Federal officials openly violate the U.S. Constitution by pushing Christian messaging on citizens

After working hard to distance himself from Project 2025 (the Heritage Foundation’s ultra-right wing conservative blueprint for transforming the country) during his 2024 presidential campaign, convicted felon/sexual abuser/President Trump is now openly embracing it and pushing its Christian nationalist tenets onto society through government agencies.

In posts that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution by using the authority and platforms of the federal government to promote specific Christian doctrine, top Trump officials issued a wave of religious messages in December exhorting Americans to observe Christmas as an official religious celebration of “our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The U.S. government is aligning itself with Christianity, as mandated in Project 2025.

 

Project 2025 calls for establishing a government based on “biblical principles” and run by a president with sweeping national power over federal agencies. Its primary agenda is to impose Christian nationalism on citizens of the United States.

The above social media posts are manifestations of this religious agenda and as such are clear violations of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Establishment clause prohibits government from “establishing” a religion by using government to promote a single religion over all other religions, or no religion. The Free Exercise clause protects citizens’ right to practice their own religions as they please, as long as it doesn’t run afoul of a “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest.

Typical holiday messages from government agencies have been neutral and inclusive and utilized generalized imagery like winter scenes, Christmas trees and good wishes. This lets government agencies comply with the Constitution by acknowledging the holiday without overtly endorsing a single, particular faith.

But Trump is doing the opposite.

The federal government is now intentionally aligning itself with Christianity.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, a co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, says overtly religious messages emanating from government agencies “are not harmless greetings. They send a message that the federal government aligns itself with Christianity and that Americans of other faiths, or of no faith at all, are outsiders in their own country. That is divisive, unconstitutional and un-American.” Gaylor points out that the biggest single “denomination” by religious identification in the U.S. today is the religiously unaffiliated, at 29 percent of the population — larger than any one sect — including Roman Catholic, at 19 percent, or evangelical Protestants, at 23 percent. Today, Christians make up about 62 percent of the U.S. population, compared to about 90 percent in the 1990s.

The reason the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment exists is to prevent the government from favoring one religion over others, or from favoring religion over non-religion. Federal officials are always free to express their personal religious beliefs on their own time and using their personal social media platforms, but they may not use official government channels to proselytize.

The Trump administration is openly thumbing its nose at the Constitution, while the House and Senate fail to check the behavior, which is their duty.