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

Summary

Consider This from NPR

Episode: A prayer festival calls for more religion in politics, not less
Date: May 17, 2026
Host: Emily Feng (with field reporting by Henry Larson)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the "Rededicate 250" prayer festival held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The event, partially funded and organized by the Trump administration, drew thousands of mostly evangelical Christians and pressed for deeper entwinement of religion—specifically Christianity—with American politics and national identity. NPR investigates the motivations of those attending, analyzes the historical basis for these arguments, and presents counterpoints, including recent polling and reactions from counter-protesters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scene at Rededicate 250

• Setting: Stage designed as a fusion of church and federal architecture, large white cross prominent ([00:36]).
• Crowd: Overwhelmingly evangelical, many wearing USA gear and Christian-themed clothing; “One Nation under God” shirts were common ([00:48]).
• Security: Exceptionally tight, “bigger than I’ve seen for most events” ([00:48]).

2. Purpose & Messaging

• Main Goal: To “rededicate America to God,” seeking a return to what organizers view as the nation’s true Christian roots ([00:22], [04:11], [04:25]).
• Alignment: Event themes explicitly echoed the Trump administration’s push to intertwine faith and governance ([02:31], [03:35]).
• Connection to Founding: Recurrent claim that America was founded on Christian principles and should reclaim this foundation ([03:35], [05:53], [06:13]).

3. Voices from the Event

Attendees

• Yasmin Tobias: Came from New York with her church group. “Today we are dedicating the nation to God. That’s the purpose of the event.” ([04:10])
• Victoria Gamare: Expressed concern over moral decline: “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... contradicts what the word says, that's not where we can sit idly by.” ([04:41])
• Ian Cully: Defended event’s tax funding because participation isn’t compulsory: “It's not a regulation, it's not a law… it's free and it's on Sunday.” ([05:12])

Organizers & Speakers

• Eric Metaxas (Author, Speaker):
  • Events like this should “acknowledge God publicly…those who made these great sacrifices felt that they were unequal…needed God’s help.” ([06:38])
  • Asserts “at the heart of the Christian faith…is this idea of religious liberty.” ([07:18])
  • Argues the intention isn’t to privilege Christianity but sees advocacy for religious liberty as rooted in Christian faith: “Some of the most vocal Christians of the revolutionary era were also the fiercest advocates for religious liberty.” ([08:00])
  • Clarifies historical interpretation of separation of church and state: “He [Jefferson] was putting them at ease...we have this sacred wall of separation between church and state.” ([09:10])
  • Supports religion in public life: “I've always said that anybody who believes in the God of the Bible ... social movements...come out of people's faith.” ([10:17])

Historical Context & Critique

• Matthew D. Taylor (Visiting Scholar, Georgetown University):
  • Critiques the narrative that America was founded as a Christian nation: “The era of the Founding Fathers was a very secular era...influenced by Enlightenment philosophy...the founding of the US was a grand experiment in separating religion out from...the state.” ([11:35])

Additional Perspectives

• Ed Morgan (Veteran at the event):
  • Believes “the problems that we have as a country...have come from us straying from the Lord.”
  • Saw “divine protection of General Washington—never hit him...much like he has protected President Trump.” ([12:42], [13:25])
• Don Powell (Counter-Protester):
  • Voiced against government funding of the event: “I don’t think my government, which was founded on separation of church and state, should be funding multimillion dollars worth of church and state stuff.” ([14:06])

4. Broader Public Opinion

• Polling Data: NPR cites a Pew Research poll indicating more than half of Americans oppose ending the enforcement of separation of church and state. Fewer than 20% think Christianity should be the official U.S. religion, though that number is rising ([13:28]).

5. Visual Symbolism

• Freedom Trek Museum:
  • Mobile museum at the event depicted American founders and Christian imagery, reinforcing the melding of American and Christian identities ([12:02]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jack Jenkins (on the crowd):
  "It is overwhelmingly evangelical…a very particular subset of Christianity seems to be deeply represented here today." ([00:48])

• Victoria Gamare:
  “We were founded upon these Christian principles and we have lost our way. It's about time we came back.” ([04:36])

• Ian Cully (on public funding):
  “But it's not a regulation like a law that it must be enforced.” ([05:33])

• Eric Metaxas (on religious liberty):
  “Some of the most vocal Christians of the revolutionary era were also the fiercest advocates for religious liberty.” ([08:00])

• Matthew D. Taylor (on the Founders):
  “Most of the Founding Fathers were very much shaped by...Enlightenment philosophy...the founding of the US Was a grand experiment in separating religion out from the functioning and identity of the state.” ([11:35])

• Don Powell (counter-protester):
  "I don't think my government...should be funding multimillion dollars worth of church and state stuff." ([14:06])

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Important Timestamps

• [00:22]–Emily Feng arrives at the event, describes the scene.
• [01:31]–President Trump addresses the crowd via video, reading scripture.
• [02:31]–Discussion of the event’s political and religious alignment.
• [04:10]–Interviews with attendee groups about their motivation.
• [04:36]–Attendee perspectives on the loss of Christian identity in America.
• [05:12]–Discussion about government funding vs. compulsion.
• [06:13]–Eric Metaxas discusses the spiritual roots of the American Revolution.
• [07:34]–Debate on privileging Christianity in public life.
• [08:57]–Jefferson’s “wall of separation” explained.
• [10:17]–Arguments for more religion in politics, contextualized through history.
• [11:35]–Scholarly critique: Founding era as a secular, Enlightenment-influenced time.
• [12:02]–Description of Freedom Trek museum and its symbolism.
• [13:28]–Polling data: Majority of Americans support church/state separation.
• [14:06]–Counter-protester’s view on government funding for religious events.

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Final Thoughts

The episode provides an immersive look at the contemporary movement pushing for more overt religious integration in American politics, revisiting both the historical claims and ongoing societal divisions. Through participant interviews, expert commentary, and public opinion data, NPR offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of the “Rededicate 250” event and the broader debate on the role of religion in U.S. public life.

Transcript

[Emily 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 Rededicate250. I went down to understand what the organizers were looking to achieve and why many people traveled a long distance to come.

[Henry Larson]

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.

[Emily 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.

[Jack Jenkins]

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. You know, 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, like, crosses emblazoned on those shirts. I 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.

[Emily 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

[Eric Metaxas]

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?

[Emily Feng]

The president was a main draw along with the program connecting the nation's founding with Christianity.

[Jack Jenkins]

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. Even 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.

[Emily 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. From npr, I'm emily fay.

[Narrator from Up First podcast]

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[Victoria Gamare]

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[Narrator from Up First podcast]

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[Yasmin Tobias]

Foreign.

[Emily 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 and government. I went to the mall to understand more clearly the ideas motivating people to come.

[Henry Larson]

We're standing in line with people who are trying to get into the event. I'm with NPR producer Henry Larson.

[Jack Jenkins]

Hi, Emily.

[Yasmin Tobias]

New York City.

[Henry Larson]

Wait, so you came all the way down from New York?

[Yasmin Tobias]

Yes, it's a big group from our church that's here. Thank God. We're from the Light of the World 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.

[Henry Larson]

What does rededicate 250 mean?

[Yasmin Tobias]

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.

[Jack Jenkins]

What's special about today? Why is this such a big deal?

[Victoria Gamare]

We were founded upon these Christian principles and we have lost our way. It's about time we came back.

[Henry Larson]

How have we lost our way?

[Victoria Gamare]

I mean, just look around like it was strayed from the very things we've been we were founded upon. Like 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.

[Henry Larson]

How has President Trump made Christians relevant again? By promoting these values in government?

[Ian Cully]

Not in government. He separates it from the government because he's not enforcing it on anyone. 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.

[Henry Larson]

I mean, it is paid for by the American taxpayer, though it is paid

[Ian Cully]

for by the American. But it's not a regulation like a law that it must be enforced.

[Yasmin Tobias]

Right.

[Emily Feng]

That was Yasmin Tobias, Ian Cully and Victoria Gamare. 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.

[Eric Metaxas]

Amid all the bleak nights, the loss and despair, the lack of proper support, George Washington performed a profound act. He prayed.

[Emily Feng]

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.

[Eric Metaxas]

When Columbus first reached the shores of the New World, his first act was prayer to the Lord of hosts.

[Emily Feng]

I talked to him from NPR studios on Friday. 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.

[Eric Metaxas]

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.

[Emily Feng]

I'm curious, is that a Christian God?

[Eric Metaxas]

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.

[Emily Feng]

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. And I wonder if you believe this is privileging American Christians over other religious denominations.

[Eric Metaxas]

I can imagine that people would see it that way, but I don't think it Is I think that if. 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.

[Emily Feng]

Since you brought up the founding fathers,

[Henry Larson]

I know your hometown is Danbury, Connecticut. I'm also from Connecticut.

[Emily Feng]

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.

[Henry Larson]

And it's a critical text in this

[Emily Feng]

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?

[Eric Metaxas]

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 as meaning. In other words, when he spoke, what he is saying is that there are people worried that. 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 Baptist, 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. In Congress. And then you Danbury Baptists, tough luck for you. He was putting them at ease and saying, we will not do that. We have this sacred wall of separation between church and state.

[Emily 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?

[Eric Metaxas]

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. Because 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?

[Emily Feng]

That was Eric Metaxas, a speaker at the event and author of the book 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 tenants 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

[Matthew D. Taylor]

Edition, the era of the Founding Fathers was a very secular era. It was very much influenced by the Enlightenment. And most of the Founding Fathers were very much shaped by, 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 US Was a grand experiment in separating religion out from the functioning and identity of the state.

[Emily 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. We're walking up to Freedom Trek, got

[Henry Larson]

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.

[Ed Morgan]

I'm Ed Morgan.

[Emily Feng]

And Ed, why are you here today?

[Ed Morgan]

I did my final reenlistment in the Navy and matched up with 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 words, the lack of unity, the cultural decay in some cases without the Lord's guidance, you know, there was no logical reason we should have won our independence. You had the divine protection of General Washington. That never hit him.

[Henry Larson]

And God protected him.

[Ed Morgan]

Yes, yes. And I believe, much like he has

[Emily Feng]

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% think the government should declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S. although that number is on the rise. 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.

[Eric Metaxas]

I don't think my government, which was founded on separation of church and state, should be funding multimillion dollars worth of church and state stuff.

[Emily Feng]

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. Our executive producer is Sam Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Emily Feng.

[Narrator from Up First podcast]

Why do some of us feel so tired and other people seem to have endless energy?

[Jack Jenkins]

What we've discovered is that different people

[Eric Metaxas]

have very different kinds of mitochondria, and

[Jack Jenkins]

some people's mitochondria seem to be quite

[Eric Metaxas]

a bit better at flowing energy.

[Narrator from Up First podcast]

That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.