Because the US is used to chattel slavery, where someone "owns" the person and the person (in general) is never freed. "Forced labor" denies the fiction of ownership and maintains the illusion that everyone can be free.

[As a complete aside, ancient Rome had a law saying that a father could only sell his son into slavery a maximum of three times.]

pretty sure that's classed as human trafficking

This is because there is a huge difference between belief and religion. Belief is personal. Religion is organized.

When it's organized you get problems with dogma, corruption, power, money, bad people abusing this power as a means to control, and the steps they are willing to take to make sure the organization survives.

And when you can convince millions of people that you're doing God's work.. well then you can get away with anything, and you can make people do/accept anything. Look at all the shit organized religion has done throughout history. I think nobody/nothing surpasses that body count.

https://www.news.uscg.mil/Doing-Business/Photos/igphoto/2003677939/

Apparently it's a Coast Guard drug operation in the Pacific. No idea why that picture is on this article. A mistake?

a crazy little fact George W. Bush gave Teen Challenge programs a license exemption in texas because their religious organization and because the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse was going to shut them down for multiple violations

Unfortunately, history says otherwise. Religion will always pop up, as will people prepared to exploit it for personal gain.

Boy I wish. But stop believing in gods and people find other things to worship, as the techbros and cults of personality prove. There seems to just be part of the population that wants a ‘higher force’ to mindlessly follow.