The final report from Trump’s “Anti-Christian Bias” task force reveals… nothing

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The White House’s ridiculously named “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” has just released its final report summarizing all the ways Christians are persecuted in America and how we can fix it.

It’s as absurd as you’d imagine.

A quick history here: Last year, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing this group and the commission really only had one job: Putting out a report highlighting any “unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct by an agency” and suggesting how to fix them.

The Task Force was filled with the brightest minds in the Administration. Which is to say they had one brain cell that was passed back and forth between each other.

Was it all symbolic? Perhaps. But it could be useful if experts on the subject were coming together to offer the administration a guide on how to overcome serious obstacles to religious liberty.

Unfortunately, this commission wasn’t filled with religious liberty experts. It was filled with right-wing Christian crusaders who treat religious neutrality as anti-Christian persecution. And who quote Pulp Fiction when they mean to quote the Bible.

You would think the people who make up the most popular religion in the country, and 87% of Congress, and 98% of elected Republicans are doing just fine. Complaining that Christians have it rough is like saying the problem with racism in America is that it really hurts white people. But as we’ve seen with the recent Supreme Court ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, that’s very much what these people believe.

When the Task Force held its first meeting last April, it was obvious where this was going. Attendees included several notable right-wing Christians, including Pastor Paula White-Cain, homeschooling advocate Michael Farris, and the provost of Liberty University. You just knew they were going to compile a list of conservative Christian grievances—How dare anyone say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”?—not an actual list of federal biases that exist against Christians, much less ways to fix anything, because no such thing exists.

Their preliminary report, issued last September, was nothing more than a collection of complaints from various Cabinet departments along with a preamble that laughably claimed there was “a consistent and systematic pattern of discrimination against Christians during the Biden Administration.”

But now their final report has been released. It’s 565 pages aimed at an audience of Christian extremists who have no idea how religious pluralism ought to work. It’s also full of lies and exaggerations about how Christians are supposedly persecuted in the country. (The substance of the report is under 200 pages.)

The executive summary sums up just how pointless this whole exercise was by repeating the lies underlying Christian Nationalism: “Our Nation’s origin and system of government bear the imprint of a Christian worldview and ethic, even as its laws protect religious pluralism.” Hilariously, they admit the Biden Administration “generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held” but insist that Christians got in trouble when they demanded the ability to “act in accordance with their faith.”

Well… yeah. If your religion tells you to do something discriminatory or ignore generally applicable rules (like vaccine mandates), and you work for the government, too damn bad.

But what examples do they actually give of this discrimination?

There are 14 “Key Findings” and each one is dumber than the last.

Key Finding 1: The Biden DOJ pursued aggressive prosecutions against non-violent, prolife, Christian demonstrators under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act but responded less aggressively to violent attacks against pregnancy resource centers.

They’re upset that the Department of Justice under Biden targeted Christian protesters who blocked access to abortion clinics. Not because they opposed abortion but because they blocked access to abortion clinics.

That’s not anti-Christian discrimination at all.

Key Finding 2: The Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated, monitored, tracked, and scrutinized traditional Catholics who had engaged in no criminal misconduct.

I’ve written before about how this story is bullshit. Basically, an internal FBI memo pointed out that a guy they were looking at as a potential terror threat hung out at a church that described itself as Catholic but wasn’t formally affiliated with the Catholic Church. He also appeared to be recruiting members for a possible attack. When a couple of FBI analysts wrote up their report on this guy, they noted the link between his extremism and his faith, though they pointed out this guy was on their radar before he ever joined that church.

Those analysts later found that there were other men on the FBI’s radar that had similar extremist ideologies and belonged to a similar church. So they noted there might be a link there worth investigating. But higher-ups in the FBI rescinded that report saying it “failed to adhere to FBI standards” because of a number of other errors in it and that the agency did not conduct investigations “based on religious affiliation.” (It should be noted that the draft report was never even made public, but it was leaked to a right-wing outlet before it could even be scrutinized.)

That’s not anti-Christian bias. It was a valid documentation of a potentially dangerous phenomenon. (It wasn’t even against the Catholic Church, but rather a potentially extremist sect calling itself Catholic!) Yet the DoJ cited it as an example of the Biden administration targeting people of faith while leaving out the details that would have justified those actions.

Key Finding 3: The Biden Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigated churches because of what their pastors preached and Christian organizations because they applied biblical teachings to daily life.

This never happened. By this point, it’s well-documented how right-wing pastors constantly violate the Johnson Amendment—by promoting political candidates from the pulpit—but face no consequences because of it. There’s no evidence of the IRS targeting churches because of what pastors preach. (Notice also that they say “investigated” and not “punished.” There’s nothing wrong with looking into potential violations of the law.)

And the word-salad description of how Christian groups were targeted “because they applied biblical teachings to daily life” is nonsense. The report says the IRS denied a non-profit tax exemption to one (just one) political group that justified its planned campaign interventions by invoking biblical language. Even if you believe that’s the wrong decision—it’s not—it’s literally one example. Not evidence of an anti-Christian trend.

Key Finding 4: The Biden Department of Education (ED) focused its enforcement actions against Christian universities, levying enormous fines that dwarfed the penalties for Larry Nassar’s and Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assaults.

Neither penalty was an example of “anti-Christian bias.”

In 2023, Biden’s DoE levied a $37.7 million fine against Grand Canyon University because there was ample evidence that the school lowballed its tuition fees to reel students in… before hitting them with larger fees once they were already taking classes (and it was therefore harder to leave).

The government laid out, with plenty of detail, how the school lied about tuition on its website, its enrollment agreement, the “Net Price Calculator” that students could use online to figure out how much they would owe, and other marketing materials. This wasn’t, in other words, some accident on one page of GCU’s website; it was clearly a purposeful move to attract students before gouging them later.

But the Trump administration rescinded that penalty because it doesn’t give a shit about students who were defrauded by the school.

What about Liberty University? They were fined $14 million for violating the Clery Act, meaning the school created a culture where students were afraid to report sexual violence and didn’t do nearly enough to let students know about threats on campus. A consultant who spoke to the Washington Post said it was “the single most blistering Clery report I have ever read. Ever.” (For the sake of comparison, the largest-ever Clery fine issued before that was $4.5 million to Michigan State for failing to address Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse.)

Punishing schools for not taking sexual assault seriously and for jacking up tuition costs after students have enrolled was never ideological. Biden wasn’t weaponizing the government to go after Christian schools. His administration did the kind of oversight it’s required to do of any school that receives taxpayer money—and both Liberty and GCU benefit from government-funded student loans.

In other words, the Biden administration didn’t target Christian schools. They went after schools that were screwing over their own students, and two of those schools happened to be Christian.

Key Finding 5: The Biden Health and Human Services (HHS) and DOJ scaled back ongoing enforcement efforts to vindicate conscience rights, withdrawing a notice of violation against the University of Vermont Medical Center after it coerced a Christian nurse into participating in an abortion despite her religious objections.

In this case, in 2017, the University of Vermont Medical Center began offering elective abortions but said staff members who objected didn’t have to participate. They just needed to let the school know if they objected to “medically necessary” abortions, elective abortions, or all abortions. But if the school couldn’t arrange for someone else to take your place, then the expectation was that you would help out to make sure patients were taken care of. A Catholic nurse was later put in a situation where she had to help out with an abortion procedure against her objections.

The Biden Administration later helped the school develop a policy that protected patients and allowed staffers to refrain from those procedures. That’s good, right? Not to the Task Force, which said the Biden people weren’t as deferential to religious staffers as they could have been because they “resolved active enforcement matters through administrative means, if possible, rather than litigation.” Right… because not everything has to go through the courts. Sometimes, you can just take care of things yourself. That’s not anti-Christian bias.

Other items on the list of Key Findings point to policy positions taken by the Biden Administration that basically boil down to laws that conservatives don’t like. If taxpayer dollars went to foster care agencies, for example, Biden’s people wanted to make sure potential parents weren’t making life worse for LGBTQ children. But the Task Force calls this anti-Christian.

There’s also this:

Key Finding 10: The Biden Administration sidelined Christians in favor of their preferred constituencies.

They seriously cite the example of Biden issuing a proclamation in 2024 celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, just as he did in 2021 and 2022 and 2023, saying that trans people were “part of the fabric of our Nation” and that we need to “work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”

In 2024, however, March 31 coincidentally overlapped with Easter. So conservatives pretended that the Transgender Day of Visibility proclamation was anti-Christian… as if Biden picked the date as a middle finger to his own religion.

Key Finding 13: Biden agencies’ religious accommodation process often functionally penalized Christians who sought to exercise their religious rights.

This one claims the Biden Administration targeted Christians who were just practicing their faith… when the reality is that, when COVID vaccines were finally available, the government wanted federal employees to get vaccinated and they didn’t offer blanket exceptions for Christians who believed anti-vax conspiracy theories. Which was the right move because vaccines work and not getting vaccinated puts everyone in harm’s way.

You get the idea.

Some of the biggest examples of “anti-Christian bias” in this report aren’t systemic attacks on religion at all, but just examples of Christians behaving badly and getting punished for it. Apparently, Christians should be allowed to get away with anything they want under the Trump Administration.

The report concludes:

The Task Force found that, in its zealous pursuit of its preferred policies and constituents, the Biden Administration engaged in anti-Christian bias, seeking to limit Christians’ ability to act in concert with their sincerely held beliefs in their homes, in the workplace, and in the public square. At times, it went still further, leading Christians to reportedly choose between their beliefs and compliance with federal law. And, most troublingly, the Biden Administration is alleged to have prosecuted and jailed peaceful Christian pro-life demonstrators, terminated or harassed Christian workers who did not comply with the vaccine mandates, targeted Christian organizations with IRS inquiries, and subjected Christian schools to excessive fines. Taken together, the findings presented by the Task Force raise serious concerns about whether certain Biden-era policies and practices were administered in a manner consistent with the Constitution and applicable federal law. These concerns implicate core American commitments—religious liberty, equal treatment, and the rule of law—that protect all Americans of faith and conscience.

It’s all bullshit. This entire idiotic charade just shows how the Biden Administration wasn’t waging war on Christianity at all, but rather treating Christians the same way they did everyone else and not allowing claims of “But Mah Religion” to override health and safety and generally applicable laws.

Unfortunately, we now live under a regime full of powerful conservative Christians who want to weaponize victimhood to shield themselves from accountability.

To call any of this persecution is an insult to the very concept of oppression.

This report is not evidence of discrimination; it is evidence of entitlement. These Republicans don’t give a damn about freedom of religion. All they want is freedom from consequence. They want right-wing Christians to be allowed to operate above the law, unchallenged and unaccountable.

To state the obvious, ”anti-Christian bias” shouldn’t be ignored. Neither should bias against any other group. If it happens in a government agency, it should be punished. The problem here is the underlying theory that Christians suffer more discrimination than other religious groups.

If these are the best examples of anti-Christian discrimination they have, they’ve got nothing. They’re just proving what many of us have been arguing for years: Cries of anti-Christian persecution in America are not about protecting faith, but about protecting power.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State called out the uselessness of this report:

“The Executive Summary alone confirms what we have been saying all along: The administration’s claims that it has uncovered extensive evidence of anti-Christian bias within the federal government are unfounded. Instead, the report just repeats the misleading examples the Trump administration has been using since Day 1. The task force is doing exactly what we expected: imposing its narrow view of Christianity on the country and attacking freedom and equality, especially for women and LGBTQ+ Americans.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation said this was a “political document masquerading as a civil rights analysis.”

“The bogus findings of the ‘Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias’ were always a foregone conclusion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor, “since the purpose of the task force was to presume and look for bias against only one class, conservative Christians, and seek to expand protections only for them.”

The Interfaith Alliance’s Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush said the Trump Administration ought to look in a mirror:

“Trump’s radical DOJ’s new report is abominably hypocritical. To find anti-Christian bias, the Trump administration should look in the mirror at its own targeting of Christian communities and leaders who dare to oppose its extreme agenda. From attacking Pope Leo to Bishop Budde to so many others, this president has repeatedly threatened and clashed with many of the most prominent Christian denominations in our country.

…

Given President Trump’s own very public disrespect for Easter – and shocking portrayal of himself as a Christ-like figure in social media posts – the idea that his administration is somehow prioritizing the traditions and values of the Christian faith is absurd. Reports and stunts like this are meant to distract from the admin’s persecution of millions of Americans – including the many Black Christians across the South whose civil rights and political freedoms are directly targeted by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling.

They make solid points. If you want real examples of Christians getting harassed for their beliefs, you won’t find them in this report. In January, just after Trump was inaugurated, a religious leader politely asked Trump to follow Jesus and have mercy on the marginalized. Republicans responded to Bishop Mariann Budde by saying she should be “added to the deportation list” (she was born in New Jersey), implied that she was an idiot, and insisted that she was bad at her job.

More recently, Trump has threatened to deport millions of Christian immigrants.

Those are far more direct examples of anti-Christian bias than anything you’ll find in this report. If you want to protect Christianity, you’d be better off ridding the administration of all the people who make Christianity look bad… which is damn near everyone.

And if you think the Trump Administration is interested in leveling the playing field for Christians, you’ve been lied to. They want to make sure “I’m Christian” is always an acceptable excuse for certain people to get away with anything they want, whether it’s ignoring civil rights laws, putting patients in danger, or promoting bigotry with taxpayer dollars. That’s the only kind of Christianity they care about.

It’s not like they have examples of Christians wanting to help the poor only to be stymied by Democrats.

This Task Force was always a sham and this report proves it.

For what it’s worth, the Task Force says one more report will be published next year outlining policy recommendations for the future.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

FFRF gets prayer box removed from Maryland high school

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s efforts persuaded Maryland’s Calvert County Public Schools to remove a box for religious prayers from one of its schools.

A concerned community member informed the state/church watchdog that Patuxent High School had a prayer box in the front office. The box had the verse from Matthew 11:28 written on top, along with a Latin cross.

FFRF took action to align the district with the Constitution.

“The district has a duty to ensure that its teachers and administrators are not using their positions to promote their personal religious beliefs to students,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Fellow Charlotte R. Gude wrote to the district.

FFRF pointed out that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion. Parents, not public school staff, have the constitutional right to guide their children’s religious or nonreligious upbringing. Teachers and administrators may not encourage students to pray. By having an official, school-sponsored prayer box, Patuxent High School, and thus the district, abridged that duty and needlessly marginalized those students and community members among the 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including the 43 percent of Generation Z that is nonreligious.

FFRF is happy to report that the district did the right thing. Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome emailed FFRF after receiving the letter to confirm that the prayer box has been removed.

Whenever a school district makes the mistake of proselytizing students, FFRF will be sure to stand up for students’ right to freedom of conscience.

“Public high schools are not churches where ‘prayer boxes’ belong,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Our public schools exist to educate, not to indoctrinate in religion or to promote religious rituals such as prayer. We’re glad this school has taken corrective action to make it an inclusive and welcoming place for all students, regardless of their views on religion.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members across the country, including more than 800 members in Maryland. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post FFRF gets prayer box removed from Maryland high school appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

FFRF calls out Trump’s lies about shooter being ‘anti-Christian’

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is denouncing President Trump’s lie that the suspect in custody for attacking the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is “anti-Christian.”

“He had a lot of hatred in his heart for quite a while,” the president said during an appearance on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.” “And he just, I don’t know. He just, it was a religious thing. It was strongly anti, anti-Christian.”

Au contraire, notes the largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) in North America. Cole Allen is Christian, was active in a Christian campus organization and even cites his Christian beliefs in a manifesto that Trump also falsely mischaracterizes, saying, “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians.” Yet Allen even thanked his church and cited the bible in the writing.

CNN states, “Allen attended the California Institute of Technology from 2013-17, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he participated in the school’s Christian Fellowship organization and its Nerf Club, in which members armed with foam toys organized campus battles. Facebook photos from 2016 also show Allen at Christian Fellowship events at the school.”

The New York Times says, “Another fellowship member recalled that while Mr. Allen was generally quiet and studious, he was not shy about defending his own interpretation of his faith.” The Times quotes fellowship member Elizabeth Terlinden: “He was definitely a strong believer in evangelical Christianity at the time that I knew him.”

Newsweek reports that Allen “had deep roots in the Christian community,” was active in the Caltech Christian fellowships and even served as a large-group coordinator of discussions on the Apostles’ Creed. “His father, Thomas Allen, is a ruling elder at Grace United Reformed Church in Torrance, a congregation in the United Reformed Churches of North America,” the magazine adds.

We also know already that in his manifesto of more than 1,000 words, Allen gave what Newsweek calls “religious reasoning.” Newsweek writes, “He cited Scripture throughout and argued that Christians have a moral obligation to resist unjust authority through force.” Newsweek cites a theologian quick to deny there are any germs of violence in Christian teaching, but quotes Drew University Ethics Professor Darrell Cole saying that Allen’s interpretation, in asserting that one doesn’t have to “turn the other cheek” in the face of injustice, contains a kernel of legitimate Christian teaching. Allen also contends in his manifesto that the counsel to “render unto Caesar” applies to obeying legitimate civil authority rather than unlawful orders. Theological debates aside, as Newsweek writer Jesus Mesa notes, “What remains clear to the theologians interviewed is that Allen was not foreign to Christianity. He drew on real Christian traditions, misapplied them, and acted in isolation from the very communities those traditions require.”

Unfortunately, some media are casually repeating Trump’s assertions as gospel truth, such as this news story out of Utah reporting as a “key takeaway” that “suspect Cole Tomas Allen … wrote anti-Christian manifesto.” It’s now all over the internet and social media that an “anti-Christian manifesto” was found, when, in fact, the suspect explicitly cited his Christian beliefs as a rationale for his attack.

“Trump isn’t just distorting the facts, he’s lying about them,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Given the White House’s national security directive from last year falsely blaming terrorism on ‘anti-Christianity’ and ‘hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality,’ such a perversion of the truth seems calculated to scapegoat nonbelievers and non-Christians.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post FFRF calls out Trump’s lies about shooter being ‘anti-Christian’ appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Megachurch pastor’s Senate tease sparks ethics complaint from Kansas Republicans

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The Kansas Republican Party is accusing a Christian pastor of unfairly using his megachurch platform to promote a political candidate.

That sound you hear is your irony meter breaking. But their justification is worth exploring, and so is the way this pastor’s church is handling a delicate situation.

Two months ago, Adam Hamilton announced that he was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate from Kansas. He needed time to go around the state, talk to voters and potential donors, and figure out if he would be a viable candidate before making it official.

The reason he thought he might even have a shot here is because he’s already a leader of sorts, having founded the United Methodist-affiliated Church of the Resurrection over three decades ago. It’s now the largest UMC congregation in the country and one of the largest in the world, with over 24,000 active members spread out over nine locations.

What makes Hamilton unique is that he’s hardly a fundamentalist preacher. He has admitted there are “hundreds” of mistakes in the Bible (though he believes in the overall arc of the story). He has said it’s wrong for churches to prohibit women from being ordained as preachers. He supports social justice. And he’s been a supporter of the United Methodist Church’s inclusive position on openly gay clergy members and its decision to allow clergy members to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.

In short, his whole thing is trying to bring people together in a divided world and he believes that might be a winning formula for a Senate race. Maybe he’s right. Even if he’s not a progressive firebrand, he would undoubtedly be better than a typical Republican.

It helps to understand the current political landscape in the state. The seat we’re talking about is currently held by Republican Roger Marshall, a conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist who’s running for a second term. It’s considered by the Cook Political Report to be a “solid” GOP seat, meaning there’s virtually no chance a Republican will lose… at least under current circumstances. Democrats will have a candidate, but given that a Republican won the other Senate seat in 2022 by over a 20-point margin, and Marshall won his 2020 race by 11 points (in a year when the anti-Trump voters were out in full force), you have to assume any opponent with a D next to their name will be an afterthought.

One strategy to counter that, however, is to imitate what’s happening in neighboring (and deeply red) Nebraska. The Democrats there have already announced they won’t even put up an official candidate but instead support the independent Dan Osborn, who came very close to winning a Senate seat two years ago.

So if Hamilton wants to get elected in Kansas, his best chance may be running as an independent, not as a Democrat. (That’s assuming Democrats won’t put up a fight if he decides to run.)

Here’s where things get messy.

Hamilton announced his thinking—that he was exploring the possibility of a run—via a video posted on his church’s website and released on the church’s YouTube channel:

He said in that video that he wanted to personally tell his congregation where his mind was at so they didn’t hear about it in newspapers. He also told them, “I’m not asking you to vote for me. I’m not asking you to support me. I’m just asking, would you please pray for me for God’s wisdom?” More than anything, he wanted to give them a heads up that, if he ran, he would probably stop preaching in the immediate future so he could concentrate on the race, and if he won, church leaders could begin the process for finding his replacement, something they already had on their radar since Hamilton was planning to retire in a couple of years.

… If I lose, I’ve already got a sermon series planned. It’s called “The thrill of victor and the agony of defeat.”

But what if I win? Well, if I win, starting in January of 2027, would I remain your senior pastor?… If the staff parish committee would have me, the answer is yes. I would continue to be your senior pastor, but I would be scaling back the time that I would be able to commit to the church to about one quarter time, and I would be preaching 12 to 18 times a year.

(It’s not unusual for pastors in elected office to preach when their schedules allow. Sen. Raphael Warnock does it regularly.)

Hamilton said he would make his decision after Easter, but as of this writing, he hasn’t made anything official.

In the meantime, though, the church has put up a page on its website dedicated to his decision. They make clear that the church would not endorse him if he ran because the church “does not endorse political candidates or parties.” (They have a policy to that effect.)

Congregants and staff members are encouraged to vote according to their own convictions. To maintain clear distinctions between church life and any political activity, the church will not engage in political activities this year. For instance, we will not host onsite voter registration, distribute voter guides, or hold candidate forums during this election cycle. The church’s focus remains on our shared faith and mission.

They also say no church resources would be used for the campaign. Staffers wouldn’t work on the campaign “during work hours,” the church’s database would not be shared with the campaign, etc.

To state the obvious, this is a hell of a lot of commentary from the church to describe a pastor who’s not going to run for Senate. But they’re also trying to give their massive congregation details about what could be a major internal shakeup. Pastors like Hamilton, who have been around for decades, don’t usually leave suddenly for reasons other than a major scandal. This isn’t anything like that.

Whatever the case, it sure looks like the Kansas Republican Party assumes he’s going to run, because they recently filed an ethics complaint with the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance laws. They’re basically trying to hamper his potential campaign before it ever gets off the ground.

In their announcement, the Party said Hamilton and his church were already violating the law by using church resources to promote his exploratory committee.

Those actions, the complaint argues, constitute prohibited in-kind corporate contributions to a federal candidate.

“The Kansas Republican Party believes strongly in the rule of law. This complaint raises serious questions about the separation between the Church of the Resurrection’s religious mission and partisan political activity,” Rob Fillion, Executive Director of the Kansas Republican Party, said. “This is a clear and blatant violation of federal law. For more than a century, corporations, including nonprofit corporations like churches, have been strictly prohibited from making political contributions to federal candidates. Adam Hamilton and the Church of the Resurrection used church staff time, facilities, databases, and communication platforms to launch his political campaign while claiming ‘firewalls’ that were immediately ignored. No one is above the law, and the FEC must investigate and enforce the rules that protect the integrity of our elections.”

I know, I know, it’s pretty damn hilarious to see Republicans insisting they believe “strongly in the rule of law” while their Party’s leader seems to rack up new crimes by the day—while actively suppressing evidence of his potential past crimes—all while other Republicans stand back and allow him to do whatever the hell he wants. Republicans have no right pretending to care about the law.

But beyond that, do they have a point? Is the church breaking any rules by talking about Hamilton’s potential candidacy?

This is where it gets tricky. For example, as I mentioned, the church has an FAQ page to answer questions about Hamilton’s potential run for office… but the complaint says that itself is a problem (emphasis theirs):

On February 27, 2026, the Church added a page to its website headlined “Pastor Adam Hamilton Explores a Possible Run for the U.S. Senate.”4 This page includes a list of questions and answers concerning Hamilton’s potential candidacy, including “[w]ould church resources be used for the campaign?” The Church proceeded to answer the question concerning the use of church resources by using church resources to answer as follows…

The Church webpage also embeds Hamilton’s eleven-minute-and-thirty-five-second exploratory committee announcement video… which was first posted on the official YouTube channel for “Church of the Resurrection.”

They go on to say Resurrection must have “utilized an internal Church mailing list to email Hamilton’s statement to the Church’s members.”

Are these in-kind contributions to his campaign? If church staffers publish an FAQ on the church’s website, aren’t they, in a way, working on his campaign during work hours? And if you say you never use church resources to promote candidates… while using church resources to talk about a potential candidate… is that hypocritical?

That’s what the Kansas Republican Party is claiming. They’re asking the FEC to “move expeditiously to compel Respondents to comply with the law” if the law has been broken, and they want the FEC to impose any “appropriate sanctions” if necessary.

The complaint points to FEC fines that have been issued in other cases, but all of them involved cash donations made to actual candidates, situations that don’t apply here. It also says the church made “its corporate resources available to Adam Hamilton so that he could announce his exploratory campaign for U.S. Senate,” though one could argue he didn’t formally announce his campaign at all but rather explained to the church why he may be leaving.

I will say that I believe there’s a good-faith argument for Hamilton’s side here.

He’s the founder and face of this megachurch, and his sudden departure would be a huge deal. The best way to handle it is by being as transparent as possible about why he might leave, answering obvious questions in advance, and giving church leaders ample time to plan a future without him at the helm. It’s not like his consideration of a Senate run is a secret, nor does he want it to be.

If he was asking for campaign donations, or telling people to vote for him, or launching his campaign during a service, those would be pretty serious violations of the Johnson Amendment. He’s not doing any of that.

But maybe it’s easy to say that when right-wing pastors have gone so much further to actively promote Republicans from the pulpit. Their numerous violations of the Johnson Amendment—and their complete lack of consequences—have been well-documented at this point. So perhaps I’m judging Hamilton on a curve. I just don’t know if there’s a better way for him to explain to the congregation what he’s doing without going this far. He and his church seem to know there’s a line that must not be crossed, and what we’re seeing is his team getting as close as they can to that line without going over it.

(It would be ironic, too, if none of this mattered because Republicans have decided the Johnson Amendment can’t be enforced while they’re in power.)

The Republicans’ case would be a lot stronger if Hamilton had already jumped into the race. But he hasn’t. Telling people he’s seriously thinking about it just isn’t the same thing. And there’s a separate page for his exploratory committee that has no direct connection to the church at all. That page has a different, more political, video message:

I doubt the FEC will do anything. (As of now, it doesn’t even have the numbers to conduct serious investigations.) But the purpose of calling this out may simply be to connect “Adam Hamilton” with “ethics complaint” in the minds of voters. Anything to make sure Roger Marshall has an easier path to reelection.

For what it’s worth, Hamilton didn’t respond to my request for comment, but his spokesperson told a local news reporter that this complaint wouldn’t get anywhere and blamed it on Marshall himself:

“Roger Marshall would rather launch false attacks on people of faith – and the largest church in Kansas – than defend his record as a failed politician, because he knows Kansans are tired of politicians like him who aren’t listening and keep making things worse in Washington. Roger Marshall knows that if Adam Hamilton runs against him, Adam will win.”

Sounds like a statement from a candidate who has already made up his mind about running.

And that last line isn’t just bluster. A recent poll showed that Hamilton had very little name recognition among voters, but in a hypothetical matchup between Hamilton (as an Independent) and Marshall, Hamilton would come out on top. (The poll also showed Hamilton would lose if he ran as a Democrat.)

The church itself offered a more neutral explanation of its actions:

The communications cited in the GOP’s complaint are examples of how the church regularly communicates significant updates to congregants, Resurrection Church spokeswoman Cathy Bein told WORLD Tuesday in a statement. The church’s founding senior pastor is considering a possible career change after 35 years in ministry, which would have a major impact on the church, so congregants were informed, she added.

If Hamilton does indeed run, and if Democrats decide to back him instead of one of their own candidates, it could be one of the more interesting campaigns nationwide.

At a time when James Talarico is redefining what it means to be a Christian in Texas, and independent candidates in Nebraska and Maine are running effective campaigns, and when Kansas has seen a Democrat win a statewide gubernatorial race twice in a row now while rejecting a constitutional amendment banning abortion, the state is ripe for a major change. Especially if the Senate election is a referendum on Trump.

After baseless attacks on the SPLC, Pastor Joel Webbon says America needs “more racism”

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Christian Nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon insists “America does not have a racist problem” and that, “if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America.” If that strikes you as a wildly ignorant rant from someone who slept through every single grade school history class, you’d be absolutely right.

But he’s not alone in saying things like this. Conservatives like him are whitewashing history even more than usual on the back of an indictment against a group that’s been fighting hate groups for decades now.

For the past week, conservatives have been downright giddy over the Trump-controlled Justice Department indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center. After years of watching many of their organizations accurately labeled “hate groups” by the SPLC—not because they’re merely anti-LGBTQ but because they spread untrue and harmful lies about the groups they rail against—they’re eager to see the SPLC destroyed by the Trump administration.

The problem is that the indictment means very little and the actual case against the group is extremely thin.

The entire case against the SPLC, according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, revolves around a couple of major allegations: that the SPLC was financially propping up the very groups they claimed to fight against, and that it lied to banks about who they were in order to make those payments. That’s why the 11-count indictment includes charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The more nuanced understanding is that the SPLC knew that they could learn more about a variety of hate groups if they had someone on the inside who could feed them information about upcoming plans or attacks. They paid several of those informants to give them this information, which was also shared with the FBI. And to protect everyone’s cover, and to make sure the money wasn’t traced back to the SPLC, they created fake companies to make the payments. (It’s unclear if the FBI was aware of this.)

The government argues that this method deceived the banking system as well as donors. They need to fight the SPLC on behalf of liberals who love them!

At a press conference earlier this week, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche focused largely on the wire fraud charges, saying that between 2014 through 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center paid at least $3 million to eight different informants who were affiliated with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nation.

To prove wire fraud, the government must show at trial that the Southern Poverty Law Center intentionally tried to fleece its donors and that those misstatements or omissions of facts were material.

If the SPLC told donors it wanted to “dismantle white supremacy,” but paid hate group insiders to help take them down, is that deception? Not if I’m a donor. Seems like a perfectly smart way to do that kind of work. That’s why experts say this case isn’t strong and may even be dismissed before any kind of trial.

But conservatives have spent the past week arguing that the indictments prove the SPLC was fueling hate, not stopping it. Blanche said the SPLC was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” Others are going even further, arguing that these supposed hate groups never existed at all. Some conspiracy theorists claimed the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was a false flag:

Those attempts to pretend violent hate groups never existed aren’t getting very far, though, in part because there’s video proof of the violence and some of the people involved are openly confessing to what they did. Even white nationalist Jared Taylor said the indictment “seems hokeyed up to me.”

Joel Webbon doesn’t care about any of those pesky details. Webbon, pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas (not far from Austin), is the sort of guy who believes false rape allegations would end if we just “publicly execute a few women,” that white parents should teach their children to avoid Black people, and that in his ideal world Jewish people wouldn’t “be able to serve in public office.”

In response to the SPLC indictment, Webbon says it’s proof that racism simply doesn’t exist. As if the organization made it up from scratch in the 1970s.

Right Wing Watch has the clip and transcript:

“It’s so clear that America does not have a racist problem, at least in terms of like pure, baseless, mindless hatred towards minority people,” Webbon said on his program last Friday.

…

“There’s a lot of money to be made in slaying dragons or pretending to slay dragons that have already been slain,” he continued. “Either the dragon doesn’t exist at all, and that’s why it’s lucrative, or—I’m just going to throw this out there—the dragon’s actually good and it’s actually the king who’s commissioned the knights and they’re actually the bad guys. This whole witch hunt for white supremacists who hate brown people simply because they’re brown, the reason why that’s so lucrative and there are NGOs with millions and millions of dollars for that is because the white people in America are predominantly, on the whole, not racist. White people in America are, if anything, I think, too trusting, too gullible, toxic empathy. White people in America are like, ‘You know what? I know that this will kill my grandchildren, but can we just import half of the country of Haiti, just to be nice?’ So not only is racism non-existent, if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America.”

As Right Wing Watch points out, Webbon himself is living proof that racism is alive and well, especially in conservative Christianity.

He’s said he doesn’t trust Black doctors, that it’s Black people’s “fault” they’ve ever been oppressed, that he would tell his daughter not to marry anyone who’s Black, and it’s fair to generalize that all Black people are lazy.

In response to RWW’s clip, Webbon issued one correction: Racism was indeed real, he said. But white people were the victims of it:

There’s a reason he and his Christian allies are making these kinds of comments. If they can convince conservatives that racism is somehow over (if it ever existed at all), then any policies that harm marginalized groups can be reframed as neutral or justified. When Webbon says “a little bit more racism” would be beneficial, he’s trying to normalize his own bigotry.

If this were one fringe guy with no audience, maybe it would be forgettable, but he’s not. He’s part of a white conservative Christian movement that has spent years minimizing systemic racism, rewriting American history, and reframing civil rights advocacy as the real threat. They’ve already been successful getting their bigotry enacted in red states and it’s widespread in pockets of social media. That’s why it must be countered at every turn.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2

More than 100 community events across the country to put empathy into action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2026

Contact: Court Beyer, cbeyer@americanhumanist.org

WASHINGTON – This Saturday, May 2, the American Humanist Association (AHA) will mobilize communities across the country for the American Empathy Project (AEP), a simultaneous national day of service taking place at more than 100 locations nationwide. The effort represents one of the largest coordinated days of humanist community action in the organization’s history.

Through $100,000 in grants awarded to individuals and organizations nationwide, the AHA has supported local changemakers in organizing service projects across a range of communities and causes. Events on May 2 will include mutual aid drives for immigrant families in Maryland, menstrual supply packing parties in Kentucky, and social programming for senior citizens, among more than 100 others taking place simultaneously across the country.

“The American Empathy Project is built on a simple, humanist idea: the belief that people are good, and that when we show up for each other, we build the kind of communities we all want to live in.” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “This Saturday, more than 100 communities across the country are proving that. The AHA has spent over 80 years fighting for a more compassionate world, and we’re proud to meet the extreme religious right’s ‘war on empathy’ with a groundswell of Americans taking care of our neighbors together.”

WHEN: Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: 100+ events nationwide

WHO: American Empathy Project, a project of the American Humanist Association

Members of the public can find an event near them or learn more about the American Empathy Project at AmericanEmpathyProject.org.

Media interested in attending or covering May 2’s events are encouraged to reach out to press@americanhumanist.org for more information. A full map of service projects can be viewed here.

###

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

The post American Humanist Association to Host Nationwide Day of Service on May 2 appeared first on American Humanist Association.

Religious “switching” is an existential crisis for the Catholic Church

This newsletter is free and goes out to over 24,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.

Subscribe now

In dozens of countries worldwide, more people are ditching Catholicism than entering into it, including countries where Catholicism is the default religion for many citizens. It suggests a perilous future for the Church if it can’t find new ways to bring people into the fold.

There’s a phrase for this: Religious switching. It’s when you were raised in one religious tradition but have since gone on to a different one. It’s been happening a lot in recent years and it threatens to upend one of the most basic beliefs about belief: That if you raise your children in your faith, it’ll stay with them in the future.

Think about that for a moment. One of the reasons religion has historically had so much power is because parents could safely assume that if they indoctrinated their kids from a young age, those beliefs and traditions will live on indefinitely. It’s the very idea at the core of the Quiverfull movement, famously exemplified by the Duggars: If you have lots of children, the religion will eventually spread to their own families, and within a few generations, your religion will mathematically outgrow all the other ones.

But the vertical continuation of religion isn’t a safe assumption.

People make friends outside their religious bubble when they go to school. They date and marry people who don’t share their faith (though their values likely overlap). They live in diverse communities where there’s no “default” faith, making the spread of different ideas a little easier. There’s also less stigma today in saying you’re not religious (or not Christian). That means the pressure to remain in the fold has largely evaporated. And, of course, there’s the internet, which allows people to see what life is like outside their particular bubbles.

When it comes to religion in general, the switching is intense. It’s especially bad news for the Catholic Church because far more people are leaving than entering.

Just take in this incredible chart from the Pew Research Center showing the percentages of people who have “switched” into or out of Catholicism in various countries. The blue bars represent people who left Catholicism despite being raised in the faith. The yellow bars show people who decided to convert to Catholicism.

In nearly every case, the blue bars dwarf the yellow ones. And in the few cases where Catholic converts outnumber those who’ve escaped, it’s only by a small amount.

Overall, more people left Catholicism than joined it in 21 of the 24 countries we analyzed. Hungary is the only country surveyed where more people joined (5%) than left the church (2%). In the remaining two countries – Kenya and South Korea – similar shares entered and exited Catholicism through switching.

It also helps to know how Catholic these nations were to begin with to better understand how porous they now are. Poland, for example, is almost entirely Catholic with a low leak rate. But Italy, which is also heavily Catholic, is on track to lose quite a few believers over the next few generations. (And who knows what might happen to religion in Hungary now that the autocrat Viktor Orbán has been ousted.)

The big question is: Why is this happening? The analysis doesn’t go into all that, but I would argue a lot of this is simply the Catholic Church shooting itself in the foot. Blame the sex scandals, the blatant hypocrisy, the desperate attempts by some conservative Catholics to worship Donald Trump while abandoning Jesus, the easy access to material for people questioning their faith, etc. Or maybe JD Vance’s relatively recent conversion scared them away.

It’s tempting to say these trends may reverse with Pope Leo at the helm, but so far, he’s really no different from his predecessor in terms of his PR savvy and positions on issues. And while some American dioceses are celebrating a rise in new converts—and receiving fawning media coverage for their self-reported numbers—the overall trend is still not good news for them.

Before you celebrate the global demise of religion, though, it’s important to recognize these trends aren’t the same for Protestantism. If you do the same kind of analysis in the same countries, you find that the shifts aren’t quite as drastic. In fact, Pew says, “Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss.” Those gains are especially noticeable in Latin America:

The question in places like Brazil and Ghana is whether those gains will remain in place in years to come. Or will people who switch to Protestantism eventually leave that religion for the same reason so many people are leaving Catholicism? It’s too early to tell.

If there’s a broader takeaway here, it’s that religious institutions no longer get to assume permanence. People around the world are willing to reconsider their religious upbringing and that sort of thinking is contagious. When you realize you don’t have to be trapped in a faith you no longer believe in and whose beliefs in certain areas are indefensible, it’s much easier to walk away when you see others doing it. Right now, the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging credibility faster than it can replace it.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)