Trump seems to want a tent revival — in the federal workplace

For most Americans, it’s common sense: You don’t harangue your coworkers because of personal beliefs and behaviors, just because they’re different from yours. Depending on your workplace, lecturing your colleagues because they are or aren’t married, do or don’t have kids, or spend their weekends woodworking instead of surfing could be recorded as anything from a “basic etiquette violation” to an “H.R. matter.” Minding your own business is generally considered morally righteous, and also a best practice, to make life easier for everyone.

But to hear Republicans tell it, being required to leave people alone is the 21st century equivalent of feeding Christians to the lions. On Monday, the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management issued a guidance allowing federal employees to “engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views.” The rule also permits federal employees to “encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer,” and explicitly allows bosses to use their work hours to pester people they’re supervising with appeals to come to Jesus, or sermons on how their sinful lifestyles will send them to hell. Some have speculated the memo opens the door to permitting religious conversion attempts offices nationwide.

First Amendment issues aside, in the eyes of most people, it’s considered obnoxious, offensive and oppressive to tell a gay coworker they’re damned for eternity, or to harangue a Jewish colleague into reciting the Lord’s Prayer. According to the memo, however, expecting basic respect in the workplace is “discrimination” against “employees of faith.” Donald Trump is quoted as saying this change is necessary to protect “America’s unique and beautiful tradition of religious liberty.”

In reality, this policy does the opposite. It allows Christian conservatives to deprive their colleagues of religious freedom by pressuring them to participate in religious rituals they don’t believe in or practice. As the Freedom from Religion Foundation argued in their response to the guidance, when “someone’s job security and promotions are at stake, employees will feel they must go along with the religious conversation or attend that Easter service.”

Even if the pressure isn’t coming from a boss, however, it can still be oppressive. The memo includes guidance stating that “if the non-adherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request.” But asking a coworker to pray, or attempting to persuade them to convert, could make it hard for them to say no. Their rejection could be received with politeness and respect by the evangelist. Or it could spark hostilities. Having the legal right to say “no” means little when there’s every reason to worry your coworker will try to make your work life hell for rejecting them.

The implied threat that can accompany soft coercion is bad enough. But as Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State pointed out in a statement, the Trump administration has created a separate enforcement mechanism to coerce the unwilling to participate in Christian prayer and rituals: The so-called “anti-Christian bias task force.” Using false claims that Christians in government routinely face persecution, the task force relies on an expansive definition of “bias” that could easily encompass every time a fundamentalist gets their feelings hurt because an uninterested coworker said “no” to the offer of a religious pamphlet. “Under this regime, it’s easy to imagine the Christian Nationalists Trump has appointed proselytizing employees in the workplace — who then get reported and disciplined for anti-Christian animus when they object to this harassment,” Laser said.

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For decades, many white evangelicals in particular have nursed a persecution complex that recasts disagreement over religion and spirituality as oppression. Right-wing movies like “God’s Not Dead” conflate having to tolerate difference with outright persecution, as if merely allowing an atheist to exist undisturbed is the same as being crucified. In her book “Star-Spangled Jesus,” former Christian nationalist April Ajoy — who, after leaving conservatism behind, has embraced an inclusive Christian faith — writes about how eager she was to experience Christian persecution, and how her fellow believers were so primed to presume they were being oppressed that any rejection of their views, however mild, was regarded as an outright attack.

“American Christians are the most privileged group to exist in the country,” Tim Whitaker of “The New Evangelicals” — an organization devoted to rejecting Christian nationalism and promoting a faith “centered on justice” — argued in a recent TikTok that gently mocked evangelicals who think they’re about to be arrested for reading the Bible. “But when you’re afraid of losing the power and privilege you have, you become paranoid that any attempt to give others the same rights as you is an attack on your freedom.”

One terrifying example of the topsy-turvy logic in action is the Christian nationalist apologetics of Russell Vought, one of Trump’s most powerful appointees. Before he took over the Office of Management and Budget, this major author of Project 2025 argued a form of Christian theocracy is necessary to counter what he believes to be the oppression of his faith. Vought openly identifies as a Christian nationalist, arguing that forcing his religion on all Americans is the only way to preserve “our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage,” which he sees as under assault from LGBTQ people, feminists and secularists. He is fond of hyperventilating language, such as claiming the country is facing an “existential threat” from the “left-wing revolution.” But mostly, Vought’s argument comes down to this: When people are free to not be Christians, more than he would like choose that option. Having all these non-Christians around is perceived as an assault on his freedom. So he would like to deprive everyone else of their rights, in the name of freedom.

This lack of logic shares much DNA with the rationales of abusers everywhere, who claim that having a boundary is actually abusing them, and therefore, the word “no” justifies whatever beatdown they inflict on the victim. It’s also why it’s safe to say that, despite the generic language of “religion” and “faith” in the administration’s memo, the right to bully and harass your colleagues in the name of religion will only belong to Christians. After all, the task force established to enforce these orders is explicitly about “anti-Christian bias.” Even if a Muslim wanted the same leeway to annoy his colleagues with constant appeals to convert to Islam, he could not go to the task force and complain about “bias” because he heard the word “no.”

The name of the task force makes it clear: The only “persecution” the Trump administration worries about is when conservative Christians get their feelings hurt from rejection.