Trump boosts school prayer, faith groups as he rallies base
WASHINGTON — In a bid to solidify his evangelical base, President Trump took steps Thursday to give religious organizations easier access to federal programs and he reaffirmed students’ rights to pray in public schools.
Under orders from Trump, nine Cabinet departments proposed rules intended to remove “regulatory burdens” on religious organizations participating in federal programs by eliminating a requirement that they refer people to alternative providers upon request. Much of that follows through on an executive order Trump from 2018 that aims to put religious groups on equal footing when competing for federal grants and other funding.
At the same time, the Education Department issued its first updated guidance on school prayer since 2003. While Trump promised “big action” this month, the new guidance appears to make few major changes.
The expansion of faithbased groups’ ability to participate in government programs is a significant show of support for an evangelical constituency long a vital part of Trump’s base and it follows a Christian magazine’s call for his removal from office.
A directive orders states to verify that school districts have no policies limiting constitutionally protected prayer and to refer violators to the Education Department. That’s much like the 2003 guidance, but the directive goes further in requiring states to provide ways for making complaints against schools.
Students can pray on their own or together during lunch or other free times, for example, and student speakers can pray at assemblies or sports games as long as they weren’t chosen to speak based on their religious perspectives, according to the guidance.
“Our actions today will protect the constitutional rights of students, teachers, and faithbased institutions,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement.
Civil rights advocates said the administration risked empowering discriminatory behavior in the name of religious freedom.
The regulations “will make it more difficult to access critical social services, just because someone is LGBTQ or a different faith,” the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted. “It’s 2020 and religious freedom is STILL not a license to harm others.”
But Johnnie Moore, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, lauded the moves as a fresh sign of Trump’s commitment to religious freedom.
“The White House isn’t saying whether one should pray or to whom or what they should pray to,” Moore said by email. He added that “they are simply making it clear that in the United States students have First Amendment rights also, and our ‘separation of church and state’ wasn’t intended to suppress a vibrant religious life in America but to facilitate it.”
About 8 in 10 selfidentified white evangelical Protestants approved of Trump’s performance, according to APNORC polling last month. But the president has nonetheless moved to shore up his already strong connection to this bloc since an editorial in the magazine Christianity Today called for his removal from office.
Public schools have been barred from leading students in classroom prayer since 1962, when the Supreme Court said it violated a First Amendment clause forbidding the establishment of a government religion. Later decisions extended the ban to school graduation ceremonies and, under certain circumstances, school athletic games.