‘This is blasphemy’: Christian leader turns on Trump

A prominent Christian leader has delivered a blistering rebuke of Donald Trump, accusing the religious movement that helped shape conservative politics of losing its way under MAGA.

John Whitehead, founder of a powerful Christian legal movement, told the Washington Post that the cause has “gone astray” as it has become increasingly politicised and intertwined with right-wing politics. He warned that religious liberty was being transformed from a constitutional principle into a political programme.

Whitehead says the movement has remained too quiet as Muslim rights come under attack and as Trump allows immigration enforcement officers into houses of worship. He also argues that religious-liberties law firms have wrongly elevated the rights of conservative Christians above those of religious minorities.

“We started out trying to protect the little people,” Whitehead said. But he now says movement leaders are “sitting in the White House with Trump” and have become part of the nationalist movement.

His stance has reportedly made him a “persona non grata” within the movement he helped establish. The criticism marks a dramatic break with some of Whitehead’s earlier positions and with the political allies who now champion Christian nationalism.

Whitehead and his wife, Nisha Whitehead, wrote in March that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of religious language to promote the war in Iran was “blasphemy baptized in nationalism”.

He has also attacked religious symbolism used at immigration facilities. In October, after then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem prayed publicly at an ICE facility in Portland, Whitehead wrote that her actions were “not Jesus’ Christianity — it is Christianity draped in the flag and wielding the weapons of war.”

Yet Whitehead’s own history makes his evolution striking. He once argued that the United States should become an explicitly Christian nation and wrote a book advocating that position, which has since been embraced by Hegseth, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Trump allies.

He also once argued that LGBTQ rights threatened Christianity. But by the mid-1990s, according to the Post, he was criticising a Colorado constitutional amendment that prevented communities from banning discrimination against gay and transgender people.

Whitehead says his views changed after he began thinking differently about who Jesus really was. “We’re here to care for others,” he now says.

He still supports some elements of Trump’s religious-liberty agenda, including efforts to create more “Know Your Rights” materials in schools and hospitals. But he says the broader Christian legal movement is guilty of “a lot of overstepping”, pointing to Ten Commandments laws in public schools and the legal representation of a Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licences.

“If the government is acting as a Christian nationalist organization as opposed to one representing the Constitution and all Americans, there is a problem,” Whitehead said.

During Trump’s second term, Whitehead has backed foreign nationals who lost visas and were deported after protesting against Israel, as well as universities whose funding was suspended during the administration’s campaign against DEI, campus protests and antisemitism.

One legal brief also opposed the administration’s decision to allow immigration enforcement inside houses of worship. Whitehead warned that religious-freedom groups risk undermining their own cause when they align themselves with political power.

“The moment religious freedom organizations begin aligning themselves with those in power, or framing their work in partisan or ideological terms, they risk weakening the very principle they are trying to defend.”

'This is blasphemy': Prominent Christian leader has had it with Trump