'Rededicate 250' focus on evangelical Christians is un-American | Opinion

Officials from President Donald Trump's administration and evangelical Christian leaders plan to gather "with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and rededication of our country as One Nation to God" in Washington, DC, on May 17.

That description is a lie. The real plan here is to push one distinct version of religion – right-wing, MAGA-heavy, politically motivated Protestantism – as the only government-favored faith for our entire country.

"Rededicate 250," as the all-day event on the National Mall is called, will platform almost exclusively those kinds of preachers in a way that brazenly and intentionally violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This is part of a larger attempt to undo the decrees the men we call our nation's "Founding Fathers" wrote into our first laws, mandating a separation between church and state.

Rededicate 250, pegged to this year's 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is designed to demolish those decrees.

But that's not what most Americans want.

Americans clearly support the separation of church and state

A Pew Research Center survey, released May 14 to provide context ahead of Rededicate 250, found that just 17% of Americans want Christianity declared as the official religion in this country. Fifty-four percent of Americans support a separation of church and state, while just 13% oppose that. And 52% said “conservative Christians have gone too far" pushing religion in government and public schools. 

The Rev. Paul Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and CEO of the Interfaith Alliance, told me Rededicate 250 violates the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause, which guarantees both the freedom to practice religion and the freedom to prevent the government from forcing a religion on you.

"Unfortunately, this event is very clearly privileging one tradition with the full-throated support of the government," Rauschenbusch said. "And it's a very kind of thin slice of American Christianity that largely is unified by political goals."

Rededicate 250 is an offshoot of Freedom 250, an effort funded by your tax dollars and corporate sponsors, organized by the U.S. Park Service and promoted by Trump's White House, to celebrate America's 250 years of existence.

How much of your tax dollars are being spent on Rededicate 250? I can't tell you. The White House team assigned to answer that question did not respond to my request for information last week, a continuation in a pattern of obstructing transparency while mislabeling it as "freedom."

The Founding Fathers were clear about church and state

Then there's an unintentional irony of Rededicate 250's website using the 1975 Arnold Friberg painting "The prayer at Valley Forge," which depicts George Washington kneeling in the snow next to his horse. On display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, it has been labeled there as portraying "an imagined moment of prayer.”

Rededicate 250 leans hard on the "imagined" part because Washington, our first president, was a religious man but never wanted to force his faith on other Americans. He didn't just call for government toleration for different religions. He wanted full freedom for all creeds.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence before becoming our third president, was also a religious man. And he, too, emphasized a "wall of separation" between the church and government while promoting freedom for all religions.

So now, we're all paying for a religious celebration

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me Rededicate 250 represents a larger effort in Trump's second term to force a particular version of religion into our government.

"It's extremely concerning that at a time when America is celebrating our decision not to have a king who rules over both church and state, that we are leaning into a Christian nationalist activity that promotes the lie that America was founded as a Christian nation," Laser said. "It's deeply un-American, and an assault on one of our best foundational values as a country."

Annie Laurie Gaylor, cofounder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, told me her group and Faithful America, religious progressives who oppose Christian nationalism, will protest at Rededicate 250 with an inflatable "false prophet" that looks like a golden calf with the visage of a certain 47th president.

"An all-day Christian prayer-fest on the National Mall proclaimed by our president and participated in and evidently funded by our federal government is exactly what our Constitution intended to prohibit," Gaylor told me.

Just consider how Trump pitched Rededicate 250 while announcing it in February at the National Prayer Breakfast.

"I've always said you can't have a great country if you don't have religion," Trump said before adding, "I behave because I'm afraid not to, OK, because I don't want to get in trouble."

This, from a president who last month posted a social media meme that made him look like Jesus Christ and then criticized Pope Leo XIV for preaching peace after Trump threatened to destroy “a whole civilization” in Iran.

The First Amendment guarantees Trump's right to act that way, even if it outrages people of faith. But that amendment also guarantees that Americans should not have to pay for any religion to be celebrated, and certainly not one distinct version of faith.

That's Trump's next outrage, happening on the National Mall, in contradiction of our Constitution.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.