This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
The Trump administration is expanding how much federal civil servants can talk about their religious beliefs at work — and with you.
This week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal workforce, released a memo titled “Protecting Religious Expression In the Federal Workplace.” In it, the Trump administration details federal workplace behaviors that are now acceptable under the guidelines.
One of them? Telling your co-worker that they should rethink their religious beliefs because yours are correct.
“During a break, an employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” the guidelines read.
But don’t worry, the Trump administration has come up with a foolproof way to ensure this doesn’t veer into harassment: “However, if the nonadherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request,” the memo continues.
The memo goes further, detailing how coworkers can interact with each other, how supervisors can discuss their religious beliefs with their direct reports and how government workers can use their religious expression when engaging with the public. It even includes an appendix of permissible activities. Notably missing are activities that aren’t permitted — which may lead some staffers to believe that almost anything is allowed.
Asked for comment about the new guidance, OPM directed HuffPost to a press release.
“This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in the statement.
The Trump administration has dressed up the memo as a victory for religious freedom. But advocates of free speech and even people of faith see it as another step toward something more sinister.
“OPM wants you to talk about your religion in the workplace,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the nonreligious. “We see this as the implementation of Christian nationalism in our country.”
The vast majority of the examples of permitted activities in the memo are related to Christianity, such as instructions that an employee may display crosses, rosary beads, or invite colleagues to church for an Easter service. There is one mention each of an employee displaying the Star of David and a mezuzah, symbols of Judaism. No other religions are mentioned. The memo’s focus is overwhelmingly on the ability of Christians to promote their religion without pushback, despite the fact that Christianity is already the dominant religion in the United States: 63% of American adults identify as Christian as of 2024, according to Pew Research.
That’s because in the MAGA version of Christianity, the rights of white conservatives and Trump supporters, who are likely to be evangelicals, are of the most importance and they’re the ones under attack.
Turning Christianity into the official doctrine for the entire country has been a decades-long mission for the right. Starting in the 1980s, the Republican Party aligned itself with evangelical Christian churches. They lobbied against issues like abortion rights, birth control and same-sex marriage. They pushed for prayer in public schools and religion in government, despite the First Amendment prohibiting the government from imposing religion on the public.
Trump has since taken up the mantle. During the racial justice protests in 2020, Trump had police clear demonstrators with tear gas, so his photo could be taken in front of a historic church. And when a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump on the campaign trail last year, he said it was God who had saved his life.
As he panders to the Christian right — despite his two divorces, alleged affairs, and generally sordid past — Trump is also carrying out a broader attack on the civil servants who make up the federal government. Under the auspices of cutting waste, fraud and abuse, the Trump administration has required agency heads to conduct mass layoffs at agencies across the government. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off or are in limbo while their firings make their way through a legal limbo. Now, those who remain could be subjected to being evangelized by their coworkers and bosses.
The new guidance follows other attempts to inject Christianity into the federal government. In February, Trump signed an executive order called “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” The order baselessly accuses the Biden administration of unfairly targeting Christians and creates a task force whose goal is to root out so-called anti-Christian bias in government.
Last month, the IRS said churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits are now free to campaign for and endorse political candidates, ending a decades-long policy that barred political activity from the pulpit. Critics say this will now allow churches to use their deep pockets to promote their preferred candidates while still receiving tax breaks funded by the public.
This OPM memo is just the latest move in the effort.
This isn’t the first time an administration has weighed in on religious expression in the federal workplace. The memo is similar to guidelines written decades ago by the Clinton administration. But there are some apparent differences.
The 1997 memo clearly defined what is permissible and what isn’t in the workplace when it comes to religious expression — for example, using open conference rooms to pray during lunch breaks is allowed, but a group of employees belonging to the same faith attacking those who don’t believe is not.
But constitutional law experts say the Trump administration’s memo doesn’t set any boundaries about what is permissible.
“They invite some serious constitutional problems,” Chip Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University, told HuffPost. The new memo fails to include any safeguards against harassment, particularly given the permission for coworkers to attempt to “persuade” their colleagues that their own religious views are correct.
“It uses the word harass[ing] once,” Lupu said. “It just barely hints at the possibility of harassment, leaving supervisors with very little guidance.”
“A federal worker who’s a zealot is going to see this as a green light,” Gaylor said.
The problem isn’t just with interactions between peers in the federal workplace. While it says supervisors can engage in the same activities as other employees — including proselytizing for their religion — there’s no mention that an employee might feel as if they’ll be retaliated against if they don’t participate in their boss’ preferred religious activities.
“This memo shows no sensitivity to it,” Lupu said.
Then there’s the issue of how federal employees are allowed to practice their religion even when they’re dealing with members of the public.
According to the memo, a park ranger leading a tour through a national park can join the tourists in prayer, and a doctor at a Veterans Affairs hospital is permitted to pray over a patient.
“It doesn’t say if the patient agrees or consents,” Lupu said. “We don’t even know if the patient is conscious.”
The appendix also cites a receptionist praying with his colleague in the patient’s waiting room as a permissible activity.
“This is intrusive,” Gaylor said. “This is sending the message that this is a religious VA, something that’s not open to everybody.”
The memo hardly concerns itself with the fact that a federal worker promoting a religion could be perceived as speaking for the government — and the government, as per the First Amendment, should not be persuading anyone to join a religion. Instead, it states that if a government employee acts in their official capacity, there could be consequences for religious expressions, but the boundaries of this are not defined.
Nor does the memo seem particularly interested in the impact on religious minorities or religiously unaffiliated people, who might feel pushed out or unwelcome if they have to engage in religious discussions to do their job or access public services: About 6 or 7% of Americans belong to religions other than Christianity, and a full 28% are not religiously affiliated at all.
“This is a power flex, it’s not about protecting freedom of religion,” the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, CEO and president of Interfaith Alliance and an ordained Baptist minister, said. (Raushenbush previously worked as a religion editor at HuffPost.) “This is trying to exercise control and trying to impose your religion on everyone else.”
But even for Christians, which the memo seems eager to champion, the Trump administration has put clear boundaries on how far speaking about your beliefs is protected. When members of the clergy have spoken out against Trump’s policies, they’re met with hostility.
At a January prayer service typically held after Inauguration Day at the Washington National Cathedral, Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde made a direct plea to the president on behalf of LGBTQ+ children and immigrants who feared a second Trump presidency.
“Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God,” she said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
She was met with vitriol. The president lashed out, calling her a “Trump hater” and demanding an apology for her “boring” service.
“This is actually the most anti-religion administration,” Raushenbush said. “The only religion they care to protect is their own.”