by Jerry Newcombe, New American Prophet, ©2025
(Feb. 21, 2025) — Is religious liberty at stake in our time? President Trump has established a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias to eliminate discrimination within the federal government.
The President has appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi to head this project. The goal is to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government.”
Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com reports, “In his address [announcing the task force], President Trump also highlighted the importance of prosecuting acts of violence and vandalism against Christians. He pledged to ‘move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.’”
To many believers, Trump’s pro-religious freedom stance is most welcome. Furthermore, I believe that the founders of America would applaud this—including those we could call the patron saints of the ACLU.
The Christian faith played an indisputable role in the founding of America. The Supreme Court reviewed all the evidence in the Trinity decision of 1892, where they declared, “this is a Christian nation.” And because America began as a Christian nation, people of all faiths or no faiths are welcome here.
A review of the facts of history show that the founders had no intention to banish religion from the public square. Let me marshal examples just from those who gave us the Constitution, which today is sometimes used as a club against religious freedom.
At the time of our Constitutional convention, progress was so slow at first because of their many conflicts, some even despaired that they might not finish the task. Yet at the darkest moment during that hot summer of 1787, Ben Franklin—one of the least religious of the founding fathers—got up and gave an impassioned speech, imploring them that they needed God’s help to finish the task.
Franklin declared, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, can an empire rise without His aid?”
He continued, “We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.”
A variation of Franklin’s request for prayer was adopted, the founders prayed together (on July 4th), and the Constitution was finished a few months later.
James Madison, a key architect of the Constitution, called the freedom of conscience “the most sacred of all property.” He was a part of the committee that hired chaplains for the legislature and for the military.
Banish religion from the public square? Not according to the “father of the Constitution,” as some people call Madison.
Read the rest here.