This post has been published in Informed Comment.
On Sunday, May 17, a conservative religious group known as Freedom 250 is inviting you to a prayer vigil at the National Mall. This is called Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving. The goal is to “prepare for the nation’s 250th birthday with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and rededication of our country as One Nation to God.” Freedom 250 was created by the National Park Foundation to work alongside the White House Task Force 250, which is a child of Project 2025. The chief architect of that project is Russell Vought, who now serves Trump as Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Although it is advertised for “Americans of every background,” there is an immediate link on their website to register your church to join the event, even a “Church Engagement Toolkit.” Looking over the list of speakers, it is obvious what kinds of churches are behind this event: mostly Evangelicals and especially Baptists. This includes Jonathan Falwell, the Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Chancellor of his father Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Jonathan replaced his brother Jerry Falwell, Jr., who resigned after a sex scandal. There are also charismatics, including Paula White, a spiritual advisor to Trump who seems to know more about glossolalia than the Gospels.
There are two Catholic bishops, one of whom is the conservative Catholic Timothy Dolan, who Pope Leo recently replaced as Archbishop of New York. A Black senator and a Nigerian singer are also part of the show, but no major African American pastor was invited. I did not find any speakers from the mainline Protestant sects, including Episcopals, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and United Church of Christ. Nor are there any Latter Day Saints or Jehovah’s Witnesses. The only Jewish speaker is Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who offered prayer at the last Republican convention. There are no Hindu or Sikh speakers.
Not only are there no Muslim speakers, but one of the main stars is Franklin Graham, who has made his father Billy Graham’s Foundation an ultra-conservative political tool. Graham’s vitriolic hatred of Islam has a long history, including calling it a “a Very Evil and Wicked Religion.” Graham not only supports Trump’s war on Iran, but has the delusion that “the church in Iran is among the fastest growing in that part of the world.” He insists that more Iranians have become Christians in the last two decades than the entire 1,300 years since Islam arrived in Persia. At last year’s Pentagon Christmas Worship Service, Graham told the military personnel assembled that God is not just about love, but also a God of hate and war.
Featured as a main speaker is Pete Hegseth, identified as the 29th United States Secretary of War. Actually, since we have not had a Department of War since 1949, this number is off. Hegseth has promoted the war in Iran as a Christian duty with God on our side. This echoes the call of his religious advisor, Douglas Wilson, who argues that America should be a Christian nation and Christianity should dominate the world. Wilson also thinks women should not be allowed to vote, nor be in the military. Although it is not clear what kind of prayer Hegseth will ask for in his talk, he will probably not ask forgiveness for his previous adultery and drunken behavior.
I grew up in a small Fundamentalist Baptist church in northern Ohio, where my father often led the Wednesday night prayer service. I heard lots of sincere prayers from the elders, but none calling for God to kill someone. We were told that God hated sin, but Jesus died so that sinners do not need to be killed. They would be judged by God. It was common practice to pray for the American President, no matter which party he came from. This small church supported two local missionaries, who went to India and Africa to save souls, not to judge them.
Every once in awhile there was an Evangelistic Service in which we were told to invite our unbeliever, i.e. not Baptist, friends so the Holy Spirit could convict their hearts when a Bible verse was read. This has been the teaching of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals for a long time. The proposed national prayer vigil is a politically glorified evangelistic service by ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists. It is not going to be a prayer ritual for peace, justice or tolerance. The special message that will be read by Trump, who apparently will not attend in person, will have been written by an aide for a man who has never read the Bible and certainly has no desire to do so.
There is a scriptural passage which well defines this national display streamlining Sunday across the country: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15, KJV). There are many different kinds of sheep in our country, both those who are religious and those who do not belong to a formal religion. A good shepherd, the kind that anyone who recites Psalm 23 knows by heart, is one who protects all the sheep, not just a select few. That is the founding principle of the United States: a separation of church and state that prevents the state from defining which religion is best. Rededicate 250 is a non sequitor since our country has never been dedicated to a specific religious sect. Make no mistake, this call for Freedom is not about being free to worship or not worship who you please.
Sunday’s call for prayer is clothed in religious rhetoric, but there is nothing sheepish about it. A good shepherd knows that wolves want to devour the sheep. The whole point of Sunday’s state-sponsored event is to promote a specific religious view that disenfranchizes the majority of American citizens. Evangelicals, not all of whom support Trump, represent less than a quarter of the population. The goal is to indoctrinate, not to provide a meaningful forum for the wide range of religious and spiritual views throughout our entire history as a nation. This event must be seen as nothing more than a wolf call for Christian Nationalism, ignoring one of the very reasons our country was founded to prevent this attack on freedom of and from religion.
