WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The Trump administration accused the Biden administration of “anti-Christian bias” in its approach to policy issues related to abortion, marriage and gender, among others, in a report published by the Department of Justice April 30.
Shortly after returning to the Oval Office last year, Trump directed the creation of a task force by the Department of Justice to investigate “anti-Christian” bias in the federal government. The task force was criticized by those who argued such claims were without merit, or were an effort to favor a particular religion.
The report does not carry any legal force, but it marked an opportunity for the Trump administration to critique its predecessors and its Democratic rivals as they prepare for the upcoming midterm elections, and to tout what it called “The Trump Administration’s Work to Right Prior Wrongs.”
The report argued the Biden administration, in pursuit of its policy goals, “attempted to curtail liberty, trample disfavored beliefs, and tamper the ability of Christians to act in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
“That is not to say that every actor in the Biden Administration held animus toward Christians,” it said. “Many identify as Christians. But Christianity is not monolithic, and within that faith tradition, Christians have hotly contested points of doctrine, biblical interpretation, and how faith should inform daily conduct since the earliest days of the religion.
Biden, a regular Massgoer whose practice of Catholicism in his public life was the subject of debate and scrutiny, was sometimes at odds with the U.S. bishops during his presidency, most notably over his administration’s abortion policy.
The report argued the Biden administration carried out “biased enforcement” of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, and pursued “more severe charges and significantly harsher sentences for peaceful pro-life defendants than violent pro-abortion defendants.” The Department of Justice earlier in April similarly released another report alleging the Biden administration “weaponized” the FACE Act, which was crafted to protect access to both reproductive health facilities and houses of worship.
Featured prominently in the report was the now-infamous January 2023 memo often referred to as the “Richmond Memo,” a controversial leaked and retracted FBI document that discussed “radical traditionalist” Catholics as those who may pose threats of racially or ethnically motivated violence.
That document drew a distinction between “radical traditionalist” Catholics as “separate and distinct” from “traditionalist Catholics,” who it described as Catholics who “simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings.” The same FBI memo noted that “conversely, deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.” Some of the groups named in the memo are not canonically recognized by the Catholic Church, including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located in Richmond, New Hampshire.
However, that memo was sharply criticized as anti-Catholic and promptly retracted.
The report alleged that an investigation that led to the lawful arrest of “career criminal Xavier Louis Lopez” for the possession of unlawful weapons also resulted in “the targeting of his priest and an entire Catholic sect to which Lopez happened to adhere.”
However, documents previously released during a congressional investigation of the memo suggest that agents were unfamiliar with the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, a religious order the Vatican has described as having an irregular communion with the rest of the Catholic Church. The subject appeared to have interest in the order, the documents suggested, and agents were seeking to understand the SSPX and its relationship to the Catholic Church, not that the order itself was under investigation.
Christopher Wray, the FBI director at the time that memo was written, was first nominated to that role by Trump in 2017. During congressional testimony in 2023, Wray described himself as “aghast” at its contents.
Although the task force was directed to focus on anti-Christian bias, the report argued that the issues it included “do not only affect Christians. Far from it.”
“If the federal government can discriminate and limit the rights of a majority group to such an extent, people of every faith — and even those of other minority affiliations — have cause for concern about their rights under future administrations,” it said. “To wield the force of government against certain viewpoints or the people who hold them is anathema to our constitutional system of government.
“The American people deserve to know when this type of abuse happens and how it happens,” it added, “so they can demand better from the Executive Branch and its agencies under any administration.”
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