Commissioners of the White House Religious Liberty Commission delivered their final report to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, following their yearlong investigation into the emerging threats to faith in the United States, which they confirmed are increasing.
The report, which spans more than 200 pages and was compiled from findings from the commission's seven hearings since Trump established it last year, drew on the testimony of more than 100 witnesses regarding growing encroachments.
Some of the testimonies came from mothers who were lied to by their children's school administrators, children who were bullied because of their religious beliefs, healthcare workers who faced retaliation for opposing transgender procedures, as well as workers and military service members whose careers were destroyed because they objected to vaccine mandates.
"Although their circumstances differed, their stories shared a common theme," the report said of the witnesses, who were diverse in ages, backgrounds and faith traditions. "Far too often in our national life, religion is treated not as a protected and valued contribution to public life, but as a problem or annoyance to be managed, restricted, or sidelined."
The report warned that such an attitude has served as the basis for increasing conflicts that have permeated American society and compromised religious liberty at various levels.
"Among our conclusions, we believe that safeguarding religious liberty requires more than defending legal rights after they have been violated. It requires cultivating a culture that understands why those rights exist in the first place," it said.
The report concluded that the metaphor of "a wall of separation between church and state," which it noted is not found in the U.S. Constitution, has been misapplied and weaponized to exclude religious Americans from the public square.
During the final commission hearing in April, Texas Lt. Gov. and Chairman Dan Patrick said the phrase, which comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote about religious liberty to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, has become "the biggest lie that's been told in America since our founding."
He reiterated his assertion during the gathering of the commissioners in the Oval Office on Friday, warning that "the left has used that one phrase ... to batter and hammer people of faith for the last 70 to 80 years."
The report emphasized that none of America's founding documents suggests that faith was ever intended to have no influence upon the government, or that the First Amendment's aim was "to exile the practice of religion from public life." It offered instead the analogy that religious liberty serves as "a bridge between church and state," and that the institutions can "strengthen and support one another."
At the event in the Oval Office, clinical psychologist and TV personality Phil McGraw said he was shocked during his time on the commission to discover how pervasive rising instances of religious discrimination against Americans had become.
Emphasizing that the commission was not "performative," McGraw said, "What stuck out for me is how many Americans showed up saying that they were persecuted — in healthcare, military, education, different walks of life — for living their faith and standing up for their faith."
"It's not just the liberty to choose which house of worship they want, it's actually getting into their daily life, and they're being persecuted in their jobs, in their professions. And that's where the fight for liberty is actually showing up," he continued, going on to praise the witnesses for their courage in stepping forward.
The report offered 12 specific recommendations to strengthen religious liberty, beginning with instructing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to issue guidance clarifying the proper understanding of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the separation of church and state.
Another recommendation included the DOJ, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issuing "Know Your Rights" posters to inform students, parents, public school teachers and administrators, religious leaders, religious institutions, healthcare workers and military service members.
The commission also recommended that the DOJ, HHS and EEOC create religious liberty violation hotlines and online portals for students, parents, teachers and healthcare workers to obtain support when they face potential religious liberty violations.
Other recommendations include nominating federal judges who respect religious liberty; combating antisemitism through civil rights laws; instructing the DOJ to establish a religious liberty task force to track and prioritize litigation to protect religious liberty; and working to restore retirement or re-enlistment eligibility for service members who refused the COVID-19 injections.
It also called for the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 federal tax code provision that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from directly or indirectly endorsing or opposing political candidates. Trump has called for its repeal in the past, a move that would require an act of Congress.
The report's release came the same day Trump delivered an address to the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C., during which he highlighted the importance of religious liberty, the commission's work, and what he characterized as state-sanctioned hostility toward Christians under the Biden administration.
"They turned a nation founded on freedom for believers into a place where Catholics were targeted by the FBI, where pro-life grandmothers were put in jail for praying and where members of our military were thrown out of the armed forces for their religious lives," Trump said of his predecessor's administration.
"The radicals responsible for these offenses would have loved nothing more than to mark America's 250th anniversary by driving God from our public square once and for all. They wanted to do that. I don't know how anybody could vote for these people."
Trump warned that members of the political left and the Democratic Party are radicalizing in their antipathy toward Christianity as they drift further into overt communism, which he called a "godless" ideology that has failed repeatedly.
"They want to resume the transgender immunization of our children. They want to restart the war on Christians and churches, and as you saw with the communists elected in New York City recently ... they want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life," he said, warning that Democrats will effectively reduce the country to "a disaster area" if they are allowed to regain power.
"These are not social Democrats; these are hardcore, godless communists. They're godless communists. All communists are godless. They don't believe in God. This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country," Trump said.
The White House Religious Liberty Commission had been fraught with controversy and infighting in recent months as religious questions increasingly took center stage in the national discourse.
In February, conservative Catholic activist and former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean Boller was removed from the commission following a tense exchange with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon about Gaza, Zionism and the definition of antisemitism. Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim adviser to the commission, subsequently resigned in protest of Boller's removal and the war in Iran.
