What would a second Trump presidency mean for religious freedom?

On June 1, 2020, then-President Donald Trump walked from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church, taking the place of protesters who had been cleared out with tear gas and other anti-riot measures.
He stood in front of the church holding a Bible, posing for what would become one of the most iconic images of his presidency. He briefly spoke about safety and the United States being the greatest country in the world.
The next day, Trump released an executive order on international religious freedom. It urged federal officials to prioritize protecting people of faith in their work overseas and mandated additional training on religion for U.S. diplomats.
“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative,” the order said.
As Trump seeks a second term in the White House, law and religion experts are debating which of those two days best characterizes his relationship with religious freedom — the first, when his references to religion sowed anger and division, or the second, when he used his power to make the world a safer place.
The fact that Trump’s four years in office contained dozens of both types of days helps explain why he’s a polarizing figure among religious voters.
Some religious liberty advocates ignore Trump’s faith-related PR problems and focus, instead, on the legal protections they secured when he was in office. Others say his divisive comments threaten religious freedom in the long run.
The bottom line is that there are multiple ways to tell the story of Trump and religious freedom — and multiple ways a second Trump presidency could go.
The gap between what Trump says about religion and does on religious freedom became apparent before he was elected in 2016.
As a candidate, Trump stirred faith-related tensions by heaping praise on evangelical Christians and stoking fears about minority faith groups. He suggested that Muslims should be barred from entering the country even as he promised to defend and expand religious freedom laws.
After he took office, Trump continued to invite faith-related controversies with his comments, but he appointed officials who took religious freedom rights seriously.
Over the next four years, those officials worked to expand legal protections for faith-based organizations and to defend a wide range of people of faith.
They made it easier for religious nonprofits to participate in federal funding programs, enabled mosques to be built, protected religious employers with moral objections to birth control and clarified how to apply the religion clauses in a variety of federal rules.
“You could listen to some of things Trump said or the ways he said them and take a lot of offense if you stopped there. But if you actually dove into what was happening in various areas, you’d find a quite different tale,” said Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance.
Trump also appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who are receptive to religious freedom claims. His State Department launched an annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, an event that was — and remains — religiously and politically diverse.
But throughout his presidency, Trump couldn’t shake the accusation that he inappropriately prioritized conservative Christian concerns.
He was criticized for allowing evangelicals to dominate his faith-based advisory council and for speaking, at times, like the U.S. is meant to be a Christian nation, not one that offers religious freedom for all.
As the 2020 presidential election approached, faith groups that had long partnered on religious freedom initiatives were singing two different tunes: Trump was either a long-awaited hero or someone who was getting religious liberty all wrong.
Those two takes on Trump remain present in the 2024 election, although Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy has shifted the significance of certain parts of Trump’s reputation.
For example, Trump’s close relationship with evangelicals stands out more when it’s compared to Harris’ religious background than it did when it was measured against President Joe Biden.
Harris was not only the product of an interfaith marriage, but she also chose one herself when she fell in love with Doug Emhoff.
She’s likely the first presidential candidate to be personally linked to most of the world’s major religions, and those relationships help her champion religious freedom at home and abroad, religion experts told the Deseret News this summer.
On other religious freedom issues, Trump compares more favorably with Harris than he did with Biden, at least among more moderate or conservative religious voters.
Harris is seen by many as someone who prioritizes her support for progressive causes, like LGBTQ rights and abortion access, over her support for religious freedom protections. They worry she sometimes ignores or undervalues concerns raised by conservative religious groups.
Trump, on the other hand, earns praise for being sensitive to religious freedom concerns. In a February survey, Pew Research Center found that 61% of Protestant Christians and 52% of Catholics believe he stands up “a great deal” or “quite a bit” for people with religious beliefs like theirs.
Just as there are multiple ways to the tell the story of Trump and religious freedom, there are multiple ways to describe the current state of religious freedom in the U.S.
To some, including prominent political commentator David French, religious liberty has never been more secure. To others, it’s decidedly under attack.
Carlson-Thies explained that the divide stems, in part, from how differently religious freedom is treated in different parts of the country and at different levels of the legal system.
Even as the Supreme Court hands victory after victory to religious plaintiffs, state-level judges are limiting when and how faith-based organizations can operate according to their beliefs.
“In that respect, you can have clear examples of religious freedom advancing and still have a lot of reason to be concerned. … It’s a complicated picture,” Carlson-Thies said.
For people of faith who are anxious about the future, Trump’s approach to religious freedom is appealing. Just as they were during his first term, they’re willing now to forgive harsh comments or awkward photo shoots if they’re paired with substantial policy wins.
But there’s a growing sense even in more conservative circles that to truly protect religious freedom over the next four years, Trump would need to shift his technique. It’s important right now to win back skeptics of religious liberty protections, not encourage further unrest.
“The next administration has to really take seriously that we’re a nation of communities of different convictions and ask, ‘How can the government help them live together?’” Carlson-Thies said.