A recent article in the New York Times detailed how prevalent Christian prayer and Christian conservative perspective has become in the daily operations of the White House.
He has elevated the Faith Office to high visibility. And that office has promised, "an ambitious agenda, including ending what it sees as Christian persecution in America and to end the prevailing belief that church and state should be separated." While it says it's mission is to support all religions, clearly it's focus is on Christian dominance.
In furthering its cause, the office and the Evangelical pastors who frequent the White House have used misleading statements to ground their message in broadly accepted beliefs/concepts. For example, one pastor talked about their commitment to affirming "our Judeo-Christian value system." Please, leave Jews out of this; the MAGA Christian agenda has nothing, or at best little, to do with Jewish values.
In another example, a book prominently displayed in the Faith Office is titled, The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America: Christian Self Government. Yet, although the Founding Fathers were all Christian and many had a strong contemporary belief in God, there is absolutely no mention of God in the Constitution.
Why? The First Amendment specifically provides that Congress shall not establish a state religion. The Founders believed strongly in the importance of the separation of church and state. This was based on their knowledge of the wars and suffering that religious absolutism had caused in Europe. To speak of God in the Constitution would have given the appearance of violating that separation.
In support of this separation and the appreciation of diversity, Article VII provides that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for public office. It is thus absolutely clear that from a governance perspective, rather than a personal one, religion was not to be part of the process.
President Trump, in bringing Christian practice so visibly into the daily workings of the White House has crossed the line between observing his personal faith (of which he seems to have had none) and establishing Christianity as the state religion. This is yet one more example of his deceptive perversion of American values.
