Washington (United States) (AFP) โ President Donald Trump and top cabinet officials addressed thousands of Americans at a mass prayer rally in Washington on Sunday -- an event critics saw as an overt display of Christian nationalism undermining the separation of church and state.
The gathering was organized by the White House as part of a program 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 JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who both spoke via video.
In a brief video appearance, 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," Johnson said. "We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions."
Muscular Christian nationalism, which fuses American and Christian identities, has enjoyed a prominent platform since Trump's return to power, and evangelicals are among the president's staunchest backers.
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, religious rhetoric.
"Today, friends, we are in a spiritual war," 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, 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."
Jeana Dobbins, a 67-year-old retiree who traveled from North Carolina with her friend, said they had come to "rededicate our country back to God. Our country has fallen away in so many areas," she told AFP.
Sarah Tyson, holding a "Jesus Saves" sign, said she believes 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 needs to wake up," said 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 spoke were 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 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 than previous events," Perry added.
The organizers' website says the prayer gathering is for "Americans of every background" but Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, says the list of speakers suggested "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," 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.
So much for the constitutional freedom of religion, and the Republican party's continued call for small government, I guess. How long do you think before freedom of religion will be removed from the constitution?