Donald Trump Thinks Your Kids Should Go To Sunday School
Photo by Gage Skidmore If Donald Trump had his way, we—a humanist news site published by the nonprofit, tax-exempt American Humanist Association—would be able to freely discuss how good or bad a president we think he’d be. But we don’t want to be able to do that.
Trump spoke in New York yesterday to a group of powerful Christian conservatives (including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell’s son Franklin). The event was closed to the media but the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer spoke to attendees after who also showed them audio clips that they used in their report published today.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee received numerous rounds of applause for exalting religious liberty and promising to lift the ban on churches and other tax-exempt entities from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. While he said it could be his “greatest contribution to Christianity—and other religions,” his further comments about bringing back wishes of “Merry Christmas” and making sure football coaches in public high schools could lead teams in prayer, it’s pretty clear which religion Trump wants to elevate, which is precisely what the establishment clause of the US Constitution guards against.
Boorstein also tweeted several takeaways from Trump’s evangelical pep rally, including his recollection that Sunday school was “like, automatic” when he was a kid. “If they go to church…it’s a tremendous asset,” Trump reportedly said. “Maybe we can get back into a position where it’s automatic.”
In compliance with the ban on tax-exempt groups engaging in politicking, we’ll leave it to you to decide what that means.