The War on Religion Advances: A Report from the U.S. Presidential Commission

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On June 26, the Religious Liberty Commission — a temporary advisory body established in 2025 by President Donald Trump to identify emerging threats to religious liberty — presented a draft report addressing such threats in the United States and around the world. The presentation was chaired by Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick, joined by Vice Chair Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon.

The document is the product of seven hearings held over the past year, gathering testimony from more than 100 witnesses representing a range of faiths and age groups. The hearings addressed religious liberty in the military, in education, in health care, and in the public and private sectors, as well as the protection of parental rights, the role of faith-based institutions, and violence against houses of worship. Although the Commission’s mandate formally concerns threats within U.S. borders, the draft explicitly notes that similar problems exist internationally, citing relevant European cases. The document also addresses the interpretation of church-state separation, freedom of conscience in health care and military service, parents’ educational rights, and violence targeting places of worship.

Religion as a corrective force against unjust law

In Chapter 1, titled “Religion as an Indispensable Support,” the Commission presents religion as a source of moral standards that has corrected American history whenever it strayed from the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The authors cite specific historical examples in which religious motivation set the nation back on course, including Quaker opposition to slavery, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s invocation of St. Thomas Aquinas in his civil-rights advocacy, and the pro-life movement’s efforts to affirm the dignity of the unborn. These examples, the report argues, show that religion has historically functioned as “the conscience of the state,” correcting unjust law whenever it departed from the country’s founding principles.

The theme of the unborn’s dignity reappears in Chapter 3, which cites the testimony of Oriel Ekşi, a survivor of human trafficking who testified at the Commission’s seventh hearing in April 2026 (p. 48). Ekşi described how, facing an unplanned pregnancy as a minor victim of trafficking, she rejected her mother’s suggestion to have an abortion, describing that choice as an expression of her religious conviction about the inherent value of human life. The report presents this as a concrete, real-life example of how religious conviction shapes decisions about life, complementing the more abstract historical references in Chapter 1.

The chapter closes with a line from President George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports” (p. 35).

Faith-based institutions and disputes over “gender identity”

Chapter 3 also addresses the role of faith-based institutions in American public life and the pressures they face, particularly in ideological disputes over “gender identity.” This section opens with Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations,” including religious ones (p. 46). The Commission cites this to argue that religious institutions have historically built social bonds and provided assistance, so restricting their activity on account of their convictions threatens that tradition.

Concrete examples of such conflicts are offered in support of this thesis. One is the Downtown Hope Center in Anchorage, Alaska — a women’s shelter run by Sherrie Laurie. In January 2018, an intoxicated man wearing pink nightclothes demanded access to the women’s section. Staff refused, noting that the facility primarily serves women who have survived domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault, and that safety is at the core of its mission. The case went to court, sparking public debate over whether antidiscrimination law can force a religious charitable organization to abandon its foundational principles.

This section also cites the case of a Vermont couple with Christian convictions who were denied approval as foster parents by state authorities because they indicated they would not support a child’s potential “gender transition.” The report presents this as an example of how a family’s religious beliefs — unrelated to any hostility toward a specific child — can become a formal barrier to fostering.

In response to these concerns, the Commission recommends federal guarantees that faith-based institutions have equal access to public funding without having to renounce their religious identity, along with the administration’s involvement in lawsuits against discriminatory state and local authorities. It further proposes that the Department of Health and Human Services put in place solutions to protect religious liberty for foster and adoptive families (pp. 62–65).

Parental rights and education

Later chapters (4 and 6) address parents’ right to raise their children according to their religious convictions within the public school system, access to religious education regardless of family income, and cases in which schools made decisions about a child’s gender identity without the parents’ knowledge or consent.

Chapter 4 describes situations in which students faced pressure or punishment for religious expression at school. The Commission argues that the current system effectively limits the constitutionally protected parental right to choose a religious education to higher-income families who can afford private tuition, while lower-income families are, in practice, compelled to use public schools even when they disagree with the curriculum on religious grounds.

Chapter 6 focuses on parents’ own right to direct their children’s religious upbringing. It cites Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court case in which parents — including Svitlana Roman of Montgomery County, Maryland — challenged local policies denying parents the right to withdraw their children from classes using picture books that portray “gender transition” and same-sex relationships in a positive light. This chapter also describes the case of Jennifer Mead of Michigan, whose 11-year-old autistic daughter was, without the mother’s knowledge, secretly encouraged by a school counselor toward a “social transition” and addressed using a masculine name and pronouns.

Chapter 4’s recommendations propose establishing a universal, nationwide school-choice system in which public education funding “follows the child” (pp. 77–80). Chapter 6 repeats the school-choice recommendation and proposes creating a joint parental-rights task force at the Departments of Justice and of Health and Human Services. The Commission further recommends guidance clarifying parents’ right to be notified of any attempt at a child’s “gender transition” at school, regardless of the child’s own consent, as well as their right to information about boys’ access to girls’ athletic teams and facilities.

Religious liberty for health care workers

Chapter 9 addresses the conscientious objection of medical workers to taking part in abortion, sterilization, “assisted suicide,” and “gender-related interventions.” It includes the testimony of Dr. Eithan Haim, a Jewish surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital, who in 2023 revealed that the facility was continuing a program of “gender-related interventions” for children despite having publicly announced the program’s closure in response to a legal opinion from the Texas Attorney General. In June 2023, the Department of Justice under the Biden administration sent armed federal agents to Haim’s home, and he was charged three times even though he had broken no law; he was ultimately acquitted (pp. 131–133).

Chapter 9’s recommendations (p. 140) propose expanding the protections of the Church Amendments — 1970s legislation shielding federally funded medical workers from being forced to take part in abortion or sterilization procedures that conflict with their religious or moral convictions — and granting medical workers a private right of legal action for violations. It also recommends restoring a dedicated Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the Department of Health and Human Services (pp. 140–142).

Attacks on places of worship

Chapter 12, titled “Faith Under Fire in America’s Houses of Worship,” addresses physical violence and vandalism targeting facilities belonging to various denominations. The document presents this as a growing problem affecting Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities alike, arguing that such attacks are a particularly severe violation of religious liberty, since they threaten not only the safety of individual believers but the very spaces where religious communities gather to practice their faith together.

The chapter’s recommendations propose that the Department of Homeland Security expand the availability of grants for security improvements at high-risk religious and nonprofit facilities.

Religious liberty in other countries

The last chapter reviewed here summarizes the entire document while going beyond U.S. borders, noting that the phenomena described earlier are not exclusively American problems but also affect Europe.

The first case cited is that of Adam Smith-Connor, a British military veteran and physical therapist convicted for silent prayer in a “buffer zone” around an abortion facility. The case concerns legislation establishing safe access zones around abortion facilities, currently in force in various parts of the United Kingdom, including England, Wales, and Scotland, where similar legislation was adopted in 2024 under Scotland’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act. Smith-Connor was arrested while praying silently outside an abortion facility in Bournemouth, where he was remembering his deceased son. The court convicted him under Britain’s Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act of 2014. Vice President JD Vance referred to the case in February 2025 in his address to the Munich Security Conference. The report cites it verbatim (p. 177): “In the United Kingdom, police recently arrested army veteran and physiotherapist Adam Smith-Connor for the crime of silently praying.”

The second case cited is that of Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish parliamentarian, a longtime activist of the Christian Democrats, and a former minister of the interior. Räsänen has faced criminal proceedings since 2021 over a 2019 tweet quoting Scripture and a 2004 church pamphlet setting out the Christian understanding of marriage and sexual ethics. The Helsinki District Court, in 2022, and the Helsinki Court of Appeal, in 2023, unanimously acquitted Räsänen and her co-defendant, Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, of all charges. On March 26, 2026, Finland’s Supreme Court, in a divided 3–2 ruling, convicted Räsänen of insulting a group over the 2004 pamphlet, while unanimously acquitting her over the 2019 tweet. Räsänen has announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The draft report cites this verbatim (p. 177): “Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was recently convicted for the crime of expressing her religious perspective on human sexuality.”

Numerous other violations

The report also addresses a number of other religious-liberty issues, including criticism of the traditional understanding of church-state separation and a proposal to describe the two spheres instead as linked by a “bridge” (Chapter 2, pp. 36–45); the operation of the Department of Justice’s existing Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias (p. 44); cases of service members punished for refusing vaccines on religious grounds under the Biden administration, including a Navy SEAL who lost his retirement benefits three years before they would have vested (Chapter 7, pp. 105–120); violence and hate speech targeting Jewish communities (Chapter 11, pp. 151–157); and the phenomenon of “debanking” — the denial of banking services to religious organizations (Chapter 13, pp. 165–175).

The draft report of the Religious Liberty Commission deserves attention for several reasons. First, it speaks favorably of the pro-life movement’s efforts to affirm the dignity of the unborn, situating them within a tradition that also includes the abolition of slavery and the civil-rights movement — a significant political signal from the American administration. Second, the report consistently diagnoses a pattern in which religious institutions, parents, and workers in the education and health care sectors are forced to choose between fidelity to their convictions and participation in public life, as illustrated by the cases of the Vermont couple and Dr. Haim. Third, the inclusion of the Smith-Connor and Räsänen cases shows that the erosion of religious liberty is not a purely American phenomenon but one that affects Europe as well. The document remains, formally, a draft open to consultation, and its recommendations carry no automatically binding force.

Translated using Claude.ai

See also:

• Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age – A UN Report
• Polish Sejm Passes Censorship Law – Time for the President’s Veto
• Legal Action for a Tweet Quoting Scripture
• Protection of Life, Freedom of Religion and National Symbols – Ordo Iuris Intervenes Before the Strasbourg Court
• The UN Defend the Victims of Religious Persecution

Source of cover photo: iStock