The Commission, chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and vice-chaired by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, was formed under an executive order Trump signed May 1, 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi named the Commission's members and has led its work, telling attendees at its first hearing last June that the government intends to preserve religious freedom "against emerging threats."
Over the past year the Commission held seven hearings, taking testimony from more than 100 witnesses on religious liberty in the military, public education, healthcare, the workplace, parental rights, faith-based institutions, and the rise of violence against houses of worship. The draft report recommends that the Justice Department issue new guidance to public schools on students' religious liberty rights, launch a "Know Your Rights" poster campaign, and stand up a portal where families can report violations. On the military side, it calls for restoring and compensating service members who were discharged or penalized for declining the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, along with updated religious liberty training for commanders.
Patrick said the hearings produced "witness after witness" who testified that the phrase "separation of church and state" -- words that appear nowhere in the Constitution -- has been used for decades to push people of faith out of public life. A coalition of interfaith advocacy groups has pushed back, asking the Department of Justice to set the report aside, arguing it blurs lines between government and religion. The public comment period will help decide what, if anything, changes before a final version is issued.
The liberty no government granted
Set the government paperwork down a moment. Behind every page of that report sits an older question, one no committee can settle by a vote: can a man kneel before God without asking Caesar's permission first? The founders answered it one way, in a handful of words carved into the First Amendment. But the deeper answer was settled long before Philadelphia, on a hill outside Jerusalem, where a Man died so that men might be free indeed.
Washington can guard religious liberty. It cannot grant it. No commission, however well-meaning, hands a soul the right to worship -- that right comes from the same Maker who breathed life into Adam. Governments can only recognize that liberty or trample it. That is why a soldier ought not lose his career for keeping his conscience, and why a child ought not have to hide her Bible under her math book. Not because the state is generous, but because the state has no business standing between a man and his God in the first place.
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." (Galatians 5:1)
That liberty is bigger than any statute. Paul was not writing to men worried about permits or portals. He was writing to men who had tasted real freedom in Christ and were being talked back into a yoke -- back under rules and rituals that never could save them. The world will always find some new yoke to sell you: a philosophy, a fear, a flag from some other kingdom entirely. The gospel says Christ already broke the yoke that mattered. The Spirit of the Lord and liberty travel together, always -- in a courtroom, in a barracks, in a school hallway, and, most of all, in the heart of a man who was once a slave to sin and is a slave no longer.
So welcome every fence Washington builds around a Christian's freedom to pray in the open. Write your public comment before July 13 if the Spirit moves you to do it. But do not mistake the fence for the field. The liberty this nation was built to protect is only a shadow of the liberty Christ purchased on a cross two thousand years ago. That liberty was never up for a comment period. It was settled once, by blood, for good.