You’d be forgiven if among all the scary national and international headlines of the past few weeks you missed the first meeting of the newly formed Religious Liberty Commission.

You may not have even heard of this Trump-appointed commission of almost entirely Christian Nationalists tasked with “safeguard(ing) and promot(ing) America’s founding principle of religious freedom.” If religious freedom is something you value, you need to add this to your list of things to follow, because the first meeting made it clear that we are headed towards the end of religious freedom for all in our country. As an atheist, that really scares me.

President Donald Trump announced the commission during the National Day of Prayer event May 1. It is responsible for creating a report with recommendations for the president, due on July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of our independence, just in case their intent to push the falsehood that the USA was founded as a Christian nation isn’t clear enough). The commission is just one of Trump’s many actions to appease his evangelical base, including his establishment of a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” in February.

Religious extremists have been messaging around “Christian discrimination” for decades. They have fabricated a narrative where they are victimized by anyone who believes, lives, loves, or looks different than they do. This effectively scares the public into putting its trust into officials who say they will protect them against “the other.” Evidence of these anti-Christian offenses that the commission is meant to investigate is twisted to privilege extremist religious beliefs over the safety and wellbeing of others.

As an example of so-called anti-Christian offenses, Attorney General Pam Bondi cited the arrest of 23 anti-abortion activists who were charged in 2020 with conspiring to storm an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. Kansans are intimately familiar with the violence directed toward abortion clinics and providers after the assassination of physician George Tiller in 2009, and we don’t need to look beyond last month’s assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband to see how religious extremists target Planned Parenthood and their supporters. Instead of understanding this, Trump pardoned all 23 activists this January.

The commission is made up of almost entirely of known right-wing Christians — including Texas Lt. Gov. and Chair Dan Patrick; former HUD secretary and vice chair Ben Carson; son of Billy Graham, disgraced evangelist Franklin Graham; former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller; lawyers from Project 2025-affiliated organizations such as First Liberty Institute and Ethics & Public Policy Center; and right-wing TV and radio hosts such as Dr. Phil. A bishop, cardinal, and rabbi round out the members in what they tout as a “diverse” representation of faiths in America.

The commission will hold several more hearings over the next year to investigate the tired list of Christian Nationalist priorities, including so-called parent rights and “school choice,” prayer in schools, vaccine mandates, government displays of religious iconography, and “anti-Christian offenses.” As expected, the other key priority voiced throughout the day was to attack the LGBTQ+ community — especially trans kids.

During this first hearing, the real objectives of the commission became abundantly clear:

• Rewrite history to make America a Christian nation. A key tenet of the Christian Nationalist political ideology is that America was founded as a Christian nation, and must return to this status to secure our future success. The commission repeatedly embraced this very narrow interpretation of key historical documents, including writings by the founders and the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Both commissioners and witnesses denied the principle of church-state separation and a secular government.
• Remake the courts with “courageous” Christian Nationalists. The courts, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court, will be the subject of many recommendations in the final commission report. The commission discussed which cases should be overturned, how Trump’s administration can assist with that, and how to make sure pesky state and local courts don’t get in the way. The Supreme Court has been chipping away at church-state separation for the past decade with crucial victories this term, but for this commission, this isn’t happening fast enough.
• Promote religion in all parts of American culture, politics, and public life (but only if it’s their version of “Christianity”). Expert witnesses referred to a divine truth — the existence of a Judeo-Christian God — as the foundation for a moral, happy, and politically good society. Many devout Americans hold similar beliefs about their faith, but also recognize that our government should not prioritize one religion in a pluralistic society. Not only does this push minority faiths and nonbelievers such as myself outside of the bounds of this “virtuous citizenry,” but it asserts that one religion (Christianity) must be imposed on every person to create and maintain this good society.

In a world where we are facing very real threats to our physical, mental, and financial health, why did I spend five excruciating hours listening to a commission whose only job is to make recommendations? The obvious answer is because these individuals were hand-selected for holding a world view that advances the Christian Nationalist agenda and threatens any religious beliefs that fall outside of this ideology. The uncomfortable truth is that this rhetoric justifies hate crimes and the dissolution of rights for women and minorities has a new platform with the divine weight of presidential approval. As a lifelong atheist, I’m scared that we’re looking at the end of church-state separation and the rise of a theocracy weaponizing religion against people who don’t fall in line.

American Atheists just announced that it will no longer be hosting the 2026 World Humanist Congress in Washington, D.C., because the “Trump Administration’s actions … have created an environment that is not only incompatible with our values but also inhospitable to members of our global secular community.” They feared for the safety of their attendees because we are no longer a country welcoming of visitors, and especially not visitors who fall outside of a specific Christian identity.

But it’s not just the secular community who should be worried right now. Every person who has found within their faith the mission to love their neighbor, feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, and embrace the stranger should be fighting for the sanctity of their beliefs. The members of the Religious Liberty Commission will not be including these priorities in their final report, and you will not find a place for your faith in their new America.

Laurel Burchfield is the advocacy director of Mainstream Coalition, where she advocates under the dome and in local communities to protect church-state separation. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

As the advocacy director for Mainstream Coalition, I had a front row seat to the harm caused to vulnerable Kansans by our elected officials this year. I sat beside deeply religious and secular Kansans as we advocated passionately for our government to respect our rights, protect our children, and care for our neighbors.

I shared their grief as we lost. Repeatedly.

More than 30 years ago, Kansas faith leaders created Mainstream Coalition to protect religious freedom and guard against the spread of religious extremism into our local, state, and federal politics. We need this mission today more than ever as the Trump administration enacts Project 2025, the Christian nationalist handbook to dismantle democracy. Every day we wake to new efforts to eliminate institutions, research and people who don’t align with their goals.

This is the Christian nationalist playbook: Impose a theocratic government and privilege “patriots” pledging allegiance to a so-called Christian nation.

But if we’re only watching for threats from D.C., then we’re blind to the attack on our rights happening in Topeka through the decimation of church-state separation. For years we’ve fought against efforts to advance a dangerous political bastardization of Christianity through state policy. That fight got a lot harder this year.

When our elected officials spend hours fighting for legislation aimed to erase transgender identities, prioritize tax relief for fetuses over working Kansans, divert millions of public dollars to private schools and Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or force a last-minute religious exemption for childhood vaccinations, they’re not doing the work of protecting the rights or pocketbooks of everyday Kansans. They are abusing their power as elected officials to force their narrow religious beliefs onto all Kansans.

This year the supermajority of the Kansas Legislature had some major “wins.”

It began with Senate Bill 63, the gender-affirming care ban. Make no mistake, this bill exists to force a narrow religious definition of “God-given biological sex” onto all Kansans. Every Republican legislator (with the exception of Emporia Rep. Mark Schreiber) supported this bill, despite the hundreds of Kansas teachers, faith leaders, parents, transgender youths, and medical providers who warned that this would put children’s lives and mental health at risk. SB 63 was the first piece of legislation sent to the governor’s desk, passed on just the 14th day of session.

Despite what legislators may have said last year while asking for your vote, their top priority wasn’t to improve the economy or reduce your taxes. No, the first thing they did in Topeka was try to erase transgender Kansans because they are a so-called “attack on the creativity of God.”

This year the supermajority (or maybe we should just acknowledge the real power under the dome — Kansans for Life, Kansas Family Voice, and the Kansas Catholic Conference) also celebrated the passage of several anti-abortion bills. Fortunately, education advocates were able to hold back expanded voucher programs that would send public dollars to unregulated private, often religious schools with a track record of using textbooks that teach that the Loch Ness Monster is proof of creationism or that slavery was Black immigration.

One bill illustrates the real power of Christian nationalists in Topeka. House Bill 2311 puts some of our most vulnerable youths, queer children in our foster care system, in harm’s way by prioritizing religious beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity over the well being of children. Extreme religious families are now legally permitted to foster or adopt a queer child and subject them to “conversion therapy,” an unethical, unproven practice that targets queer children and seeks to change their sexual and gender identities.

Legislators called this a religious freedom bill but at first failed to produce any examples of a religious household being denied a foster placement, the very problem they said so desperately needed protection in Kansas. They managed to find one unverified claim of religious discrimination before the bill was passed. This one example was touted as evidence that religious households are under attack by the state, and again ran roughshod over the dozens of opponents who said this bill would endanger children.

This is their secret weapon: Christian nationalists are skillful at escaping accountability through manipulative messaging. If a teacher is told to use a student’s chosen pronouns, then their freedom of speech is violated. If a household is denied a foster care placement because they want to “pray the gay away,” then their religious freedom is violated. If a legislator is told that they are threatening the lives of transgender youths by denying gender-affirming care, then their motives are being unjustly impugned.

They argue that they are the victims, not the innocent Kansans whose human rights and dignity they are dismantling.

Any attempt to hold Christian nationalists and their adherents accountable for their harmful actions is twisted to be a threat against not just them, but against their chosen faith and church. This was perfectly illustrated this year when the Satanic Grotto announced its plan for a “black mass” at the Statehouse. The group’s stated purpose to host a civil disobedience event to “reflect our own pain and anger of us being subjected to religion that we never gave consent to,” was immediately overshadowed by loud legislators who felt their religion was threatened by this public theater.

As the modern day religious show-down devolved into physical altercations and arrests, videos captured the loud prayers of Rep. Angela Stiens, Sen. Mike Thompson, and gubernatorial candidate Charlotte O’Hara, who were permitted to publicly display their religious beliefs inside the Statehouse without threat.

Sen. Rick Kloos summarized my dread regarding this year’s legislative session best when he preached from the Senate floor: “The day Jesus rose from the dead, we won, and we continue to win. I say it again, we already won.”

Who is the “we” that Kloos referenced? Not me. Nor is it the majority of Kansans, Christians or secular, who want our government to respect the pluralistic beliefs and constitutional rights of all Kansans. Those of us not privileged in this Christian nationalist world order are doomed to be the losers until we start holding them accountable and call out their actions for the un-Christian, theocratic agenda that begins at the federal level and trickles down to Kansas through our elected officials.

Laurel Burchfield is the advocacy director of Mainstream Coalition, where she advocates under the dome and in local communities to protect church-state separation. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.