On the National Day of Prayer, May 2, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Religious Liberty Commission. The White House said the agency is designed to protect Americans’ fundamental right to freely practice their faith and to counter growing threats to religious communities.
“We are bringing religion back to our country,” Donald Trump said during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, adding that America can only be a great nation when it is a nation under God, he added.
According to the executive order, the newly created commission is to perform several key tasks:
Prepare a thorough report on the historical foundations of religious freedom in the United States.
Develop strategies to increase awareness of the American model of peaceful religious pluralism.
Assess contemporary threats to religious freedom and propose ways to protect it for future generations.
The commission’s priorities include: protecting parents’ rights to religious education, supporting freedom of conscience and choice of educational facilities, responding to attacks on churches and religious communities, ensuring freedom of speech for religious organizations, and protecting the autonomy of religious institutions.
The Commission will include representatives of various faiths, rights activists, scholars, clergy, and government officials. They will advise the White House and the Domestic Policy Council on religious freedom issues, and prepare recommendations for legislative and executive decisions.
The administration seeks to protect all people of faith and their freedom — not just in America, but around the world, Trump stressed.
He also criticized the policies of the previous administration, accusing it of persecuting “peaceful Christians” and ignoring anti-Christian violence. The official White House statement claims that the previous administration systematically restricted religious freedom, in particular, of religious organizations that did not support government policies.
The creation of the Commission is presented as an important step to protect religious freedom, which has been called the heart of American identity, both nationally and globally.
A few months earlier, Trump announced the creation of a task force led by Attorney General Pam Bondi to combat “anti-Christian bias” in federal agencies. Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, he said the government must stop discriminating against Christians in agencies such as the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service.
