Most people will read National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) as straightforward: the government cracking down on political violence. That’s the surface story.

The deeper story is how it makes Christianity a category inside a domestic-terror enforcement playbook, both as a protected target and as an ideological boundary line.

Here’s the narrow claim: NSPM-7 doesn’t just say “stop violence.” It builds a pipeline: Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF)-led network investigations → mapping “funders / non-governmental organizations (NGOs) / overseas ties” → U.S. Department of the Treasury and bank Suspicious Activity Report (SAR)-driven financial tracing → Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scrutiny of tax-exempt entities.

That architecture is justified with a narrative that ties “self-described anti-fascism” to recurrent motives including “anti-Christianity.” (NSPM-7, full text)

I’m not claiming “every protest = terrorism,” and I’m not arguing churches shouldn’t be protected. I’m saying when the state fuses a security framework to a culture-war moral map, the church becomes a battlefield in two directions at once: sanctuary in need of protection, and political identifier used to justify expanded investigations.

You can see the overlap in the Minnesota church case. A federal indictment alleges a coordinated operation inside a church, including intimidation and obstruction of congregants and clergy. It also charges interference with religious exercise at a place of worship. Mother Jones reports an Army veteran protester being arrested in the wake of the church disruption episode, as officials targeted participants and pursued federal charges.

So the question isn’t “do you like the church protesters?”

The question is: what guardrails exist when “domestic terrorism” becomes an expandable network model, and Christianity is written into the motive schema?

If NSPM-7’s framing is legitimate, you’d expect it to be applied symmetrically: violence first, ideology second, and you’d expect clear walls between protected speech/association and “network” targeting.

Civil-liberties groups warn the memorandum exposes nonprofits and activists to Treasury and IRS scrutiny without clear limits. Constitutional scholars emphasize the problem of treating “Antifa” as an organization rather than ideology.

What would change my mind: public guidance with real limits, plus demonstrated enforcement that tracks actual violence regardless of which side claims God.