by Eric Lendrum
President Trump recently declared his intentions to “safeguard” the right to pray in schools, as he ramps up efforts to energize the Evangelical vote ahead of the 2020 election, according to USA Today.
In a speech to an “Evangelicals for Trump” event in Florida earlier this month, the president said “I will be taking action to safeguard students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights to pray in their schools,” adding that the Left wants to “take that right along with many other rights.”
President Trump specifically referenced such a bill being proposed in the state of Tennessee to expand the right to prayer in schools. The far-left American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against a school district in Tennessee, alleging that the school was sponsoring “prayer assembles and Bible distribution,” even though such an action is not illegal.
The move is seen by some as an effort to reinforce the president’s support among Evangelicals, a key voting bloc on the Right and one that was crucial to his victory in 2016. President Trump had been criticized by an ostensibly Christian magazine called Christianity Today, which had published an op-ed in support of the president’s impeachment.
But many in the Evangelical community, including Franklin Graham – son of the late Reverend Billy Graham, who founded the magazine – criticized the magazine and said that it was not representative of most Evangelicals in the United States.
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Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22).
