Martyrs don’t bend the knee — even to the state



In 1535, Saint Thomas More went to his death, not in defiance of his king but in ultimate service to both God and England. His final words — “I die the king’s faithful servant, and God’s first” — captured the essence of true religious liberty: the freedom to fulfill the duty to worship God rightly. As the patron saint of religious liberty, More challenges lawmakers and church leaders to renew their commitment to defending that sacred duty.

To More, religious liberty wasn’t just freedom from state interference. It meant the freedom to obey God, even at the cost of his life. His last declaration made clear that duty to God comes before any loyalty to civil authority. Pope Leo XIII put it plainly in “Immortale Dei”: “We are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.”

When laws hinder the duty to worship God rightly, they chip away at the foundation of religious liberty the founders meant to preserve.

More lived this principle, choosing martyrdom over surrender to the world. His death makes clear that real freedom begins with obedience to God — a truth rooted in the moral obligations of human nature. To defend religious liberty is to affirm the duty to give God the worship He deserves, a duty no earthly power — not even a king — can rightly deny.

America’s founders understood this well. They saw religious liberty not as license, but as the right to fulfill one’s duty to God. James Madison wrote, “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

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America’s founders drafted the Constitution with the understanding that citizens would practice their religious duties — not as optional acts, but as essential to a free and moral society. As John Adams put it, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

That understanding now faces growing threats. When laws hinder the duty to worship God rightly, they chip away at the foundation of religious liberty the founders meant to preserve. Consider the case of Colorado baker Jack Phillips. For refusing to make cakes that violated his faith, Phillips endured more than a decade of legal battles, fines, protests, and business losses. He wasn’t seeking special treatment — he simply wanted to live out his faith. Although the Supreme Court eventually sided with him, the fight drained years of his life and resources. Religious liberty delayed for a decade amounts to religious liberty denied.

True religious freedom, as More and the founders envisioned it, demands strong protections for people and institutions to live out their beliefs in every area of life, not just within a sanctuary or under the narrow shelter of exemptions.

To fulfill the vision of religious liberty embodied by Thomas More and upheld by America’s founders, Americans must renew their commitment to strengthening religious institutions through laws that promote the common good. Elected leaders cannot separate their faith from their public responsibilities. Religious truth shapes just governance.

Having just celebrated Religious Liberty Week, we would do well to recall More’s words: “God’s first.” True religious liberty begins with the duty to worship God as He commands. That duty forms the bedrock of a free and just society.

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Secularists think they won at the Supreme Court — but they’ll lose in the end



The Supreme Court disappointed Christians when it deadlocked in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond.

The justices' 4-4 split keeps in place the ruling of the Oklahoma Supreme Court that St. Isidore of Seville Virtual School may not operate as a charter school in the state — for now, anyway.

Denying American families access to the winning combination of a Catholic charter school is not only unconstitutional but also unconscionable.

The court’s “non-decision decision” came about, in part, because Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. Barrett did not explain her reasons, but her close ties to Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Clinic and her friendship with a chief adviser to the school likely played a role.

How this happened

In the face of progressive accusations of unethical behavior, the justices recently agreed to a code of conduct that represents “a codification of principles” governing their conduct. Importantly, a justice is “presumed impartial” and “has an obligation to sit unless disqualified.” The code adds, presciently, that “the absence of one Justice risks the affirmance of a lower court decision by an evenly divided Court — potentially preventing the Court from providing a uniform national rule of decision on an important issue.”

Back in 2003, Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett once served as a law clerk, denied a motion for his recusal based on his friendship with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a named party in a case before the Court.

"The people must have confidence in the integrity of the Justices, and that cannot exist in a system that assumes them to be corruptible by the slightest friendship or favor, and in an atmosphere where the press will be eager to find foot-faults," Scalia wrote.

In any event, what is done is done. And more importantly, Barrett’s recusal is not binding for future cases.

The victory that wasn’t

Secularists and opponents of school choice have been celebrating the outcome, even though split decisions do not constitute binding legal precedent.

As Notre Dame Law Professor and Supreme Court scholar Richard Garnett observed, “The do-nothing denouement in this particular round of litigation does not preclude other courts, in other cases, from vindicating the no-discrimination rule and permitting religious schools to participate in charter-school programs.”

Garnett is right. The twin religion clauses of the First Amendment — the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause — permit certification of religious schools like St. Isidore’s as charter schools.

Take, for example, the court’s recent decisions involving the Free Exercise guarantee and school choice initiatives. When the court struck down the “No-Aid” provision in Montana’s state constitution that excluded religious schools and families from a publicly funded scholarship program for students attending private schools, Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed the Free Exercise Clause’s demand for fairness.

“A state need not subsidize private education,” he observed. “But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

Similarly, in Carson v. Makin, the court found that Maine violated the Constitution when it excluded religious schools from participating in a voucher program for rural students. Roberts, again writing for the court, explained that “the State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”

No clause against faith

Allowing religious schools such as St. Isidore’s to participate in a state’s charter school program is merely a natural application of this principle of fairness. But what about the Establishment Clause?

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond argued that certifying St. Isidore’s as a charter school would violate the Establishment Clause.

His argument has some appeal, particularly for secularists who want public schools to have a virtual monopoly over America’s educational system. Granted, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause prohibits public schools from providing religious instruction. Private schools, by contrast, are free to do so. Charter schools receive public funding, but they are privately established and controlled schools with minimal regulatory oversight by the government.

Consequently, charter schools are not state actors. And because they are not state actors, a charter school’s endorsement of any particular religion does not constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Success secularism can't match

Charter schools currently exist in 45 states and the District of Columbia. A recent study reveals that charter-school students “show greater academic gains than their peers in traditional public schools.” The study also found that “charter students in poverty had stronger growth, equal to seventeen additional days of learning in math and twenty-three additional days of learning in reading, than their [traditional public school] peers in poverty.”

As for the benefits of a Catholic education, Catholic school students “continue to outpace public schools in math and reading, while public school student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels and reading scores continue to decline following a sobering trend last reported in 2022.”

Denying American families access to the winning combination of a Catholic charter school, then, is not only unconstitutional but also unconscionable.

The split decision affirming the Oklahoma Supreme Court means that families in the Sooner State cannot yet benefit from the stellar Catholic education offered by St. Isidore's as a charter school.

Still, it needs repeating: The order does not set precedent. The question of whether the Constitution allows a state to exclude religious schools from its charter program is not settled.

A call for clarification will likely be before the court soon and, with a full bench, we should expect that principles of fairness and religious freedom will prevail.

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Why Trump's religious liberty agenda terrifies the left — but tells the truth



In a Rose Garden ceremony on May 1, the National Day of Prayer, President Donald Trump announced the creation of a Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty. Even though I couldn’t be there, I knew about the commission because I have the honor of being one of its members.

I can hardly say how much religious liberty means to me, and I was thrilled to know we have a president who understands its vital importance — and sees how scandalously it has been under attack in recent years.

This is the very soul of our republic: a nation grounded in God-given rights, moral clarity, and the enduring belief that freedom begins with the liberty of conscience.

But one is hardly surprised the secular left did not respond well to the announcement, carping that the commission was formed for ulterior motives, hidden agendas, and division.

The folks at Politico, for example, accused the president of “brushing aside separation of church and state,” thereby trumpeting their willful misunderstanding of the famous phrase.

Of course, “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution, but it does appear in a letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist congregation in my hometown of Danbury, Connecticut, in 1802. It represents an utterly central idea about religious liberty, one that is precisely the opposite of what secularists have been twisting it to mean for decades.

Religious liberty means that churches must be protected from the state, not that the state needs to be protected from churches. Jefferson was reassuring the Danbury Baptists that the government would never interfere with their right to worship — nor banish religion from public life.

But secularists persist in pretending that it means the opposite.

The Constitution itself says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This idea underscoresthe centrality of the “exercise” of religion in public life and clarifies that government cannot mandate what kind of religion people practice.

It is that simple.

Far from erasing religion from public life, or preventing believers from shaping public policy or living out their faith in society, the Constitution protects these things.

The origins of our country tell a beautiful story: It was founded as a safe haven from government-mandated worship.

Those who seek to denude our country of religious influence are at odds with our history, our Constitution, and our founders’ vision. Fundamentalist secularists put forth a destructive distortion of our founders’ vision and undermine precisely what has made our country a beacon of hope and justice for people of every faith.

This commission’s goal is to strengthen the liberty of every single American — regardless of that person’s faith and even of whether that person has any faith. It also aims to restore those liberties attacked by hostile and misguided secularists.

Our Declaration of Independence states that our liberties come from God — not from government. It says that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and “among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What could be clearer?

In my book "If You Can Keep It," I discuss how the founders understood that self-government and liberty presupposed a virtuous citizenry, a virtue that comes from religious faith. Power corrupts, so without faith and virtue, freedom would eventually turn on itself.

The idea is this: While the government must never mandate faith, it must vigorously preserve religious liberty so that faith is not crushed by government power.

Trump's Religious Liberty Commission gets this right. Government must be kept out of religion. His EO declares: “It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.”

This is not about establishing any religion but about protecting the freedom to believe, to speak, and to live according to one’s conscience. Nowhere does the EO limit what religion this is to be.

America has been and must continue to be a haven for freedom of speech and thought, which is exactly what the founders envisioned: a country where “religious voices and views are integral to a vibrant public square,” where “religious people and institutions are free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or hostility from the government.”

This vision stretches back to the early settlers: Pilgrims, Quakers, Baptists, and others who fled Europe to escape religious persecution. They sought a land where they could freely choose, follow, and express their faith.

The Religious Liberty Commission honors their legacy by safeguarding that right.

The goal of the Commission is to protect:

  • The First Amendment rights of pastors, religious leaders, houses of worship, faith-based institutions, and religious speakers.
  • Attacks across America on houses of worship of many religions.
  • De-banking of religious entities.
  • The rights of teachers, students, military chaplains, service members, employers, and employees.
  • Conscience protections in health care and vaccine mandates.
  • Parental rights in education and religious instruction.
  • Government displays with religious imagery.
  • The right of all Americans to freely exercise their faith without fear or government censorship.

These are not just Christian issues. These are human liberty issues. They apply to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and those of any or no faith.

Unsurprisingly the biggest concern of the legacy media is the LGBTQ agenda, which, of course, is markedly at odds with many religions. Sharia law reserves some of its harshest punishments for same-sex relationships. So why do these critics describe the commission as a “Christian nationalist” exercise other than as a cynical and calculated smear?

As I’ve written about in several of my books, it was the silence of the churches in Germany in the 1930s that led to the rise of Nazis and opened the door to unspeakable evils. The Religious Liberty Commission simply allows a platform for religious voices to be heard, and it reaffirms that America is a nation where faith can thrive without government interference.

The founders made that promise back in 1791, and while it’s tragic that we’ve come to the point where we need our president to reaffirm this, we must support his action.

The Religious Liberty Commission fulfills what the founders envisioned — a nation where faith is not censored but celebrated. A place where believers are not exiled from the public square but welcomed as full participants in our democracy.

This is the very soul of our republic: a nation grounded in God-given rights, moral clarity, and the enduring belief that freedom begins with the liberty of conscience.

This commission is not merely constitutional. It’s courageous. And it’s exactly what America needs.

I, for one, am immensely humbled that I can work alongside President Trump and the magnificent members of this commission to ensure the religious liberty of every American can be protected so that it can thrive. I pray that our society would lean into our heritage, that we would follow God first, and that liberty would continue to thrive.

May God continue to bless our nation for His purposes in history.

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100+ civil rights lawyers quit over Trump's ban on 'woke ideology,' Harmeet Dhillon tells Glenn Beck



More than 100 attorneys with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division have resigned from their roles following President Donald Trump's shift in priorities, an official told Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck.

During a Friday interview with Beck, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, stated that over 100 lawyers quit after the DOJ announced the agency's new direction under the Trump administration.

'We're also going after the notorious anti-Semitic violence and discrimination happening throughout the United States, but specifically on American college campuses.'

Beck asked Dhillon about the agency's massive turnover, which some have reportedly referred to as a "bloodbath."

Dhillon called it "colorful rhetoric," noting that "none of these people had the guts to attach their names to these colorful quotes."

She explained that many attorneys in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division have accepted the Trump administration's severance package offer, which allows them to continue receiving pay for "several months."

Dhillon stated that she has not fired anyone in her division since starting the position earlier this month.

"What we have made very clear last week in memos to each of the 11 sections in the Civil Rights Division is that our priorities under President Trump are going to be somewhat different than they were under [former] President Biden," Dhillon told Beck.

After outlining the president's priorities, many chose to walk away, she explained.

"En masse, dozens and now over 100 attorneys decided that they'd rather not do what their job requires them to do," Dhillon continued. "And I think that's fine because we don't want people in the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go persecute police departments based on statistical evidence or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of [those committing] violence."

"That's not the job here," she declared. "The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology."

According to Dhillon, roughly 200 to 300 attorneys are currently in the Civil Rights Division.

Dhillon explained that the newly vacated positions would be filled by new lawyers who will be tasked with prioritizing the protection of religious liberty and the Second Amendment.

"The president signed an executive order targeting anti-Christian bias in federal agencies, and that tallies with some of our civil rights agenda, which is to protect the rights of people of faith throughout the United States," she told Beck.

"We're also going after the notorious anti-Semitic violence and discrimination happening throughout the United States, but specifically on American college campuses," Dhillon added.

The DOJ plans to use the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act, which was passed to protect women seeking to access abortion clinics, to "aggressively go after" attacks on prenatal care facilities.

"There were more than 200 incidents in the last few years of those facilities where people were counseled about their choices, about abortion, about keeping the baby. Those facilities have been violently attacked by activists with no action by law enforcement, federal or state," Dhillon said.

In order to pursue the long list of civil rights offenses the Trump DOJ has in its sights, Dhillon stated that the agency will "need more lawyers, investigators, and commitment to do that work."

"We're going to run out of attorneys to work on these things at some point," she remarked.

Dhillon told Beck that she believes the anti-Semitism cases against universities will have "a big impact."

"You don't have to sue everybody; you have to sue to make some cases stick," she explained. "I understand people are impatient. You can't build a bulletproof case against people who've been doing bad for decades in two weeks. It's not going to happen, and the case won't stick."

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