Washington, D. C. | President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive actions his first week in office has drawn mixed reviews from evangelicals.
Initiatives to combat radical gender ideologies and protect pro-life demonstrators sparked praise while facets of Trump’s immigration crackdown met with caution in some cases and opposition in others.
The president’s other executive actions spanned a range of topics, including freedom of speech; the death penalty; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives; and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol Building.
Gender & abortion
An executive order signed on Trump’s first day in office defined male and female as biological realities determined at conception and ordered federal agencies to follow those definitions. The order also called for Trump’s
staff to produce within 30 days a proposed bill to codify the traditional definitions of gender in federal law.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order stated. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
Kristen Waggoner, president and CEO of the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), applauded Trump’s stand for the traditional definitions of gender.
“President Trump’s executive order to end the U.S. government’s promotion of gender ideology and restore the true definition of ‘sex’ in federal law is momentous,” Waggoner said in a statement. “It’s a 180-degree turn back toward reality and common sense. Men and women have real biological differences. When the law denies this, people suffer.”
In Illinois, Gov. J. B. Pritzker criticized the string of Executive Orders as harmful. “Individual rights are under attack, causing fear for people with disabilities, for pregnant women, for legal immigrants and temporary migrants, for LGBTQ Americans, small business owners and so many others,” Pritzker said. “Our Midwestern values are under siege.”
Praise also flowed for Trump’s pardons of two dozen pro-life advocates convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law enacted to protect abortion clinics against obstruction and threats. Trump called those pardoned “peaceful pro-life protestors” when he signed a pardon Jan. 23, adding it was “a great honor to sign this.”
ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley called the pardons a welcome reversal of the Biden administration’s treatment of pro-lifers.
“The Biden administration politicized and abused the FACE Act to target and discriminate against peaceful pro-life advocates,” Hawley said. “While they received harsh prison sentences, vandals who violently attacked pro-life pregnancy centers got off scot-free. Now, President Trump has rightly restored equal protection of the law by pardoning the peaceful pro-life advocates.”
A separate executive order called for enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, a law preventing the use of taxpayer money to fund elective abortions.
Brent Leatherwood
Brent Leatherwood, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, expressed gratitude for Trump’s actions regarding gender and abortion.
“On two top issues of concern to Southern Baptists – the sanctity of life and respecting biological gender realities – headway was made, without a doubt,” Leatherwood said. “Ensuring taxpayer resources will not go to ending preborn lives, both here at home and abroad, is a significant accomplishment. At the same time, mandating that our government recognizes what we all know to be true about there only being two sexes is a return to sanity this nation needs. These are important steps, ones that will keep lives from harm and death, and I deeply appreciate them.”
SBC messengers have addressed gender and abortion numerous times in resolutions. A 2023 resolution “condemn[ed] and oppose[d] ‘gender-affirming care’ and all forms of ‘gender transition’ interventions.” A 2022 resolution committed to “eliminate any perceived need for the horror of abortion.”
Immigration
Leatherwood was supportive of Trump’s efforts to secure the border but said he is “concerned about the confusion and alarm created by some of the actions taken in the area of immigration.”
At least eight executive orders during Trump’s first week in office addressed immigration. They included calls for more physical border barriers, a declaration of emergency at the southern border and mobilization of the military to seal the border.
One controversial order on immigration suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), a channel of legal immigration that resettled last year nearly 30,000 Christians who claimed religious persecution.
“Our system has been a disaster for a generation now,” Leatherwood said. “For the sake of national security and for the safety of those seeking to come here legally, it must be fixed. Through the years, broad support for those fleeing persecution to find refuge here and for allowing churches and ministries to serve them has never wavered. In their local communities, Southern Baptists have so often been at the forefront of those efforts. We must find a solution that allows this work to move forward while safeguarding our nation’s borders. I am hopeful our leaders can come together and find a lasting solution.”
Leatherwood echoed sentiments expressed in a 2023 SBC resolution that “implore[d] our government leaders to maintain robust avenues for valid asylum claimants seeing refuge.”
Some Christian leaders strongly opposed the suspension of USRAP. World Relief President and CEO Myal Green said, “We’re heartbroken by the decision.”
On Trump’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security also issued a directive permitting authorities to enter churches, schools and health care facilities to enforce immigration laws. The Biden administration had issued directives labeling such areas “sensitive” and off-limits for immigration enforcement.
Leatherwood took issue with the Trump administration’s directive.
“No church that I’m aware of harbors criminal actors, whether they’re here legally or illegally, and no church leader wants that,” he said. “President Trump is right to fix our broken immigration system—something we’ve long called for—but it must be done without turning churches into wards of the state or expecting pastors to ask for papers of people coming through their doors.
“The unintended impact of this change will be that many law-abiding immigrants will be fearful to attend our churches, and our central mission of Gospel proclamation and biblical formation will be inhibited,” Leatherwood said.
Tommy Thompson
Tommy Thompson, pastor of Ashburn Baptist Church in the Chicago suburbs, expressed similar views in an interview with ABC News. His congregation, with multiple locations, serves Latino communities where the U.S. Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) has gathered illegal immigrants for deportation. Some members of his congregations are scared, he said, and are staying home, but “I think the likelihood of ICE raiding a church would be a rare instance.” Thompson said the church has consulted an immigration attorney about its own position in the issue.
“Churches across America, like ours, are ministries of mercy to help people find new life in Jesus. So we’re going to do everything we can within our power to help people find faith, to live out their faith for the betterment of their families and their lives,” Thompson said.
“At the same time, we are a land of laws, and we have to walk both of those lines to be compassionate and merciful to everyone equally, but then also to abide by the laws. We don’t have also the answers figured out yet, but we will try to do both to the best of our ability,” he said.
ICE officers arrested approximately 100 people in metro Chicago in the first round of deportations, according to Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling.
Virtually all Trump’s executive actions followed up on campaign promises by the president, who drew strong support from religious voters in November. Protestant and Catholics both broke for Trump by wide margins, according to NBC News.
But can executive actions alone sustain a government shift toward common sense and Judeo-Christian values? Leatherwood doubts it.
“Ultimately, with all these matters, that means Congress must rediscover its primary role as the lawmaking body in our constitutional order,” Leatherwood said. “President Trump can make any number of moves but, should Congress fail to act, this will all be short lived.”
More actions
Still, multiple items of interest to many evangelicals have been addressed by executive actions. Among Trump’s other executive actions:
An order “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity” denounced “illegal DEI” policies. It ordered federal agencies to “terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences” and “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences.”
Trump’s actions, especially the combatting of radical gender ideology, left ADF’s Waggoner optimistic.
With Trump’s executive order, the U.S. government “switched sides” in the conflict over gender, she said, “from promoting the lie to defending the truth. We thank President Trump for his leadership on this crucial issue, and we look forward to working with the administration to restore common sense in American policy.
—David Roach for Baptist Press, with reporting by IB staff