A prayer festival calls for more religion in politics, not less

0:00Emily Feng:It's Consider This where every day we go deep on one big news story. On the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, thousands of people gathered as part of a prayer event, partially funded and organized by the Trump administration called Rededicate 250. I went down to understand what the organizers were looking to achieve and why many people traveled a long distance to come. We're standing here on the lawn, pretty close. We can see the Washington Monument. There are people streaming in as we speak. People are singing in the background. They've set up picnic blankets. And they're all here to rededicate the nation, as they say, to God.

0:36Emily Feng:The scene was striking. The stage was set up to look like a mix of a church and a federal building with a really large white cross. I spoke to Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service about what he noticed. The security here is super tight, bigger than I've seen for most events or protests or demonstrations on the mall. I've been talking to people in the crowd and it is overwhelmingly evangelical folks who identify as evangelical or with non-denominational churches. Visually, it's a lot of folks wearing USA gear, which tracks, given that this is supposed to be part of a 250th celebration of the United States, but also a lot of crosses emblazoned on those shirts.

1:15I spoke to one group of women who were all wearing One Nation Under God shirts, and they told me that they saw this as rededicating America to God and that that is long overdue. So a very particular subset of Christianity seems to be deeply represented here today.

1:31Emily Feng:It was a nine-hour event, and because of that tight security, many people waited hours to get in. When President Trump addressed the crowd via video, there were cheers. The president read scripture. And this house which is high shall be an astonishment to everyone that passes by it, so that he shall say, why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house? The president was a main draw, along with the program connecting the nation's founding with Christianity, Jack Jenkins told me. It's not unprecedented for government to have religious services and ceremonies. But what critics have been quick to know, and folks I've spoken to, is that what seems to be happening here is not kind of a broad appeal to faith in general, but more to a specific group of religious Americans, particularly those who have supported President Donald Trump.

2:23Even some of the folks I spoke to, when I asked them what brought them here today, one of their first answers was to support my president.

2:31Emily Feng:Consider this. The assumption at the core of the messaging at the prayer festival was that America was dedicated to a Christian God at its founding. And that there should be more religion and politics going forward, not less. It aligns with the Trump administration's push to fuse faith and governance.

2:59Emily Feng:From NPR, I'm Emily Fang.

3:18Spielberg, I'm in. Check out the summer guide from Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.

3:31Emily Feng:It's Consider This from NPR. At Rededicate 250, an event that drew thousands of people on Sunday to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the president and a slate of evangelical advisors and other Trump supporters spoke to the crowds. It was a publicly funded celebration of the nation's founding with an explicit overlapping between the role of religion and government. I went to the mall to understand more clearly the ideas motivating people to come. We're standing in line with people who are trying to get into the event. I'm with NPR producer Henry Larson. Hi, I'm Mike. New York City. Wait, so you came all the way down from New York for that?

4:08Emily Feng:Yes, it's a big group from our church that's here, thank God. We're from the light of the word church, La Luz del Mundo. It's definitely a special event today. We are dedicating the nation to God. That's the purpose of the event. What does rededicate 250 mean? Basically, I believe in the United States we have lost a sense of who God really is. And I think this event is looking for that purpose. What's special about today? Why is this such a big deal? We were founded upon these Christian principles and we have lost our way. It's about time we came back. How have we lost our way? I mean, just look around.

4:40Like, it was straight from the very things we were founded upon. They're allowing homosexuals and murder of unborn children. There's that push for the whole separation of church and state thing, but it's when the state tends to do things that contradict what the word says. That's not where we can sit idly by. So it's a good thing that our leaders are seeking him first.

5:03Emily Feng:How has President Trump made Christians relevant again by promoting these values in government? Not in government. He separates it from the government because he's not enforcing it on anyone. And it's not a regulation. It's not a law. But he organizes a program where we all can come together and worship God. And it's not by force. It's not a law. It's not a policy. It's not a regulation. It's free and it's on Sunday. I mean, it is paid for by the American taxpayer, though. It is paid for by the American, but it's not a regulation, like a law that it must be enforced, right? That was Yasmin Tobias, Ian Cully, and Victoria Gomare.

5:40Emily Feng:They told us this event was an important historical moment. They wanted to be here in person and to hear speakers like Secretary Pete Hegseth, who addressed the crowd in a video. Amid all the bleak nights, the loss and despair, the lack of proper support, George Washington performed a profound act. He prayed. On the stage today was Eric Metaxas, author of a forthcoming book that proposes the American Revolution was more deeply rooted in spirituality than is commonly thought. When Columbus first reached the shores of the New World, his first act was prayer to the Lord of hosts. I talked to him from NPR studios on Friday.

6:21Emily Feng:He told me that while writing the book, he was surprised at how many instances many of America's founders referred to God and religion. And following in that vein is what he understands to be part of the purpose of today's event on the Mall. The idea is to acknowledge God publicly. I think as we come up on the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation, that it's appropriate, historically speaking, to acknowledge that those who made these great sacrifices felt that they were unequal to what they were doing and that they needed God's help. It's fascinating to me how they make this clear over and over and over that they felt that if God isn't with them, helping them, they can't possibly do what they hope to do.

7:12Emily Feng:I'm curious, is that a Christian God? Well, I think there is only one God. And I think that at the heart of the Christian faith, at the heart of biblical faith, I should say, is this idea of religious liberty. It's not in spite of what the Bible says. It comes out of it. Last month, a senior faith advisor to the White House described Rededicate as a way to highlight, quote, the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values. And the vast majority of speakers and presenters at this event are evangelicals, Protestant Christians, Catholics. This is a very clear Christian focus.

7:49Emily Feng:And I wonder if you believe this is privileging American Christians over other religious denominations. I can imagine that people would see it that way, but I don't think it is. I think that if you really know the history of this country, you realize that some of the most vocal Christians of the revolutionary era were also the fiercest advocates for religious liberty. I think most people I know today who are serious about their faith, they understand that idea. They wouldn't want anybody to see them as trying to impose their faith. But at the same time, they would want to represent that faith.

8:35Since you brought up the Founding Fathers, I know your hometown is Danbury, Connecticut.

8:40Emily Feng:I'm also from Connecticut. Danbury is home of the famous Danbury Baptists. And as I know you know, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to them in which he talks about building, quote, a wall of separation between church and state. And it's a critical text in this concept of American democracy, of separation of church and state. But you have argued several times that Jefferson didn't mean separation of church and state. Can you briefly explain your argument? I hope I've never said that Jefferson didn't mean what he wrote. He did mean it, but what he meant is different than the way we have, let's say, in the last five or six decades interpreted it as meaning.

9:19In other words, when he spoke, what he is saying is that there are people worried that the state will encroach upon the churches, that the state will take a heavy hand and say, you can't believe this, you mustn't believe this, you must believe this. as he's writing to the Danbury Baptists. He's trying to put them at ease that somebody in the federal government will, for example, decide, you know what? Everybody in America has to be Church of England and we're going to make a law in Congress and then you Danbury Baptists, tough luck for you. He was putting them at ease and saying we will not do that.

9:58We have this sacred wall of separation between church and state.

10:02Emily Feng:I've heard you bring up this letter as an argument for why there should be more religion in politics, not that there should be a complete separation of church and state. So if you believe that religion needs to be in politics more, what would that look like? Well, I mean, I have advocated for religion in public life. People, they will use Jefferson's phrase as a way of saying there shouldn't be faith in the public square. There's that fine line of how do you have faith but not impose your faith? And so I've always said that anybody who believes in the God of the Bible, I would say, let's say it's 1860, and you say, I'm very serious about my faith.

10:41Because of that, I believe in the abolition of slavery. And you see this through history, that there are social movements, I mean, women getting the vote, the civil rights movement, this comes out of people's faith. And so the question is, if you live out your faith, how does it not lead sometimes to politics?

11:04Emily Feng:That was Eric Metaxas, a speaker at the event and author of the book Revolution, the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. Talking with him helped me understand the argument organizers hope to convince people of today, that the Founding Fathers derived the tenets of America's revolution from their Christian faith. But many religious scholars disagree with this reading of history, As Matthew D. Taylor, an author and visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice, explained on NPR's weekend edition. The era of the Founding Fathers was a very secular era.

11:36It was very much influenced by the Enlightenment. And most of the Founding Fathers were very much shaped by that kind of Enlightenment philosophy. And that's why they talked about ideas like the separation of church and state or the disestablishment of religion. In fact, the founding of the U.S. was a grand experiment in separating religion out from the functioning and identity of the state.

11:58Emily Feng:Back at Rededicate 250 on the Mall, omnipresent iconography of the founders and Christianity was a visual reminder of the desire for greater fusion rather than separation. Like at a mobile museum funded by the same private public organization that put on today's event. So we're walking up to Freedom Trek. Got a painting of Washington crossing the Delaware on the side, celebrating 250 years of the American spirit. Interesting. The foundational principles of America are rooted in the Western Judeo-Christian traditions that the colonists inherited through their British roots. I'm Ed Morgan. And Ed, why are you here today?

12:38I did my final re-enlistment in the Navy and matched up with the rededication. so we figured we would do the whole thing. Well, I do think that this country was definitely inspired, led by God and its founding. The problems that we have as a country, I believe, have come from us straying from the Lord, His Word.

13:02Emily Feng:Straying how? The lack of unity, the cultural decay in some cases. Without the Lord's guidance, there was no logical reason we should have won our independence. He had the divine protection of General Washington. And God protected him. Yes. Yes, I believe, much like he has protected President Trump. The intertwining of governance and religion was, for Ed Morgan, welcome. This messaging does face headwinds among the general public, though. A new Pew Research poll said that more than half of Americans say they do not want their government to stop enforcing separation of church and state, and less than 20 percent think the government should declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S., although that number is on the rise.

13:50Emily Feng:As we left the Rededicate 250 event, we saw a group of counter-protesters not far from the Freedom Trucks. People were holding signs and one held up a rainbow flag. I spoke with a man named Don Powell about why he was there. I don't think my government, which was founded on separation of church and state, should be funding multi-million dollars worth of church and state stuff. But the money has been spent. Kicking off what the president has promised will be more large-scale patriotic celebrations of America's 250th birthday this summer. This episode was produced by Henry Larson. It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Daniel Burke.

14:30Emily Feng:Our executive producer is Sam Yenigan.

14:43Emily Feng:It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Emily Fang. From Spider-Man to a new Steven Spielberg movie, we know the TV and movies you'll want to watch this summer. I'm excited about this film. I just know suspense, intrigue, aliens, and I'm like, all right, Spielberg, I'm in. Check out the summer guide from Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.