President Trump made the presentation during a meeting of the Religious Freedom Committee at the Bible Museum in Washington.
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- The September 8th hearing was held at the Bible Museum in Washington, DC, with the theme of “Religious Freedom in Education.”
- President Trump has announced new Department of Education’s guidance to protect prayer in public schools.
- The announcement came at the second hearing of the Religious Freedom Committee.
President Donald Trump announced upcoming guidance from the Department of Education to protect prayer in public schools during his speech at his Sept. 8 hearing on Religious Freedom Committee.
The hearing held at the Bible Museum in Washington, DC marked the committee’s second public meeting, with the theme of “Religious Freedom in Public Education.”
Trump has long vowed to bring religion back to the country during his campaign trajectory and his second term. He went out to the Bible Museum crowd just after 10:30am to thank the committee for doing “an incredible work.”
He said his administration would “protect the Jewish Christian values of our establishment.”
“To have a great nation, you have to have a religion. I believe it very strongly,” Trump said. “After we go through all of this, there’s something and it needs to be something God.”
He continued to argue that students in public schools are “indoctrinated into anti-promotion” before publishing new Department of Education guidance.
For a long time, students had the right to pray as individuals in public schools.
The Justice Department website stated that the meeting’s goal is to “understand the historical landscape of religious freedom in an educational setting, recognize current threats to religious freedom in education, and identify opportunities to ensure religious freedom in this future context.”
“No one should come between God and believers,” says the panel chair.
Lt. Colonel Texas, chair of the group, Governor Dan Patrick said the committee’s goal is to increase Americans’ understanding of religious rights and operate under the premise that “no one should come between God and his followers.”
“We are primarily a Christian nation, but this committee represents all faiths, because that is what our founders intended and people of all faiths,” he said.
The committee includes Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but there are no Muslims or members of other minority religious organizations. The Ray Leader’s advisory committee has Muslim representatives.
Patrick later said Trump’s White House Faith Office was “the first faith office ever established by the White House president.”
But Trump’s office was also replaced by former President Joe Biden’s White House faith-based neighbourhood partnership, and was still under former President Barack Obama. Former President George W. Bush established the White House office for faith-based community initiatives within days of taking office in 2001.
New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan expressed his gratitude to Trump at the hearing, saying he “takes religious freedom seriously and is realistically aware of the threats we are under today.”
He also referred to the “Bible Virtue of Patriotism.” He said he would be passionate about the committee’s work.
Three young people spoke to the committee with testimony about saying they were facing censorship in public schools because of their Christian beliefs.
They included Lydia Booth. He explained that he was told he could not wear a “Yes Love Me” mask at a Mississippi school. Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on Booth’s behalf.
“God can use something as small as this mask to ensure that our amazing nation remains free,” Booth said.
The first hearing to protect religious freedom and strikes
At the first hearing of the committee, also held at the Bible Museum, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondy said religious freedom was “attacked” and vowed that the Trump administration would protect religious freedom from “new threats.”
“The federal government has conspired to protect these threats, becoming the biggest threat itself,” Bondi said before listing events under Biden’s administration.
Several people left during Bondi’s speech.
“Most Americans believe that separation between the church and the state is good for both, and their voices are not heard at all by this committee,” he said.
Trump’s actions on religious freedom
Trump established the committee in February with an executive order on May 1, following the establishment of the White House Faith Office.
The administration also issued a memo outlining federal workers’ rights to religious expression in the workplace in August. The memo mainly repeats existing policies that date back at least to the administration of former President Bill Clinton, but some experts say that the recent memo focuses on Christianity and Jewish religious expression, and pays little attention to the potential risks of such expressions, such as religious coercion.
The committee’s next hearing, which also focuses on “religious freedom in education,” will take place on September 29th.
Brieanna Frank is USA Today’s first revised reporting fellow. Contact her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.
Reports on the First Amendment issue for USA Today are funded through collaborations between the Freedom Forum and Journalism’s fundraising partners. Funders do not provide editor input.
