In a shocking and unprecedented affront to American religious freedom in general and the nation’s 70 million Catholics in particular, President Trump on Saturday delivered a message celebrating “Reformation Day.” Marking the anniversary of the day on which Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany, Trump sent his “heartfelt prayers for a meaningful celebration” of the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

But when Trump described the “Christians across our country [who] unite in faith and fellowship this Reformation Day,” he did not specify which ones. After all, while Lutherans and a handful of other American denominations as well as 9 German states observe Reformation Day, the government of the United States never has and with good reason. When President Herbert Hoover sent greetings to American Lutherans in 1930 on the 400^th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the Rev. John J. Burke, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference branded Hoover’s message "an insult to many millions of American citizens" and "historically inaccurate." Burke explained:

"It does matter very much to the whole constitutional structure of our country and its institutions that the President of all the people, who is called by virtue of his office to respect the religious rights of all, congratulates one particular religious body on the changes it introduced from older conceptions of religion and government and declares that we, as a nation, should commemorate the Protestant persons and the events from which 'these mighty forces shaping our country have sprung'."

As even a cursory knowledge of American history reveals, those “mighty forces shaping our country” often included both incendiary anti-Catholic rhetoric and nativist political movements. (To be sure, Catholics did not welcome the Tyndale Bible which Trump claims “remains a cornerstone of our Nation’s character and upholds our steadfast devotion to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.") Long before signs reading “No Irish Need Apply” and accusations that Democrats were the party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” some Protestant leaders were warning of “Popery” and “Papists.”  As Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1855 about the “Know-Nothings,” the xenophobic, anti-Catholic movement of his day:

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

The charge that the Catholic Church was the “Whore of Babylon” mentioned by the Book of Revelations didn’t die with the Ku Klux Klan and the anti-immigrant movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain ultimately disavowed the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee after the minister denounced the Catholic Church an “apostate church” and “false religious system” which is a “cult” and “the great Whore of Babylon.”

“Guided by an unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, my Administration is working to restore the moral and religious foundations that have sustained our Republic for generations,” President Trump declared in his Reformation Day message, adding “as President, I will always support citizens of faith and defend their place in the public square, honoring the enduring role of our churches in strengthening families, serving communities, and preserving the core values that have anchored us across the centuries.” But whose faith? Jews? Muslims? Mormons? Atheists? Catholics?

Trump’s is a stunning message to a nation whose first freedom states its government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Celebrating one side of a religious schism seems well outside the acceptable role of a President of the United States. By that standard, President Trump’s next religious commemoration could well be what might be called “Perpetual Slavery Day,” the May 8, 1845 founding of the Southern Baptist Convention cleaved from its northern co-religionists for the express purpose of defending slavery.