Tracking Trump's executive orders: So-called "anti-Christian bias"

Executive Order 14202: Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias

Date Signed: February 6, 2025

Key Provisions:

• The Trump administration will establish a task force to "eradicate anti-Christian bias”
• The task force will review all departments and agencies for anti-Christian bias and actions, call for the head of those agencies to end those policies, and recommend actions for the President to help him rectify past injustices of anti-Christian conduct and to protect religious liberty
• The task force will submit a report after 120 days, then after a year, and then finally upon the task force’s dissolution
• Funding will come from the DOJ and it will terminate after two years, unless extended by the President
• It accused the previous administration of engaging in an “egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses” by supposedly bringing criminal charges against people who protested outside of a abortion clinic, tasking the FBI to investigate Catholic extremist groups, driving “Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the foster-care system,” and casting Transgender Day of Visibility on the same weekend as Easter Sunday

Interfaith Alliance Counterpoints

• Interfaith Alliance agrees that it’s essential to protect the religious freedom of all Americans, including for Christians, but we fear that this task force will aid organizations looking to circumvent anti-discrimination laws under the guise of religious freedom.
• There is no evidence of widespread anti-Christian bias in the United States and perpetuating this myth is deeply offensive to the actual Christian persecution that happens in other countries around the world.
• Executive Order 14202 presupposes that supporting equality for LGBTQ equality undermines religious freedom. We strongly reject this zero-sum approach to our nation’s civil rights and civil liberties.
• While this effort may appear to address certain forms of stigma against Christians, particularly against Catholics, in reality it will weaponize a narrow understanding of religious freedom to legitimize discrimination against marginalized groups like the LGBTQ community, infringe on our reproductive freedom, and hurt our society’s most vulnerable.
• As our President and CEO Paul Raushenbush said on CNN, “This White House uses faith for power. This is all from a Christian nationalist playbook. They don’t have wide support. They have support from a very narrow slice of American Christianity which is white, Protestant, Christian nationalists who are on a quest for power… This EO is actually biased against the majority of Christians."