US President Donald Trump has announced the creation of a White House faith office and a federal task force aimed at tackling what he describes as anti-Christian discrimination within the government.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Trump said his experience surviving two assassination attempts last year had deepened his faith, declaring that the new initiative would protect Christians from alleged government bias.
“The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI, and other agencies,” Trump said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi will lead the task force, which Trump said would focus on prosecuting crimes against Christians and eliminating federal policies deemed hostile to religious believers. He did not provide specific examples of anti-Christian discrimination but has previously accused the Biden administration of using government agencies to target religious conservatives.
A Shift Toward Religious Governance
Trump also signed an executive order establishing a White House Faith Office, which will be led by Rev. Paula White, his longtime spiritual adviser. The office mirrors a similar initiative from his first term, which regularly consulted evangelical leaders. Additionally, Trump announced plans to create a new commission on religious liberty, criticizing what he called the Biden administration’s “persecution” of anti-abortion activists.
“If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country,” Trump said.
His remarks, while framed as a call for unity, also struck a partisan tone. At a second prayer breakfast in Washington, he celebrated recent crackdowns on what he termed “woke” policies and pledged to defend Christian values.
Constitutional Questions
The move is likely to reignite debates over the separation of church and state, with critics arguing that the First Amendment prohibits government endorsement of a specific religion. Trump’s announcement comes just months after the Biden administration introduced plans to combat anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry, as well as antisemitism.
Trump has increasingly positioned himself as a champion of conservative Christian values, frequently invoking divine intervention in his survival from last year’s assassination attempts. “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he has told supporters.
White evangelical Christians remain a key bloc in Trump’s political base, with his policies often aligning with their concerns over social change and cultural shifts.
The National Prayer Breakfast, historically a bipartisan event, has undergone changes in recent years. In 2023, lawmakers distanced themselves from the private religious group that previously organized it, leading to a split into two separate events—one for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and another private gathering for religious leaders and supporters.