A United Methodist Insight Editorial | Sept. 8, 2025
President Trump, I have a hot flash for you – religion never left America. At least not the utterly corrupt religio-fascist practice you have in mind. What’s more, those of us who’ve practiced our respective religions faithfully for generations aren’t about to let you force your White “Christian” nationalism down the throats of our children.
Your announcement about returning prayer to schools is both ridiculous and alarming. It’s ridiculous because prayer never left school; any student, teacher or administrator can pray anytime, anywhere. It’s alarming because the official imposition of one set of religious beliefs on a multifaith society violates everyone’s rights under the First Amendment to be free of government-established religion. Hate to beat a tired metaphor, but that’s what the Nazis did – turn their political beliefs into a cult, with Der Fuhrer as its god.
What you want isn’t religious freedom. You want everyone to conform to a corrupt idea of Christianity that will reinforce your authoritarian politics. That’s what the guidelines you’ll dictate to the Department of (Mis)Education are all about.
The only one attacking freedom of religion in the United States is you, Mr. President, and your far-right cohorts.
I can’t speak for any other believers, but I know I’m going to fight your latest abomination with all my might. I’m doing it for a boy named Michael.
Michael was one of my elementary school classmates. Every morning until I was in fifth grade, our class would recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer. When we started to pray, Michael would leave the room and stand outside in the hall until we finished.
Michael was Jewish.
My 10-year-old self never understood why Michael stood in the hall. I thought maybe he was being punished. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down school-sponsored prayer that I understood what an insult it was for Michael to be singled out because he and his family practiced a different religion from us Christian kids.
These days there are youngsters with more different religion in our public schools. The Pew Research Center says there are 7.5 million Jews in America. There are around 3.3 million Hindus. There are 4 million Muslims. Both Pew and Public Religion Research Institute estimate that Buddhists are around 1 percent of the U.S. population, somewhere between 1 million and 4 million people.
That’s not all. Professor Google’s AI assistant says, “smaller numbers of people also identify with other faiths, including Sikhism, Daoism, Baha'i Faith, Zoroastrianism, and other spiritual practices like Unitarian Universalism and Wicca.”
Are you going to go after them in the same way you’ve dispatched your personal military force, i.e. ICE, to go after brown-skinned people who speak Spanish? Are you going to re-ignite “witch trials” to persecute Wiccans, or incite religions to fight one another the way your pal Modi has in India?
As a lifelong Christian, I don’t follow my neighbors non-Christian beliefs, but I demand they have the right to follow their consciences and not to have the government force one kind of religion upon them.
So, get ready, Mr. President. I’m not the only American believer who’s devoted to the constitutional right of freedom of religion, not least because religion isn’t under attack in the United States. The only one attacking freedom of religion in the United States is you, Mr. President, and your far-right cohorts. You don’t speak for me or for most of us faithful, and we’re not going to let you get away with what you’re planning.
So help us, God.
Cynthia B. Astle
Photo by Taylor Walters Denyer
Cynthia B. Astle is Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and views for, by and about marginalized and under-served United Methodists.