The new religious right has turned against the old religious right.
Or, to put it another way, the focus of the movement is changing. I spent more than 20 years defending religious liberty in federal courts. Our objective was to defend liberty so that religious organizations enjoyed the liberty to do good, free from state discrimination.
Yet now the focus of Christian right isn’t on the defense of liberty; it’s on the accumulation of power. And it is using that power to impose its will, including by imposing its will on Christian organizations it has decided are woke or opposed to President Trump’s agenda.
Few things illustrate that reality more clearly than the Trump administration’s decision to unilaterally — and often unlawfully — defund Christian organizations, including evangelical organizations, that serve poor and marginalized people at home and abroad.
In the first three weeks of his administration, Trump issued a series of stop-work orders and funding freezes that effectively yanked funding from religious groups that have been providing lifesaving care to many of the most vulnerable people in the world.
Caritas International, a confederation of international Catholic relief agencies, has warned that the cuts are “catastrophic” and said that the “ruthless and chaotic” way that the administration has made its cuts “threatens the lives and dignity of millions.”
The Trump administration’s cuts are immaterial to the deficit. U.S.A.I.D.’s foreign assistance constituted less than 1 percent of the federal budget, for example. All direct foreign aid (including the surge in aid to Ukraine) adds up to a mere 1.17 percent of total government spending in the 2023 fiscal year.
Yet cuts to foreign aid endanger people’s lives, including those of Afghan refugees who risked everything helping Americans during our longest war.
The cuts are also symbolic. They demonstrate the extent to which Trump is influencing the evangelical church more than the church is influencing him.
So what happened? The answer is complex, but two factors stand out. The Republican Christian right made a hard turn against immigration and, in its most extreme political faction, is turning against empathy itself.