Dan Patrick: Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission fighting to restore America’s first freedom

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, chair of President Donald Trump’s newly formed Religious Liberty Commission, says the effort is about reminding Americans of their “magnificent inheritance” – the right to live out their faith boldly in public life.

Patrick, who has been working closely with Trump since November, said the president embraced the idea immediately. 

“He’s a man of vision and action,” Patrick told The Heartlander’s Chris Stigall in an exclusive interview at the commission’s second hearing Monday at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., where Trump himself spoke. “So he said, ‘Okay, let’s get Franklin Graham, let’s get Paula White, let’s get Cardinal Dolan’ – he was like that in the first couple of minutes.

“Then we built this team of historians and lawyers who have taken these cases before the Supreme Court, that know the issues, who know all the witnesses and can help bring us the right people where their religious liberty has been attacked.”

The Republican lieutenant governor emphasized that the commission exists to protect the First Amendment from the erosion it has suffered for decades.

“We’ve just come together to remind America of this magnificent inheritance our founders gave us, and that has really been chipped away by the courts in the last, really, five or six decades,” he explained. “We need people to know they can pray where they want, when they want, to whom they want.”

Patrick praised the courage of young people who have stood up for their faith in hostile environments, including public schools. One speaker at the hearing was a 12-year-old boy who was bullied after he defended his faith at school.

“Think about the fact that they had the courage to stand up to their school district or to their teacher, along with their parents,” Patrick said. “As a family we have to make sure that our schools, places where we work, a government agency, that no one takes away our right of religious liberty. Think about this – it was the First Amendment to the Constitution, because once you take away religious liberty, then everything else is easy to take, because if I can pull your faith out of you and make you be quiet and not share it, everything else is easy.”

He also underscored how vital Trump’s support has been.

“We’ve never had a president quite like this in this arena,” he said. “He has been open to this from day one … He understands, as Eric Metaxas said, you cannot have a country if you do not have goodness, and you can’t have goodness unless there’s someone directing your path.

“We are strong because we’ve been a nation of faith, and when we’re weak, it will be because we’ve taken away those religious liberty opportunities for people to speak.”

Patrick then warned against watered-down definitions of religious freedom that confine faith to private worship. Instead, Trump is restoring faith in the public sphere, which is what the nation’s founders intended.

“We have to be careful that people don’t say, ‘Well, we want to give you the freedom to worship,’” he said. “What they really mean is you can worship in the synagogue, the mosque, the Catholic Church, the Protestant church, wherever – but don’t bring it outside. Don’t bring it into the schoolhouse. Don’t bring it into the town square. This is what this country was built upon, and that’s what this president wants to restore. He sees it clearly.”

As the nation looks toward its 250th birthday in 2026, Patrick echoed the call of HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who also participated in the hearing, for a prayer movement across America.

“We want a million people to pray for this country unceasingly until July 4 of next year,” he said. “Second Chronicles 7:14 – if my people, who are my people? They’re the Christians. The Christians need to stand up and take it back. In the book of Jude he says we must contend earnestly. Contend earnestly means fight back. And we have to keep this wonderful inheritance we have of religious liberty.”