Trump to sign order on political limits for churches

by Dramelin 1:30 AM 0 comments

Trump will sign the order as he marks the National Day of Prayer at the White House Thursday.
He was hosting members of his evangelical advisory board at a dinner Wednesday night and planned to meet Roman Catholic leaders in the Oval Office before signing the order.
The White House did not release the full text of the order and it was not clear just how those pledges would be carried out.
The plans fall short of what religious conservatives expected of the president, who won overwhelming support from evangelicals by promising to "protect Christianity" and religious freedom.
Ralph Reed, a longtime evangelical leader and founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said he was briefed by White House officials about the text of the executive order.
Reed called the provisions an excellent first step in the Trump administration`s plans for protecting religious freedom Reed said he was "thrilled" by the language on the IRS restrictions on partisan political activity.
"This administratively removes the threat of harassment," Reed said in a phone interview.
"That is a really big deal.
" He said the language in the order related to the preventive care mandate will "ensure that as long as Donald Trump is president, that something like the Little Sisters of the Poor case will never happen again.
" Still, Mark Silk, a professor at Trinity College in Connecticut who writes extensively on religious freedom, called the planned actions as described by the White House as "very weak tea," especially compared to the draft religious freedom executive order that leaked earlier this year, which had sweeping provisions on conscience protections for faith-based ministries and schools, and federal workers across an array of agencies.
"It`s gestural as far as I can tell," Silk said.
"It seems like a whimper.