Trump’s Evangelical Allies Gather in DC for Prayer Marathon, Push to Further Erode Church-State Divide

For nine hours in steamy Washington, D.C. on Sunday, President Donald Trump’s most ardent evangelical supporters gathered on the National Mall for a “historic” event to “rededicate” America to God. The Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving was part of Freedom 250, a series of tacky Christian nationalist semiquincentennial festivities orchestrated by the Trump administration. But as much as Trump berates other people for being insufficiently patriotic, or for being “anti-Christian” for failing to follow the edicts of his Christian nationalist supporters, he could only be bothered to send in a very strangely presented video. He then spent the afternoon golfing.

Trump’s evangelical supporters, who falsely contend America was founded by divine providence as a Christian nation, are trying to turn the anniversary of our independence from a king into a spectacle of worship of their wannabe king who compares himself to Jesus Christ. If there was any “rededication” going on at Sunday’s marathon on the Mall, it was not to the divine, but to the grift of Trump as the God-anointed savior of the “real” Christian America.

In his video, which the White House repurposed from the America Reads the Bible event in April, Trump was barely able to pronounce his words correctly, and recited them as if he couldn’t be bothered to understand their meaning. He quoted from Christian nationalists’ favorite verse, 2 Chronicles 7:14, imploring a sinful nation to save itself by turning its face to God.

“America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin; transgenderism, same-sex marriage, opening women’s locker rooms to men, are just the tip of the iceberg, Franklin Graham, a Trump favorite and heir to his father Billy Graham’s evangelism empire, said in his speech. He, however, had nothing to say about any sins by Trump, who spends his days dreaming up plots to loot the treasury for his friends, just as the founders intended, or posting AI photos of prominent Democrats swimming in sewage. For his supplicants, Trump is free of sin and moral rot. Eric Metaxas, an evangelical writer and podcaster who has long supported Trump and his lies about election fraud, claimed during the event that God raised up Trump to build the White House ballroom — for which Trump has collected $400 million from private donors and tried, thus far unsuccessfully, to get another billion from Congress.

Proponents of church-state separation and religious pluralism rightly pilloried the event for its promotion of an official state religion. Even though there were two Catholic speakers and a lone rabbi, this prayer marathon was principally a demonstration of Trump’s reliance on, and commitment to, his white evangelical supporters. The core of Trump’s support comes from white evangelicals; without them, his coalition crumbles. So he needs to issue periodic reminders that, in case his behavior as the most corrupt president ever caused them to forget, he is the messiah to the Christian nation they imagine America to be. God has anointed him to rescue the country and Christianity itself from the woke mob that wants to impose the “radical” or “Marxist” ideas enshrined in the Constitution, like the separation of church and state and equal rights for all. If Trump’s salvific status is eroded, his Christian nationalist house of cards might collapse.

That’s why Trump’s most passionate sycophants stand ready to defend him when he commits heresies so obvious that even Sunday school dropouts could identify them. That’s why his White House Faith Office advisor and longtime friend, the televangelist Paula White, made an appearance on the far-right Real America’s Voice to counter last month’s outcry over his Truth Social post of the AI-generated meme of himself as Jesus. Trump was raised in a very religious home, White insisted, and attended church “all the time.” He reached out to her 25 years ago, White went on, repeating famous right-wing lore about how he was drawn to her televised prosperity gospel messages. “He was watching people on television, if I started naming them, he’d go ‘oh my goodness, oh my goodness,’” White gushed. “And he can quote to you so many sermons.” Maybe he thought he was quoting a sermon when, en route home from his underwhelming diplomatic foray to China on Friday, he attacked Texas Democratic Senate candidate and seminary graduate James Talarico as “a weird, weird candidate. Six genders, a real hit on Jesus. This guy is bad news, with his mask from relatively recently. He was a vegan.”

I’ve been covering Trump’s relationship with evangelicals for over a decade, but cannot recall him ever quoting a sermon. He does, though, very frequently sound and act like a televangelist. What else are his ballroom and “triumphal arch” but the trappings of a prosperity gospel con job like a luxury beachfront “parsonage” or your own, personal, “biblical” jet. (Trump is getting one of those, too, possibly as a very special combination birthday and Fourth of July gift.) So if your idea of a sermon is a hard sell for your congregants to enrich you by parting with their money with the promise of God’s blessings, maybe it all now makes sense. Maybe that’s why Trump’s evangelicals think he is the biblically literate one in theological fights he picks with seminarians and even the Pope. Weighing in on Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo for criticizing his lethal and failed war in Iran, longtime supporter Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas claimed on Fox News earlier this month that Trump understands the Bible better than the Pope. Turning his attention to revisionist American history Sunday, Jeffress told the audience on the National Mall that the founders “would have gladly embraced” the title of “Christian nationalist.”

A Washington Post poll conducted in late April shows some evidence Trump’s Catholic support has eroded, but that white evangelicals are still sticking with him. Amid his verbal attacks on Leo, a sizable majority of Catholics — 61 percent — maintain favorable views of the pontiff, but only 38 percent of Catholics approve of Trump’s job performance. Among white Catholics, who Trump won by a 25 point margin in the 2024 election, his approval in the Post poll is now at 49 percent, a 14 point drop since February 2025. We might now be seeing a fraying of the more than 50 year-old evangelical-Catholic alliance over shared opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights.

One of the most telling findings of the poll was that while only 53 percent of white evangelicals think Trump is honest and trustworthy, 71 percent approve of his job performance. It seems like little can diminish their views of the robustness of their anointed one: 75 percent think he has the “mental sharpness” to serve effectively, and 79 percent think he is in “good enough physical health” to serve. He might stray a bit now and again, but God would never ordain someone who wasn’t smart and strong to rescue Christian America. Yesterday’s confab was yet another reminder of how Trump can easily tap into a rapturous evangelical base that seems perpetually incapable of confronting the reality of his degeneracy and decline.