Trump religious liberty commission cites European censorship as warning to US
Alliance Defending Freedom International welcomed a presidential commission’s decision to cite the conviction of a British army veteran for silent prayer and a Finnish lawmaker over a Christian booklet as signs of a wider Western retreat from freedom of conscience.
President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission recently pointed to the prosecution of two Christians in Europe as a warning of what could happen if the U.S. allows officials to place ideological conformity above freedom of speech and religion.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International on July 28 welcomed the commission’s decision to spotlight the cases of British army veteran Adam Smith-Connor and Finnish lawmaker Päivi Räsänen in its draft report. ADF has supported the legal defense of both Smith-Connor and Räsänen.
As Zeale News previously reported, the commission presented its 224-page draft to Trump on June 26 after a yearlong review of religious liberty in the U.S. that included seven hearings and testimony from more than 100 witnesses. Although its principal mandate concerned threats to religious liberty inside America, the commission warned that similar conflicts are unfolding throughout the West.
“Even in other Western countries, governments have adopted many such policies,” the report stated, before citing Smith-Connor, Räsänen, and a Quebec law barring some Canadian public employees from wearing religious symbols.
The commission warned that Americans should not assume other freedoms will remain secure if religious liberty declines. It contrasted state coercion with the choice of Americans who favor “religious liberty over government censorship, oppression, and control.”
ADF International Legal Counsel Jeremiah Igunnubole called the cases of Smith-Connor and Räsänen “stark warnings of what follows when societies abandon their commitment to free expression and religious liberty.” He said the commission rightly recognized the cases as part of a “dangerous drift towards state control over speech, belief, and conscience itself.”
Silent prayer treated as a crime
Smith-Connor, an army reservist who served in Afghanistan, was convicted in October 2024 after praying silently inside a “buffer zone” surrounding an abortion facility in Bournemouth, England. He prayed for his son who died in an abortion for which he had paid more than two decades earlier. He stood with his back to the facility and did not speak to or approach anyone, according to ADF.
The local Public Spaces Protection Order prohibited acts expressing approval or disapproval of abortion, including prayer. The court concluded that Smith-Connor’s bowed head and clasped hands communicated disapproval of abortion, sentenced him to a conditional discharge, and ordered him to pay £9,000 in prosecution costs, ADF reported.
Smith-Connor has appealed the conviction. ADF’s current case page says a hearing before Bournemouth Crown Court is expected but gives no date.
Vice President JD Vance raised Smith-Connor’s case with European leaders during his February 2025 address to the Munich Security Conference.
“In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance said.
Vance argued that Europe’s greatest danger was not an external enemy but its abandonment of fundamental Western values. He also accused officials of hiding political censorship behind labels such as “misinformation” and “disinformation” and warned that leaders cannot claim a democratic mandate while silencing opponents or excluding voters from political debate.
As Zeale News previously reported, the State Department’s 2024 human rights report similarly found “serious restrictions on freedom of expression” in the UK. The department cited Smith-Connor’s case, Britain’s Online Safety Act, and Scotland’s hate speech law.
Christian teaching prosecuted in Finland
The commission also cited Räsänen, a physician, former interior minister, and longtime member of the Finnish Parliament, who faced years of prosecution over statements reflecting her Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality.
Finland’s Supreme Court convicted Räsänen in a 3-2 ruling in March for making and keeping portions of a church booklet she wrote in 2004 available online. The court ruled that some descriptions of homosexuality in the booklet were derogatory and constituted agitation against a population group.
The court imposed 20 unit fines and ordered the challenged portions removed from the internet. It held that the conviction was consistent with protections for freedom of expression and religion under Finland’s Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court unanimously dismissed a separate charge involving Räsänen’s 2019 social media post quoting Scripture while challenging the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s sponsorship of a Pride event.
Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, whose organization published the booklet, had previously been acquitted by both the Helsinki District Court and the Helsinki Court of Appeal. In July, they appealed the conviction to the European Court of Human Rights, according to ADF.
The Holy See has also identified prosecutions for silent prayer and Scripture-based speech as evidence of religious liberty’s erosion in the West. Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, said in March that “attacks on Christians are attacks on the Cross itself,” as Zeale News previously reported.
Commission proposes U.S. safeguards
Trump created the commission in May 2025 to identify emerging threats, advise the White House, and recommend executive or legislative protections. Its members included Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota.
Bishop Barron previously said that the commission performed “exceptionally important” work by documenting threats in education, healthcare, and the military. He argued that Church leaders must advise government officials if the Church’s voice is to “resonate in the halls of power.”
The commission’s 12 principal recommendations include federal “Know Your Rights” materials, reporting portals for alleged religious-liberty violations, a Justice Department religious liberty task force, repeal of the Johnson Amendment, improved military accommodation procedures, and restoration of certain benefits to service members who objected to the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, as Zeale News reported in its coverage of the draft report.
The report also recommends that the White House Faith Office and the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom work together to make religious freedom a central priority of U.S. foreign policy.
The Department of Justice continues to identify the document as a draft. Its public comment period closed July 13, and the commission is expected to consider the responses before publishing its final report.
