Holly Salzman was recently court-ordered by a district court in New Meixco to attend ten sessions of counseling with Mary Pepper, who partners with its Family Court Division, in order to resolve a parenting dispute with her ex-husband. But when Salzman refused to go to the sessions after repeatedly being asked to pray and assigned religious homework, the court ordered that her kids be taken away until she finished the course.

Here’s the report from Salzman’s local CBS affiliate, KRQE 13:

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As Salzman said:

“I walked into the session and the very first thing she said to me was, ‘I start my sessions by praying,…When I expressed my concerns that I didn’t pray she said, ‘well this is what I do’ and she proceeded to say a prayer out loud.”

In one of the sessions, recorded by KRQE 13 undercover and reportedly representative of the other sessions, the religion was far from optional:

“The meaning in my life is to know love and serve God,” Pepper told Salzman in one of the meetings. “If you want to explore how God was in your past, how God was in your life and not in your life… I know you don’t believe in God which is fine but I know at some points he was in your life in some way.”

You hear that? You can believe whatever you want to believe, but my God says that I’m right. And since custody of your kids hangs in the balance, you’re a bad mother for thinking otherwise.

When asked how these obviously-Christian counseling sessions didn’t constitute a state endorsement of religion, Pepper first claimed that she was “a business that people choose to come through,” before offering up the rather different claim that she offers secular sessions for those who ask for them. But since Salzman was court-ordered to take her course under penalty of losing custody of her kids, the first claim seems like a stretch at best; since Pepper is on camera forcing her beliefs on Salzman, the second claim is demonstrably false.

It’s also worth noting that Pepper’s “business” is cash-only likely illegal, as it operates out of the local public library.

The court insists that it does not direct citizens to sessions with religious themes, but as Americans United’s Sarah Jones points out, even the most cursory look at Pepper’s background would suggest that her counseling is far from secular:

She is a conservative Catholic who once taught at a Catholic elementary school and volunteered for Project Defending Life, a Catholic anti-abortion group. In a 2014 interview with the Albuquerque Journal, she insisted that couples who cohabitate before marriage have a higher risk of divorce, a statement that conforms to Catholic social teaching, but not to evidence. On a Facebook page, Pepper posted repeated rants about the evils of Planned Parenthood and abortion, as well as marriage equality and gay rights.

And it’s clear that these religious beliefs regularly enter into court-ordered counseling, with the custody of children hanging in the balance.

This is how Christian privilege works. The same privilege that led Kim Davis to think it’s okay to use the government as an extension of her religious beliefs is the privilege that allows Mary Pepper to counsel under the assumption that you can’t be a good parent without her particular understanding of how Jesus wants her to live — with the endorsement of the court system.

And as wrong as she is, it’s hard to blame her. Religion, particularly Christianity, is embedded throughout our government and, by extension, our political culture. “Is it okay to display the Ten Commandments in front of prominent public buildings?” remains an open legal question, in no small part due to the fact that they’re literally carved into our Supreme Court. There are precisely zero members of Congress who are willing to publicly state that they don’t believe in God, which probably has something to do with the fact that even believers occasionally have to fend off made-up accusations of — gasp! — atheism. And that’s a political reality because, according to a recent Pew survey, a majority of Americans feel that you can’t be moral if you don’t believe in God — a sentiment echoed explicitly by our Republican presidential candidates and implicitly by our Democratic ones, none of whom would be considered serious contenders if they didn’t sign off every speech with “God bless America.”

Throughout all of this, the default assumption is religion, particularly Christianity, and all too often one particular understanding of Christianity.

Until that changes, we’re going to see episode after episode of people acting in the name of the government, but on behalf of their religion. We’re going to see public school teachers refuse to teach evolution on Monday because their pastor told them not to on Sunday. We’re going to see soldiers being told to “get right with Jesus” while in Afghanistan so they don’t go to Hell if they’re killed in action.

And we’re going to see parents separated from their children if they don’t agree that religion is a necessary component of a healthy family.