White House mass prayer event seeks to reclaim US Christian roots

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and top cabinet officials addressed thousands of Americans at a mass prayer rally in Washington on May 17 – an event critics saw as an overt display of Christian nationalism undermining the separation of church and state.

The gathering was organised by the White House as part of a programme of celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary and billed as an opportunity to revive the idea of a country founded on Christian principles.

During the daylong outdoor event on the National Mall, attendees sang and swayed to Christian music and listened to addresses by pastors and government officials, including Vice-President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who both spoke via video.

In a brief video appearance, Mr Trump read a passage from the Bible in which God says he will “heal their land” if people “seek my face and turn from their wicked ways”.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson offered a prayer over what he described as “sinister ideologies” in the United States.

“We’ve witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this great nation,” he said. “We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions.”

Muscular Christian nationalism has enjoyed a prominent platform since Mr Trump’s return to power, and evangelicals form a core element of the president’s support base.

Mr Hegseth is a member of an ultra-conservative evangelical church, and his briefings on the Iran war have been notable for their use of bellicose, Christian rhetoric.

“Today, friends, we are in a spiritual war. This is a battle in our day between good and evil, between right and wrong, between truth and lies, between light and darkness,” Pastor Gary Hamrick of Virginia told the crowd.

“This is a battle for the very soul of America.”

The US Constitution explicitly bars the establishment of any official religion, but the expression of any faith is also explicitly protected.

Earlier, Mr Johnson countered criticism of the event on Fox News Sunday, calling Christian nationalism a “new” and “pejorative” term used by people “trying to silence the influence and the voices of Christians”.

‘Rededicate our country’

“We came here to rededicate our country back to God. Our country has fallen away in so many areas,” Madam Jeana Dobbins, a 67-year-old retiree who travelled from North Carolina with her friend, told AFP.

Attendee Sarah Tyson, holding a “Jesus Saves” sign, said she believes Mr Trump was chosen by God to lead the nation through a new spiritual revival.

“God ordained him for a time like this, because these United States need to wake up,” said Ms Tyson, a middle-aged woman who came from New York with fellow church members.

While previous administrations and presidents have regularly held and attended faith-based gatherings, Sunday’s event is still unusual for its scale and the presence of top Cabinet officials.

And apart from a rabbi and a retired Catholic archbishop, almost all the 20 listed “faith leaders” who will speak are evangelical Protestants.

“It’s not unprecedented to have a group of evangelical pastors or conservative clergy come together for something like this and blend a certain kind of nationalism with a certain kind of conservative Christianity,” said Dr Sam Perry, a professor at Baylor University, a Christian school in Texas.

But “the Trump administration taking the lead on this celebration at this scale is different from previous events,” Dr Perry added.

The organisers’ website says the prayer gathering is for “Americans of every background” but Professor of religious studies, Julie Ingersoll at the University of North Florida, says the list of speakers suggests “an idea of American identity that is rooted in whiteness and Christianity”.

The event “sends a specific message... that they are the mainstream Americans, and the rest of us are sidelined,” Prof Ingersoll said.

The National Mall, which stretches from the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, is a common site for mass rallies and protests – most famously the 1963 March on Washington, when an estimated 250,000 people heard Martin Luther King Jr deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. AFP