was founded as a Christian nation isn’t clear enough). The commission is just one of Trump’s many actions to appease his evangelical base, including his establishment of a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” in February.
Religious extremists have been messaging around “Christian discrimination” for decades. They have fabricated a narrative where they are victimized by anyone who believes, lives, loves, or looks different than they do. This effectively scares the public into putting its trust into officials who say they will protect them against “the other.” Evidence of these anti-Christian offenses that the commission is meant to investigate is twisted to privilege extremist religious beliefs over the safety and wellbeing of others.
As an example of so-called anti-Christian offenses, Attorney General Pam Bondi cited the arrest of 23 anti-abortion activists who were charged in 2020 with conspiring to storm an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. Kansans are intimately familiar with the violence directed toward abortion clinics and providers after the assassination of physician George Tiller in 2009, and we don’t need to look beyond last month’s assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband to see how religious extremists target Planned Parenthood and their supporters. Instead of understanding this, Trump pardonedall 23 activists this January.
The commission is made upof almost entirely of known right-wing Christians — including Texas Lt. Gov. and Chair Dan Patrick; former HUD secretary and vice chair Ben Carson; son of Billy Graham, disgraced evangelist Franklin Graham; former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller; lawyers from Project 2025-affiliated organizations such as First Liberty Institute and Ethics & Public Policy Center; and right-wing TV and radio hosts such as Dr. Phil. A bishop, cardinal, and rabbi round out the members in what they tout as a “diverse” representation of faiths in America.
The commission will hold several more hearings over the next year to investigate the tired list of Christian Nationalist priorities, including so-called parent rights and “school choice,” prayer in schools, vaccine mandates, government displays of religious iconography, and “anti-Christian offenses.” As expected, the other key priority voiced throughout the day was to attack the LGBTQ+ community — especially trans kids.
During this first hearing, the real objectives of the commission became abundantly clear:
- Rewrite history to make America a Christian nation. A key tenet of the Christian Nationalist political ideology is that America was founded as a Christian nation, and must return to this status to secure our future success. The commission repeatedly embraced this very narrow interpretation of key historical documents, including writings by the founders and the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Both commissioners and witnesses denied the principle of church-state separation and a secular government.
- Remake the courts with “courageous” Christian Nationalists. The courts, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court, will be the subject of many recommendations in the final commission report. The commission discussed which cases should be overturned, how Trump’s administration can assist with that, and how to make sure pesky state and local courts don’t get in the way. The Supreme Court has been chipping away at church-state separation for the past decade with crucial victories this term, but for this commission, this isn’t happening fast enough.
- Promote religion in all parts of American culture, politics, and public life (but only if it’s their version of “Christianity”). Expert witnesses referred to a divine truth — the existence of a Judeo-Christian God — as the foundation for a moral, happy, and politically good society. Many devout Americans hold similar beliefs about their faith, but also recognize that our government should not prioritize one religion in a pluralistic society. Not only does this push minority faiths and nonbelievers such as myself outside of the bounds of this “virtuous citizenry,” but it asserts that one religion (Christianity) must be imposed on every person to create and maintain this good society.
In a world where we are facing very real threats to our physical, mental, and financial health, why did I spend five excruciating hours listening to a commission whose only job is to make recommendations? The obvious answer is because these individuals were hand-selected for holding a world view that advances the Christian Nationalist agenda and threatens any religious beliefs that fall outside of this ideology. The uncomfortable truth is that this rhetoric justifies hate crimes and the dissolution of rights for women and minorities has a new platform with the divine weight of presidential approval. As a lifelong atheist, I’m scared that we’re looking at the end of church-state separation and the rise of a theocracy weaponizing religion against people who don’t fall in line.
American Atheists just announced that it will no longer be hosting the 2026 World Humanist Congress in Washington, D.C., because the “Trump Administration’s actions … have created an environment that is not only incompatible with our values but also inhospitable to members of our global secular community.” They feared for the safety of their attendees because we are no longer a country welcoming of visitors, and especially not visitors who fall outside of a specific Christian identity.
But it’s not just the secular community who should be worried right now. Every person who has found within their faith the mission to love their neighbor, feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, and embrace the stranger should be fighting for the sanctity of their beliefs. The members of the Religious Liberty Commission will not be including these priorities in their final report, and you will not find a place for your faith in their new America.
*Laurel Burchfield is the advocacy director of Mainstream Coalition, where she advocates under the dome and in local communities to protect church-state separation. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.
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Emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and President Donald Trump’s second term, conservative Christians are rallying behind a series of Texas bills that would further infuse religion into public education and potentially spark legal fights that could upend church-state separations.
Last week, the Texas Senate advanced a bill that would allow public taxpayer money to flow to private, religious schools via vouchers. And on Monday, Sens. Mayes Middleton of Galveston and Phil King of Weatherford filed bills, respectively, that would allow time for prayer in public schools and require classrooms to display the Ten Commandments — both of them priorities for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and co-sponsored by all 20 Republican senators.
The impact could extend beyond Texas. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, those on the religious right see an ally in their decades-long fight to crater the church-state wall and allow more Christianity in classrooms across the country.
“Our schools are not God-free zones,” Middleton said in a statement announcing Senate Bill 11, the school prayer legislation. “We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust.’ … There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in our Constitution, and recent Supreme Court decisions by President Trump’s appointees reaffirmed this.”
Legal experts and religion scholars say those arguments misrepresent history or potentially overestimate the effects of recent high court rulings.
“The Christian Right feels very empowered by this particular moment,” said Mark Chancey, a religion professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put Christianity in schools. “They see the present configuration of the U.S. Supreme Court as sympathetic to their efforts.”
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A monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Capitol in Austin on June 24, 2024. Credit: Olivia Anderson/The Texas Tribune
The religious right entered this legislative session amid a string of legal and political victories. In just the last few years, state Republicans have required classrooms to hang donated signs that say “In God We Trust”; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to supplant mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school lessons.
Those moves have corresponded with a broader normalization in the GOP of claims that church-state separation is a myth, or that the nation’s founding was ordained by God and its laws and institutions should therefore reflect fundamentalist Christianity. Some lawmakers began the 2025 session with calls for “spiritual warfare” with demonic spirits that they believe seek control of the Capitol.
A new legal landscape
In his statement introducing Senate Bill 10 on the Ten Commandments, King said the legal landscape favored more opportunities for religion in school following the 2022 Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision.
In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines that a Washington state school district could not prevent a high school football coach from engaging in prayer with students on the 50-yard line after school games. Justices said the school district’s efforts to discipline the coach and prevent his praying violated his free speech rights and right to freely exercise his religion.
In issuing that opinion, the court outlined that it was moving away from the long relied upon legal test
— called the “Lemon test” — to determine if the government is unconstitutionally allowing the infusion of religion in public spaces.
The more than 50-year-old test has been used by courts to make sure that laws involving religion have primarily non-religious purposes. For example, in the 1980 case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court relied on the Lemon test — named for a 1971 case — when it struck down a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
In the Kennedy decision, justices suggested they were replacing the Lemon test with a consideration of “historical practices and understandings” that is based on an analysis of “original meaning and history.” Legal experts describe the new test as vague and unclear.
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The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on Nov. 4, 2022. Credit: Jason Garza for The Texas Tribune
Christian conservatives see hope in their path to put religion back in public schools, with the court’s move to sideline the Lemon test. They view the new history-based test as a pathway to reverse long-standing precedents that prohibit school-sponsored prayer or putting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Aledo, who has proposed his own Ten Commandments bill, said in an email that “after the Kennedy decision, there is no merit in prohibiting expressions of faith or our collective history.”
Under a new history-based test, Matt Krause, a former Texas House member and attorney for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal organization, said he thinks a law putting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms would survive given their “very conspicuous history” in the U.S. and purported influence on the nation’s laws and government. Among other high-profile cases, First Liberty Institute represented the football coach in the Kennedy case, and Krause has previously testified in favor of putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms in part to prompt a “restoration of faith in America.”
Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, holds a similar view to Krause. This session, he’s introduced separate bills that would put the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and allow prayer during the school day. Because of the Kennedy ruling, Spiller said he believes both bills are constitutional — though he wasn’t confident they would have survived prior. A new history-based test would bode well for his Ten Commandments bill, he added, since “most of our laws are based on principles that are contained” within them.
But Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Freedom, which advocates for a strong wall between church and state, said the Constitution and American law are not rooted in Biblical texts.
“There is this zombie myth that all of American law is based on the Ten Commandments,” Tyler said. “But when you look at the U.S. Constitution, there is no mention of God. There is no mention of Christianity. The only mention of religion is to prohibit religious tests for public office.”
Moreover, she takes issue with those arguments, which she said reframe a sacred text as a secular document in order to justify its inclusion in public schools.
“There are so many different translations, and there's just such a rich and diverse depth of the Holy Scripture, she said. “And when the government gets its hands on the Holy Scripture, it standardizes it in ways that really cheapen the mystery and the beauty.”
Religious and legal experts say it isn’t immediately clear exactly how the Supreme Court will apply the history-based test in future cases. There are lingering questions about the specific type of history that would be considered as part of the test.
Chancey, the SMU religion professor, expects those laws, if passed, will prompt lawsuits that could end up in front of the Supreme Court. But he isn’t confident the Ten Commandments bill could survive a test on historical merits.
“There was no time in American history when the Ten Commandments were routinely placed in American public school classrooms,” Chancey said.
School prayer, however, presents a slightly different history. Chancey said while school-endorsed prayer was common in early American history, it was not universal and sometimes divisive.
Steven Collis, director of the First Amendment Center and the Law and Religion Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin, said he’s also not convinced that the Lemon test has been completely thrown out. It’s possible that some parts of the test could still apply, he added.
The school prayer bill, he said, may address the legal question of whether a school cannot endorse prayer or simply cannot coerce prayer, by directly or indirectly forcing students to partake. The current court appears to be leaning toward the latter, he said, which could mean they’d allow a bill similar to the one proposed to go unchallenged. Prior to Kennedy v. Bremerton and under the old test, however, a similar law likely would have been struck down by lower courts, he said.
In the 1962 case, Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot hold prayers in public schools even if the prayer is not tied to a specific religion and participation is optional. The ruling has since been consistently upheld by subsequent decisions, but conservative groups have pushed for it to be overturned.
Regardless, Collis said parties on both sides of the school prayer and Ten Commandments bills would likely try to get the Supreme Court to “bite off on it.”
Efforts to challenge related bills are already underway. Last November, a federal judge said it was “unconstitutional on its face” for Louisiana to require the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms. In January, a federal circuit court heard an appeal on the case. A decision is pending.
Freedom from religion
The religious right’s legal and legislative pushes have come as America continues to diversify and secularize. At roughly two-thirds of the population, Christians still are by far a majority.
Even so, some Christians have been alarmed by the steady decrease in their share of the population — and the simultaneous rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans. So-called “nones” — short for believing “nothing in particular” — now make up 28% of the U.S. adult population — a 12% jump since 2007 that makes them a larger group than Catholics or Protestants, according to Pew Research.
Religion experts say that trend has been accelerated by broader discontent with organized religion, namely Christianity. Interfaith groups have said as much for years, warning that the push to redefine America as a Christian nation is actually driving people away from religion altogether.
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Members of atheist and anti-Christian nationalism groups speak with Rep. Jon E. Rosenthal, D-Houston, at his office at the Capitol in Austin on Feb. 10, 2025. Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune
“They are interfering with the right of every American in Texas to practice religion freely, which includes practicing no religion, if that’s what you choose,” said Bee Moorhead, executive director of the interfaith group Texas Impact.
Benjamin Clodfelter counts himself among the 4% of U.S. adults who are atheist — though he has not always been up front about his views. During his 7-year stint in the Army, Clodfelter was a closeted atheist, fearing his disbelief in God would draw unwanted attention and cut off career opportunities.
The U.S. Military is supposed to be secular. But Clodfelter said those rules were openly flouted by his unit leader, who required those in his command to attend prayer breakfasts and, at the same time that he had broad authority over their promotions, told soldiers that “you have to have faith to be a good leader in the Army.”
Ten years after leaving the military, those remarks still stick with him. Clodfelter has since dedicated his life to maintaining a strong church-state wall, serving as a board member for the Atheist Community of Austin and, on Monday, joining about 25 other Texans as they lobbied state lawmakers to preserve those separations.
It’s at times felt like an uphill battle, with increasing hostility crowding out nuanced conversations about religion and government.
“It used to be more of a conversation,” he said. “It was an actual dialogue. And I noticed that there was more thought terminating cliches, where they are just denying the existence of our side. It is both perplexing and really frustrating.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/12/texas-ten-commandments-school-prayer/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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Churches helping a far-right group get predominantly Republican voters to the polls may be in violation of federal tax laws, according to several experts.
NBC News reported that Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — an Arizona-based group founded by MAGA activist Charlie Kirk — is primarily depending on churches to get out the vote for former President Donald Trump in Tuesday's election. And while churches have traditionally been an important tool for both major parties to spread awareness about upcoming elections, Kirk's clergy partners are engaging in explicitly partisan activity. This risks those churches losing their tax-exempt status with the IRS.
At Restoration Hope Church in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Pastor David Rose recently allowed TPUSA to host one of its "Super Chase" events. These events involve training members of congregations on "ballot-chasing" apps that pinpoint likely Republican voters for them to target in phone-banking and door-knocking efforts. Likewise, the training sessions train participants to avoid reaching out to members of the "wrong party," meaning Democrats.
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Rose insisted that the "Super Chase" session was "not an event hosted by our church nor was it a church related event," though NBC reported that it still "most likely violated tax law." The network reported that Rose was seen posing next to signs that read "Commie Kamala" and Trump's catchphrase, "Make America Great Again."
"It is common for churches to allow other organizations to use their facilities outside of church related events," Rose said.
But some tax law experts told NBC that Rose and other churches that have hosted "Super Chase" events — including in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — are likely in violation of the Johnson Amendment. That's the 1954 federal law prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from participating in partisan politics.
University of Pittsburgh law professor Philip Hackney, who is also a former IRS employee, told the network that TPUSA's partisan political activity at churches "is at a different level than anything I’ve seen before," particularly given the group's documented ties to both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.
READ MORE:Even Republicans are growing weary of 'toxic' Charlie Kirk's extreme tactics
“The Republican Party, in effect,” Hackney said, “is explicitly using churches through this system in order to get out the vote.”
Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Mayer agreed that Kirk and TPUSA's congregational partners were risking losing their tax-exempt status given their blatantly pro-Republican electioneering. This is despite TPUSA insisting that the "Super Chase" events are perfectly legal.
“They can’t favor a particular candidate or, by implication, a group of candidates, like Republicans versus Democrats,” Mayer said. “This effort is obviously favoring getting out voters who will favor the Republican candidates.”
Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.
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