Wait, We're the Oppressed Ones? Part Seven

It will surprise absolutely no one that discrimination exists in America. The real debate is over who’s being discriminated against. According to a Pew Research Center survey from April 2025, most Americans believe there’s “a lot” or “some” discrimination against immigrants in the U.S. illegally (82%) and against transgender people (77%). But when you focus on who Republicans feel are being discriminated against a different picture emerges.

In the same Pew survey, just over half of Republicans (55%) said white people face “a lot or some” discrimination, while 63% said the same of religious people, and 57% specifically cited evangelical Christians. Those numbers are higher or on par with many racial or ethnic minority groups, reflecting how perceptions of discrimination diverge sharply along partisan, religious, and even cultural lines.

Read: Understanding White Evangelical Identity in a Changing America

This understanding of Republican’s beliefs about Christian persecution is important context if you want to better understand the contents of the Initial Report by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released June 2025. The first of three reports required by the Executive Order establishing the task force, alleged that the Biden administration “engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses.”

The Initial Report

If you already believe Christians are being unfairly targeted, this report will likely confirm that belief. And if you think claims of anti-Christian bias are exaggerated or politically driven, you’ll probably find reasons to believe that too. Despite its sweeping title, the report isn’t a rigorous investigation into government misconduct—it’s a collection of testimonies, case studies, and agency summaries—some credible, others questionable—woven together to tell a story of discrimination.

The best way to read it isn’t to accept or reject it outright, but to pay attention to the stories and the lived experiences behind them. Many of those who provided testimony for the report genuinely believe their faith was under attack, and that conviction deserves to be understood, even if some claims don’t hold up under scrutiny. As a Christian, I wanted to see how this broader narrative of persecution stacks up. So I looked more closely at several examples from the report to see which, if any, withstand a deeper look. In this piece, I focus on one case in particular—inviting you to decide whether it truly reflects anti-Christian bias, or something more complicated.

The Case of Paul Vaughn

One