There is zero room for doubt or argument: The assassination of Charlie Kirk was evil and wrong.
Yet in the month since, the Trump administration has used the heartbreaking tragedy as an excuse to further erode Americans’ freedoms of speech and press. This is also evil and wrong.
As a pastor, organizer, and student of history, I fear that Americans' hallowed freedom of religion will be next. Throughout history, many authoritarian governments have eventually come to target religious liberty—and indeed, Donald Trump has already begun his own assault. Sometimes, that assault is even a literal one.
As part of the administration’s post-Kirk assault on Americans’ First Amendment freedoms, we have seen the FCC threaten late-night hosts. We have heard a congressman demand that citizens lose their driver’s licenses over social-media posts. Perhaps the most chilling moment was when Vice President J.D. Vance threatened the tax-exempt status of two philanthropic giants with zero connection to Kirk’s death: the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation (OSF). By extension, Vance also implicated the charities these foundations fund, including faith-based nonprofits.
Those threats, particularly against OSF, continued in the lead-up to this past weekend's No Kings protest.
If Trump and Vance were sincere about ending political violence, they would condemn January 6 and attacks on Democrats, yet they point only to incidents against Republicans. As historian Timothy Snyder warns, tyrants will always take advantage of a national crisis to consolidate their power and remove their opponents’ civil liberties. MAGA’s apparent goal is neither to uphold the Constitution nor to end political violence, but to silence its political opponents.
Such silencing never ends with speech or the press; it continues until even the freedom of religion is crushed.
Throughout history, authoritarian governments have inevitably turned their eyes to faith. The Nazi regime urged pastors to join a nationalist Reich Church more loyal to Adolf Hitler than to God. Most gave in, but thousands of resistors were sent to concentration camps; Dachau built a dedicated "priest barracks." This story repeats itself, from Nero's Rome to Francisco Franco's Spain.
Trump’s own attacks on religious liberty have already begun. In his first term, he praised the antisemitic rioters at Charlottesville and enacted his promised Muslim ban. Now in his second term, he has overturned a long-standing policy that exempts church sanctuaries from ICE raids, prompting a lawsuit from churches. He has unleashed Elon Musk on the finances of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), accusing it of fraud without any evidence. And when the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, simply asked Trump to show mercy for immigrants and LGBTQ Americans, the president demanded an apology and dismissed her as “nasty” and a “so-called Bishop."
Last month, Trump’s masked ICE enforcers even shot Presbyterian Pastor David Black with pepper balls from a rooftop, all for the heinous crime of nonviolently praying for them outside an Illinois ICE facility.
Trump frames himself as a defender of religion, but many of the policies that he and his allies claim protect religious freedom—such as putting prayer in schools—impose white Christian nationalism on captive audiences. This undermines the religious liberty not only of non-Christian Americans but also of mainline Protestants, non-MAGA Catholics, and Black church traditions.
As this administration’s onslaught against freedom of speech and the press grows, its attacks on religion will also intensify. With universities under pressure to fire anti-Trump faculty and cut diversity programs, divinity schools will lose their academic freedom. And as the White House turns its ire on private foundations, the faith-based nonprofits they fund should fear as well.
Local preachers too might wonder if our own tax-exempt status will come under scrutiny should we raise a moral voice against unjust policies. If the federal government can turn its ire on the ELCA or the Bishop of Washington, why should the pro-immigrant pastor at First Baptist down the street be any different? Could Trump’s pastoral critics ultimately face the same frivolous yet burdensome investigations that now plague his political critics? And if a pastor can be pepper sprayed for praying outdoors in front of cameras, what could happen during church raids with fewer witnesses?
Even the religious Right is not safe. Nearly everything is transactional for this president, which means that if Trump ever believes that evangelical leaders have ceased to be useful to him, he could withdraw his favor. He has already been known to privately mock conservative pastors. If the Constitution doesn’t protect the religious freedom of non-evangelicals, it won’t protect the Right, either.
Now is not the time for pastors to wilt or keep our heads down, hoping against hope that we won’t be noticed. Such behavior isn’t just cowardly—it is futile. The tyrant comes for everyone in the end.
Ultimately, the best way for Christian preachers to defend our freedom is to speak from our pulpits—not just for our own rights, but for all: Liberal and conservative, Christian and non-Christian, immigrant and citizen, man and woman and nonbinary. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We are stronger not in silence but in chorus, speaking with one voice for the universal freedoms of peace, assembly, speech, press, and religion.
It was not partisan when Oscar Romero spoke against government death squads in El Salvador. It was not partisan when Clemens August Graf von Galen and Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke for liberty in Germany. And it will be holy, not partisan, if we all speak now from our own houses of worship—while we still can—for liberty, justice, and love for all.
Nathan Empsall is the priest-in-charge of St. PJ's Episcopal Church in New Haven, CT, and the former executive director of the national social-justice Christian organization Faithful America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
