Mike Farris, general counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters, attended the first meeting of the task force as a witness Tuesday. He attended after defending his own church, Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia, when the church’s tax-exempt status was threatened in 2022.
That threat from the Biden administration came after a sermon preached by Pastor Gary Hamrick during the 2020 election season.
The meeting, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, revealed that Cornerstone Chapel’s plight was far from the only example of using government resources to intimidate and persecute Christians during Joe Biden’s administration, Farris said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Poor treatment of Christ followers is what made the task force necessary, but under Trump the tone is changing, Farris said.
Farris was a qualified source for the task force because he had the unique perspective at Cornerstone Chapel of serving as an elder while also serving as the church’s legal counsel from his position then with Alliance Defending Freedom.
“I’ve been in some high-level (government) meetings. It was the most encouraging meeting I’ve ever been in for my entire political career,” Farris told show host Jody Hice.
Heavy hitters on task force
The room was filled with Cabinet members and other high-ranking government personnel who talked about “the kind of anti-Christian actions they had found that their departments had been committing under the Biden administration and what they were doing about it,” he said.
There are examples in so many walks of life.
AFN has covered extensively the Department of Justice arresting and prosecuting Christians, many of them elderly and harmless grandparents, for violating the federal FACE Act at abortion clinics.
That federal prosecution came after Democrats, angered over the Dobbs abortion ruling, vowed revenge against the other side and used the FACE Act and the DOJ to do it.
Only a pardon from President Trump freed some of those pro-lifers from a prison sentence for their non-violent actions.
The same DOJ seemed to sit on its hands when pro-life pregnancy centers, and churches, too, were targeted by abortion supporters with vandalism and even fire bombings. Those attacks that numbered over 100 incidents qualified as domestic terrorism but went mostly ignored.
There was also an in-your-face example of FBI officials labeling conservative Catholics potential domestic terrorists, which was then used as a pretext to spy on them at church.
The are less obvious instances where Christians aren't specifically mentioned, but their beliefs are targeted, such as the insistence that all Americans celebrate the LGBTQ Pride movement.
Critics, however, contend the task force is an attempt to emphasize evangelical Christianity over other religious minorities and will undermine the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) lashed out at the announcement earlier this week of a department-wide investigation into allegations of Christian bias within the Veterans Administration.
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While religious discrimination must be forbidden and fought, this internal VA memo lacks any factual basis or rationale,” said Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “It raises the specter of dividing the veteran community and favoring some religions over others.”
Not all critics of the task force are Democrats.
Combatting Christian bias is “needed,” Todd Herman, host of "A Disciple’s View" on American Family Radio, told listeners Wednesday.
But he doesn’t believe a task force is the way to address it.
“There is a clear and evident anti-Christian bias that had metastasized into government, and some of it … it isn’t even guessing that it’s there. It’s there," he told his audience. "You can start with our military being warned that Christians, who also have an affection for the Constitution, are quite likely to also be domestic extremists here to destroy the country."
Radio host: Bondi needs to do more
Herman, who praises the Trump administration on his show, opposed the appointment of Bondi as attorney general.
She hasn’t done enough to go after many other states – not just Maine – that are violating Trump’s executive order on gender and protection for women’s sports and public spaces, Herman argued.
Nor has Bondi done enough to enforce federal immigration and drug laws when open violation exists in states like Washington, California and others, he said.
“She’s not having success in defending the President against rogue judges. She’s done nothing. She’s on Fox News a bunch,” he said.
So, in addition to Bondi failing at her job so far, the radio host argued, the task force isn't necessary. Rather, he said, the Department of Justice should prosecute persecution of Christians as incidents arise, such as violations of civil rights for in public schools and in the workplace.
Trump signed the executive order creating the task force Feb. 6, citing numerous offenses by the Biden administration including the FBI memo suggesting that “radical traditionalist” Catholics were terror threats and suggesting infiltrating Catholic churches as “threat mitigation.”
Trump also established a White House “Faith Office” in February.
Two of its members, Gary Bauer and Robert Jeffress, say the President is serious about protecting Christians.
“If they find in any part of the bureaucracy, people engaged in anti-Christian bigotry, I think it's more than possible that those individuals will end up possibly losing their jobs,” said Bauer, a former staff member in the Reagan administration and longtime voice in support of Christian faith issues.
Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, said Trump “believes that Christianity has been marginalized in our country and in our world, and that any bias, especially from government about Christianity, needs to be rooted out.”
Biden and the race card
The Biden administration applied different standards for its prosecution of churches, Farris said, noting that in preparation for a lawsuit his group obtained video evidence from “multiple campaigns” of Biden himself walking into a church service and receiving an endorsement.
Black congregations have traditionally supported Democrat candidates.
“One pastor led the church in chanting, ‘Go Joseph! Go Joseph,’ and others just openly endorsed him,” Farris said.
There have been no known investigations by the Biden administration into the political activities of black churches.
“It was made clear yesterday that religious discrimination of any kind is illegal under our system, and that they were going to enforce the law against any person who violated that principle. But the reality is the most common attacks in this country today are against Christians, Bible-believing conservative Christians and serious Catholics,” Farris said.
