White House Faith Office: Is Trump Turning America into a Christian Nation?

Though not religious himself, Donald Trump has long courted evangelical Christian movements with his conservative policies, styling himself as a champion of right-wing Christians.

Despite rarely attending church, Trump sees religious conservatives as the bedrock of his political base. Since surviving the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt, he has leaned even more heavily on religious rhetoric, claiming that God saved him because he believed in Him.

Throughout his first and second terms, Trump surrounded himself with prominent evangelical and “MAGA Christianity” figures, often appearing in prayer sessions at the Oval Office—images that some supporters used to cast him as a sort of “savior.”

He issued executive orders to establish the so-called “Faith Office” at the White House to support Christians and created a Religious Liberty Commission to defend them from perceived “persecution.” Trump has openly rejected the separation of church and state.

U.S. analysts argue that Trump’s actions violate the American Constitution, which, while not explicitly mandating the separation of church and state, clearly implies it through its foundational principles.

They warn that with Trump’s return to the White House and the Republican grip on many state legislatures and governorships, he has surrounded himself with hardline evangelical fundamentalists intent on dismantling the constitutional wall between church and state.

Faith Office and a Religious Liberty Commission

On February 7, 2025, President Trump ordered the creation of a new Faith Office at the White House, replacing older faith-based and community initiatives. While the directive didn’t explicitly mention Christianity, it cited goals like supporting “faith-based entities, houses of worship, American families, and religious freedoms.” Still, many Americans saw it as an effort to promote Christianity.

Trump made no secret of his intentions. According to the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, he said the Faith Office would lead a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” within federal agencies.

He appointed newly sworn-in Attorney General Pam Bondi to head the office, tasking her with “ending the persecution of the Christian majority in the United States” and “immediately halting discrimination against Christians” in the Department of Justice, Interior Department, FBI, and other agencies. Bondi would also address “violence and vandalism targeting Christianity in our society.”

Trump’s Faith Office dismantled previous faith-based structures established by former presidents—George W. Bush’s 2001 Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and Barack Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In early May 2025, Trump signed another executive order launching a Religious Liberty Commission, focused on defending Christians' religious freedoms—part of a broader wave of Christian-centric zeal inside the White House.

That same day, during the National Day of Prayer at a Washington hotel, Trump declared: “While I’m in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares.” 

“And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God.”

He added that, as president, he had proudly created task forces to eliminate religious bias by combating antisemitism, anti-Christian sentiment, and other forms of hostility toward faith—though he notably made no mention of Islam.

Trump had previously dismantled the Johnson Amendment in 2017, which had restricted clergy from expressing political views. In 2018, he launched the Faith and Opportunity Initiative, empowering religious organizations and reversing Obama-era policies that barred disaster relief funding to such groups.

In 2020, he issued new guidelines aimed at protecting religious freedom and free speech in public schools.

One of Trump’s closest religious advisors, Paula White, who oversaw the Faith Office, once prayed that God would grant Trump wisdom beyond human understanding, divine dreams, and called for a spiritual reset in our nation—a return to righteousness, reverence, and alignment with “God’s purpose.”

Following media criticism over the overtly Christian tilt, the White House added a few non-Christian figures to the Religious Liberty Commission.

The 22-member advisory council includes religious leaders and legal experts from across the country. It’s chaired by Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

One of the most notable appointments was Hamza Yusuf, a prominent American Islamic scholar frequently listed among the world’s 500 most influential Muslims. The commission’s statement highlighted his status as one of the most respected Islamic thinkers in the Western world.

Yusuf previously served during Trump’s first term as a human rights advisor on the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. His involvement sparked backlash from Muslim organizations, who feared he was being used to legitimize Trump’s controversial policies.

The Secular Nature of the U.S. Constitution

The text of the U.S. Constitution appears as a clearly secular document, beginning with the phrase “We the People” and containing no reference to “God” or “Christianity.”

In fact, the only mention of “religion” in the Constitution is used in a way that explicitly upholds the principle of religious neutrality, with historians noting that it affirms non-discrimination based on faith.

The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and Article VI adds that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

However, when journalists pointed out that Trump was violating the separation of church and state, he responded during a Rose Garden event celebrating National Prayer Day by saying: “They say separation between church and state [..] I said, ‘All right, let’s forget about that for one time.’”

“They said, really there’s separation. I don’t know. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure, but whether there’s separation or not, you guys are in the White House where you should be, and you’re representing our country, and we’re bringing religion back to our country, and it’s a big deal,” he added.

During his inaugural address, Trump used religious language and imagery, declaring: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He also told the crowd: “We must never forget God.”

In early May 2025, Politico noted that the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on establishing a national religion is typically interpreted as a mandate for a strict separation of church and state.

Yet, despite this constitutional separation — and the fact that American students are taught from a young age that this principle is foundational — religion remains deeply entangled with U.S. politics.

Christian influence is evident in national symbols and rituals, such as the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God We Trust” inscribed on U.S. currency.

According to American studies, the U.S. experience contrasts sharply with Europe’s model of complete separation between church and state. Americans, even if only outwardly, tend to be more religious.

Donald Trump’s new Religious Liberty Commission “is filled with zealots who are primed to pursue an end to the constitutionally protected separation of church and state,” MSNBC reported on May 20.

“The president has assembled advisory teams of religious zealots known for blurring the line between politics and religion.”

The commission includes a mix of conservative influencers, activists, and far-right religious leaders from various denominations. They are spread across three advisory councils, even though the White House claimed these roles were intended for “secular leaders, religious figures, and legal experts.”

Baptist News Global recently published a detailed look at the board members — and it seems clear this commission has been designed more to enforce strict adherence to far-right religious doctrines than to protect religious liberty.

It stated that these do not seem to be individuals chosen to champion religious freedom. Among those named in the Religious Leaders Advisory Council are:

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who barred former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion over her support for abortion rights, and Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who backed a similar ban on Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, were among the appointees. 

Also included was Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who led efforts to deny communion to former President Joe Biden due to his stance on reproductive rights. 

Evangelical activist Ryan Tucker, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Trump ally Alveda King, who downplayed the significance of church-state separation and defended religion-based governance, were also named.

The Trump administration also includes numerous officials with ties to Christian nationalism, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In The Conversation on January 3, 2024, Dr. Tobin Miller Shearer, professor of history at the University of Montana, emphasized the critical role religion and the church play in U.S. elections.

He noted that in the 2016 race, evangelical voters were instrumental in Trump’s victory, with more than 55% of weekly churchgoers and 66% of white evangelicals casting their ballots for him.

In a report on The Religious Dimensions of the U.S. Electoral Battle, Dr. Kobby Barda, an Israeli scholar of religion at the University of Haifa, highlighted the influence of faith in American political life, particularly within the Republican Party, where evangelical and Christian Zionist beliefs dominate.

He explained that Anglo-Saxon white Protestants (evangelicals) feel marginalized. Once the nation’s founders and leaders, they saw a Black president, Barack Obama, serve two terms, followed by a Catholic president, Joe Biden.

Feeling threatened by further marginalization, they rallied behind a non-religious figure, using evangelical rhetoric, suggesting the issue is more about race or group identity cloaked in religious language. In doing so, a specific faction — the evangelicals — asserted their political project.

Religion and Politics: A Resounding “Yes”

American historian Gary Smith notes in a study for Oxford University that while the U.S. Constitution separates church and state, it does not separate religion from politics—religion remains deeply embedded in American political life.

He explains that, in practice, the separation between religion and politics in the United States is virtually nonexistent.

Although the Johnson Amendment of 1954 prohibits churches and religious institutions from engaging in political campaigns or endorsing candidates, it does not prevent individuals affiliated with those institutions from participating in politics in a personal capacity.

A clear example is evangelical preacher Billy Graham, who cast America’s wars—especially in Iraq—in a religious light, often invoking spiritual forces in “Babylon” to justify the invasion of Iraq and other Muslim countries.

Graham left a profound imprint on both the political and religious spheres in the U.S. and is considered one of the most influential American religious figures of the 20th century.

When judges and lawmakers moved to impeach Donald Trump, Franklin Graham—Billy Graham’s son—claimed that demonic forces were behind efforts to remove a man whom many evangelicals viewed as “blessed by God.”

On May 21, The Progressive reported that leaders of the Christian nationalist movement within the Trump administration have used Trump's dismissive remarks about the separation of church and state to attack the secular foundations of the U.S.

The article highlighted that these figures have not concealed their agenda, which is detailed in the over-900-page Project 2025—a political manifesto openly advocating for Christian nationalism.

According to the report, Project 2025, along with figures like Vice President J.D. Vance and others, calls for a “biblical definition” of marriage and family, and the dismantling of homosexual rights under the banner of “religious freedom.”

A prior study in Foreign Policy (March 19, 2019) observed that U.S. foreign policy under Trump’s first administration took on a fundamentalist Christian tone, hostile to democratic pluralism—unlike any previous presidency.

Christopher Stroop, a religion scholar at the University of South Florida, argued in the article that those shaping America’s foreign policy are Christian fundamentalists harboring deep animosity toward Islam and Muslims.