On Thursday, presidential candidate Donald Trump provided the clearest evidence yet of his disregard for religious liberty, telling Yahoo News that if elected he would target Muslims with a previously unthinkable degree of intrusion. “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” he said. “Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Asked if he would consider “registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion,” a tactic reminiscent of the treatment of Jews in 1930s Europe, he would not rule it out. He put it this way to Yahoo: “We’re going to have to—we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely.”
Over the last several years, Christians in the United States have become increasingly alarmed about threats to religious liberty. Among other things, they don’t want their nonprofits forced to provide contraception to their employees or their believers forced to provide services like photography or baking for same-sex unions. Even the people most invested in those fights should see that positions held by Trump would pose a far greater threat to their religious liberty were he elected.