By David Hood-Nuño and Julio-Cesar Chavez
WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) – A Trump administration-backed celebration of U.S. religious heritage on Sunday highlighted conservative Christian leaders’ ties to the president as critics expressed the gathering did not reflect the country’s diverse faith landscape.
Thousands of people attended the nine-hour program, called “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” for a mixture of popular worship music and speakers from evangelical Christianity and conservative Catholic traditions.
Sunday’s events included video messages from members of the Trump administration such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. All of them generally stuck to the prevailing theme of the day, touching on the Judeo-Christian roots of the country’s founders and the themes they incorporated into some landmark documents such as the Declaration of Independence.
The event mixed elements of a rally and a religious service, where chants of “U-S-A” broke out in the crowd at times with contemporary Christian artists like Chris Tomlin leading the crowd in well-known worship songs.
President Donald Trump did not record a new message for the occasion or attend in person, although organizers played a weeks-old video of him reciting 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, a recording that was originally released as part of the America Reads the Bible event.
Rededicate 250 was organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership created by the White House to coordinate 250th anniversary celebrations alongside federal agencies.
“We try to have something for everybody, that’s really our mission,” Freedom 250 CEO Keith Krach told Reuters. “I guess you can’t please all the people all the time, but we’re doing our absolute best job.”
Advocates of church-state separation said the event blurs government and religion.
“This government-sponsored prayer fest is the epitome of exactly what our secular Constitution forbids our government from doing,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a statement.
Critics pointed to the absence of religious groups such as mainline Protestant churches including Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians. Also not represented were the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christianity, Islam or Buddhism.
More than a quarter of all U.S. adults identify as religiously unaffiliated, according to figures from the Pew Research Center. About 23% and 19% identify as evangelical Protestant and Catholic, respectively, and about 11% identify as mainline Protestant.
But for Sunday’s participants, the event marked a day to connect with others and their Christian faith. Michelle Fensky, in her 60s, said she bought her tickets to travel from her home in southern Oklahoma two days after Trump announced the event.
“This is what I needed,” she said. “It’s been a hard few years for our country.”
‘SCREENSHOT’ OF EARLY AMERICA
Faith leaders who spoke included Bishop Robert Barron, from the Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester; Jonathan Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University, a school established by Christian evangelicals; and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, senior rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City.
Among the political speakers, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican Senator Tim Scott appeared in person. No prominent Democrats joined.
In a prayer, Johnson decried “sinister ideologies” that view U.S. history “through the lens of our sins” rather than seeing God’s blessings.
“We remember that your mighty hand has been upon our nation since the very beginning,” Johnson said.
One of Sunday’s speakers, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference leader Samuel Rodriguez, said in an interview ahead of the event that the mostly Christian speaker list reflects what the American colonies looked like after the Great Awakening religious revival of the 18th century.
“It’s pretty much a depiction, a screenshot of our foundation,” Rodriguez said.
The event was one of 16 planned by the administration for the 250th anniversary of the United States, and the first in 2026. According to the event’s website, it is meant to give “praise to God for 250 years of His Providence for the United States, in praying that God Bless and Protect America for the next 250 years, and in solemnly re-dedicating our country as One Nation under God.”
(Reporting by David Hood-Nuño and Julio-Cesar Chavez; Editing by Sergio Non, Cynthia Osterman and Nick Zieminski)
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