Tag: Inquirer Local

Russell “Rusty” Trubey said he was compelled by God to preach the words that helped set off a national battle over religion at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Reading from a sermon titled “When Culture Excludes God,” Trubey, an Army Reserve chaplain, sermonized to a congregation of veterans at the Coatesville VA Medical Center from a Bible passage — Romans 1:23-32 — that refers to same-sex relationships as “shameful.”

Some congregants, upset by the sermon, walked out of the June 2024 service at the Chester County facility, where Trubey has been employed for roughly 10 years. Soon after, Trubey’s lawyers said he was temporarily pulled from his assignment — and transferred to stocking supply shelves — while his supervisors investigated his conduct.

Speaking to Truth and Liberty, a Christian group that advocates for the church to play a greater role in the public sphere, Trubey said he knows that reading the Bible verses about same-sex relationships is “100%” the reason he got in trouble.

“Our VA celebrates — up until at least recently anyway — celebrated and expected us to fully tolerate the LGBTQ lifestyle,” Trubey, who belongs to the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, said in March. “It’s that part of the text, obviously, that folks took issue with.”

A month earlier, Trubey’s lawyers had taken his case to the White House. In a letter sent a few weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Trubey’s lawyers asked Trump’s VA secretary, Doug Collins, to intervene on Trubey’s behalf in regard to repercussions for the sermon.

Trubey had delivered the talk during former President Joe Biden’s administration — an environment that Trump officials allege was hostile to Christians.

In the letter, the chaplain’s lawyers from the First Liberty Institute and Independence Law Center accused Trubey’s supervisor of wanting sermons to be screened ahead of time for pre-approval and stated that Trubey received a letter of reprimand, which would later go on to be rescinded by Coatesville VA Medical Center officials.

Soon after the lawyers’ letter reached the new administration, the VA, one of the largest federal employers in Pennsylvania, reinstated Trubey to his position and Collins reaffirmed that chaplains’ sermons would not be censored.

But the fallout from this incident — paired with Trump’s ongoing campaign to root out perceived prejudice against Christians and dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion — left an undeniable mark on the VA, helping to inspire an agencywide “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force.”

Announced to employees in April 2025, the task force asks employees to report offenses such as “reprimand issued in response to displays of Christian imagery or symbols,” per a department email reviewed by The Inquirer.

And the VA wants names.

In the email, the VA encouraged employees to identify colleagues and workplace practices that violate the policy and send information about the alleged offenses to a dedicated email address. The announcement was in accordance with a Trump executive order from February that ordered federal agencies to “eradicate” anti-Christian bias and create a larger White House task force composed of cabinet secretaries and chaired by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

As of this summer, the VA received more than 1,000 reports of anti-Christian bias and reviewed 500, according to task force documents. Another report is expected in February.

Some of the offenses the VA is on the watch for could be especially pertinent during the holiday season when workers may want their faith represented at their desks.

One union leader at the Veterans Benefits Administration office in Philadelphia called the task force, which does not extend to biases against other religions, “McCarthyism for Christians.”

“What they’re really doing is they’re trying to create a hostile work environment where you’re now afraid to say something because you may be reported,” said the union representative weeks after the VA’s task force announcement. The representative asked to speak anonymously out of fear of workplace retaliation.

The VA said in a statement that the department is “grateful” for Trump’s executive order. The VA did not answer The Inquirer’s questions on an updated number of reports received through the task force, what happens to people or practices that are reported, and next steps of the task force.

“As the EO stated, the prior administration ‘engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses,’” said VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz in the statement. “Under President Trump, VA will never discriminate against Veterans, families, caregivers or survivors who practice the Christian faith.”

One of those offenses, as outlined by the VA, is “informal policies, procedures, or unofficial understandings hostile to Christian views.” Another is retaliation against chaplains’ sermons, which appears to be in response to the Trubey incident from June 2024.

Erin Smith, associate counsel at the First Liberty Institute, who helped represent Trubey said: “If Chaplain Trubey’s story serves as inspiration to help protect the rights of all chaplains in the VA, then that is a wonderful thing to come out of a terrible situation.”

But some VA employees disagree.

Ira Kedson, president of AFGE Local 310, which represents employees at the Coatesville VA Medical Center, said in an interview in June that he heard some employees were “deeply troubled” by the incident with Trubey, especially those who worked in clinical settings with patients who were in attendance of the controversial sermon.

“I was told that some of the residents were deeply hurt and deeply troubled by the situation and it took a long time for them to be able to move past it,” Kedson said.

Religion takes center stage in the Trump administration

Trump is leading what is arguably one of the most nonsecular presidencies in modern United States history with his embrace of a loyal, conservative Christian base.

“We’re bringing back religion in our country,” Trump said at the Rose Garden during the National Day of Prayer in May.

At a rally in the Poconos this month, the president declared he’s the reason people are saying “merry Christmas.”

And efforts to elevate religion in the public sphere have gone beyond Trump’s rhetoric. For instance, the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources agency, issued guidance that aims to protect religious expression in the workplace for all religions.

Trump also established a 16-person religious liberty commission in May that appears to include all faiths. The Department of Justice also announced a task force to address antisemitism.

Yet, some Christian leaders are concerned that the task force excluding biases against non-Christian faiths will actually exacerbate threats against religious freedoms.

Most of the reports submitted to the VA focused on “denying religious accommodations for vaccines and provision of abortion services; mandating trainings inconsistent with Christian views; concealing Christian imagery; and Chaplain program and protections for Chaplains,” according to task force documents.

Charles Haynes, senior fellow for religious liberty at the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington that promotes First Amendment rights, said while it’s not unconstitutional or unprecedented to create a faith-specific task force, “the appearance of [the Christian-bias task force], to many people, is a favoritism of the government for one group over another.”

The White House, in a statement, said Trump has a record of defending religious liberty regardless of faith.

“President Trump has taken unprecedented action to fight anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and other forms of anti-religious bias while ending the weaponization of government against all people of faith,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers in an email to The Inquirer.

Furthermore, she added, that the media is doing “insane mental gymnastics to peddle a false and negative narrative about the President’s efforts on behalf of nearly 200 million Christians across the country.”

Identifying anti-Christian bias or chasing a ‘unicorn’?

The Trump administration has shared few details about the operations and goals of the anti-Christian bias task force, raising questions from lawmakers and other stakeholders.

Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, was in a monthslong back-and-forth with VA Secretary Collins, trying to get answers to an extensive list of questions he initially sent in May, with the California Democrat particularly concerned that the scope of the initiative is limited to bias against Christians.

“To preserve this right to religious freedom, the Department cannot prioritize one faith over others, nor can it allow religious considerations to shape its policies in ways that may conflict with the First Amendment,” Takano wrote in May. “Further, the vagueness of the task force’s mission raises significant concerns about how it will be used and whether it is compatible with the mission of the Department.”

Collins responded in June and did not answer most of Takano’s questions, though he did say that the task force, which reports to the secretary, will identify, strategize, and potentially alter any policies that discriminate against Christians or religious liberty.

The lawmaker followed up a week later. Roughly four months later, in October, Collins’ responses were vague once again. Most recently, Takano is asking for both Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committees to be looped in on future correspondence regarding the task force.

The VA, according to a statement from Takano, has not fully answered their questions and has refused to host a bipartisan briefing.

“The lack of transparency and accountability of this task force leaves me with numerous concerns for the due process and privacy of hardworking VA employees,” Takano said. “VA’s silence won’t stop us from asking the questions we are constitutionally obligated to ask.”

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, former counsel for the Reagan administration turned founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said his group is looking for a plaintiff to sue the government over the task force. The group has been receiving calls from VA employees concerned about it, one of whom, he said, was a senior physician at the VA Medical Center in Philadelphia.

The physician, Weinstein said, was distraught to receive the memo about the task force. He had family in town and noted the irony of showing his family around all the historical sites that signified the birthplace of American freedoms while being asked by the federal government to partake in such a project.

“It was like a dagger in his heart,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein is adamant that anti-Christian bias in the federal workforce is nonexistent, like looking for a “unicorn.”

Noticeably absent from the task force, critics say, is any effort to explore instances of discrimination against other faiths within federal agencies.

Trump has historically espoused hateful rhetoric against Muslims, including enacting a travel ban on individuals from predominantly Muslim countries during his first term. The president has issued an executive order this term to combat antisemitism on college campuses, but he also has a history of engaging with antisemites on the political right.

Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, executive director of CAIR-Philadelphia, a nonprofit that aims to protect the civil rights of Muslims in the U.S., said he believes all forms of discrimination should be stamped out, but he’s concerned the task force isn’t affording those protections to everyone.

“It focuses exclusively on alleged anti-Christian conduct within the federal agencies, and in our opinion of this, risks then entrenching preferential treatment and signaling the protections that should exist for everyone is conditional, right?” Tekelioglu said.

There is hope, however, that this task force could lead to other future initiatives to root out hate, said Jason Holtzman, chief of Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

“My hope is that hopefully they’re starting with the task force on Christian bias, and then maybe they’ll initiate one on antisemitism, Islamophobia, because I think task forces need to exist on all of these different forms of hate,” said Holtzman, noting that both Trump and Biden have taken action to combat antisemitism.

Haynes, the religious liberty expert, said anti-Christian bias is a “matter of perspective.”

“How you see it for the conservative Christian, what others would say is just creating an inclusive, safe workplace for everyone, they see, in some respects, as being anti-Christian,” Haynes said.

Haynes said that “anecdotal sort of stories” about prejudice against Christians pushed by conservative groups do not appear to be based in any kind of research into a widespread trend. But it only takes one story — as seen in Trubey’s case — to set off a firestorm.

“It doesn’t take much,” Haynes said.