President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will sign an executive order creating a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative to "recognize the vital role of faith" in America.
In his remarks for the National Day of Prayer, the president emphasized religious liberty and said his faith initiative will ensure the government gives equal treatment to religious organizations.
"The faith initiative will help design new policies that recognize the vital role of faith in our families, our communities, and our great country," Trump said. "This office will also help ensure that faith-based organizations have equal access to government funding and the equal right to exercise their deeply held beliefs."
The initiative follows similar offices in the Bush and Obama administrations.
Trump also talked about religious liberty broadly, indirectly criticizing Obamacare for its contraceptive mandate that required nuns' health insurance plans include birth control.
"Across the government we have taken action to defend the religious conscience of doctors, nurses, teachers, students, and groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor," he said. "In January of this year, I was proud to be the first president to stand here in the Rose Garden to address the March for Life."
In addition, Trump mentioned "horrible" religious persecution abroad, saying his administration has "spoken out against" it and is "taking action." He said he sought to protect religious freedom because America’s religious heritage has had such a sweeping impact on its culture.
"Faith has forged the identity and the destiny of this great nation that we all love. Americans of faith have built the hospitals that care for our sick, the homes that tend to our elderly, and the charities that house the orphaned," Trump said. "They minister to the poor so beautifully and with such love. We are proud of our religious heritage and as president, I will always protect religious liberty."
Trump also took credit for his executive order–signed in May last year–preventing the Johnson Amendment "from interfering with our First Amendment rights," although Congress has not removed the federal rule. The Johnson Amendment was sponsored in 1956 by Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, before he became president, and it threatens to revoke churches' tax-exempt status for engaging in activity "on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."