The Freedom From Religion Foundation reports that Sunday’s Christian nationalist prayer rally on the National Mall failed to inspire the massive turnout or enthusiasm its organizers promised.
Despite promotion from President Trump’s allies and appearances from top administration officials, only thousands attended the government-sponsored prayer fest in Washington, D.C. — far below the 80,000-plus turnout anticipated by delusional Pastor Robert Jeffress.
Even Trump appeared to treat the rally, formally known as “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving,” as an afterthought, sending only a video message. Rather than bothering to record a dedicated address for the prayer rally, Trump provided a rerun, a video he (inappropriately) recorded last month for a bible-reading marathon last month. In the recycled Oval Office video, Trump recited a passage from 2 Chronicles favored by Christian nationalists. Trump’s only fresh acknowledgment of the event came in a Truth Social post Sunday morning saying: “I HOPE EVERYBODY AT REDEDICATE 250 IS HAVING A GOOD TIME … I’M BACK FROM CHINA!!!”
Throughout the rally, public officials repeatedly fused religious doctrine with national identity and repeated the Christian nationalist Big Lies that the United States was founded “under God” and as a Christian nation.
Quite to the contrary.
“We live under a godless Constitution whose only references to religion are exclusionary,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor, who was in the nation’s capital yesterday to protest the government-sponsored prayer revival. “America was founded on Enlightenment principles, not biblical authority. No amount of prayer rallies or revisionist history can erase that.”
The revival was staged beneath towering faux stained-glass altar displays featuring a large white cross emblazoned over rotating revolutionary images, such as a depiction from the John Trumbull Declaration of Independence 1818 painting showing the Declaration’s signing. The false claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation was repeatedly invoked throughout the day by elected officials, cabinet members and religious leaders.
Vice President JD Vance, also in a video, wrongly declared that America has “always been, and still are, a nation of prayer,” claiming “our faith was the ground upon which America stands.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a video statement likewise claimed Christianity defined the nation from the beginning. “With the dark storm clouds of war looming on the horizon, they did what Christians have always done across place and time for 2,000 years,” Rubio said of the Founders. “They turned their eyes to heaven and placed their faith in the hands of God.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told attendees in video remarks that America’s Founders “knelt” and sought God’s guidance before independence. “Now today, exactly 250 years later, we gather here on the National Mall to do the same,” Gabbard said, “to give thanks, to ask for forgiveness, and to humbly ask once more for God’s mercy and guidance.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who appeared in person, urged Americans to pray “on bended knee” to Jesus Christ, invoking George Washington at Valley Forge as an example — a piece of Christian nationalist disinformation. After the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to Museum of the Bible, which owns the 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of Washington kneeling in the snow, the museum display was changed to say it depicts what “many believe Washington” did, as the New York Times recently reported.
In his remarks, Hegseth added, “Let us ask our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as Washington did on that momentous day, ‘So help us God.’”
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who also appeared in person, repeatedly insisted that Christianity and prayer were foundational to the nation. He began his remarks asking, “How many love Jesus,” to huge cheers. “There is no way to grasp the last 250 years of America without looking to the power of prayer,” Scott said. “Our rights don’t come from government, they come from God.”
Pastor Jeffress openly embraced the label “Christian nationalist.” “If being a Christian nationalist means loving Jesus Christ and loving America, count me in,” Jeffress told the crowd.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who appeared in person, led an extended prayer declaring that the United States was founded on “biblical and foundational principle[s]” and formally “rededicate[d] the United States of America as ‘One Nation, Under God.’” Johnson, who as speaker is third in line to the presidency, also condemned what he called attacks on America’s “moral and spiritual identity,” while asserting that Americans’ rights “do not derive from the government, they come from you, our Creator and Heavenly Father.”
FFRF warned ahead of the event that the rally would promote pseudohistory and Christian nationalism, an ideology asserting that a preferred version of Christianity should be privileged in American government and public life.
Counterprotests on the day of the rally highlighted growing opposition to theocracy and religious favoritism in government. The Freedom From Religion Foundation and Faithful America displayed a giant inflatable golden calf with Trump’s face on the National Mall, mocking the idolatrous merging of religion and Trump-style politics. FFRF leased two digital billboard trucks to carry the message, “Democracy Not Theocracy” around the Mall. The Interfaith Alliance projected protest messages onto the National Gallery of Art, reading: “Democracy not theocracy” and “The separation of church and state is good for both.”
FFRF filed a Freedom of Information Act request two months ago, and appealed the denial. It is now awaiting promised records related to the planning, coordination and use of government resources connected to the event, including communications involving federal agencies and public officials who participated in the rally.
The underwhelming turnout undercuts claims that Christian nationalism represents a broad national movement, as documented by a Pew study released days before the rally showing that Americans reject efforts to merge church and state.
“The growing resistance to flagrant violations of the separation of state and church, like this ‘Rededicate 250’ boondoggle, demonstrates that Americans in this semiquincentennial year still revere secular government and religious freedom for all — not government-sponsored Christianity,” Gaylor adds.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
