Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson will speak at the event, which centers on the idea that the founders wanted the U.S. to be explicitly Christian.
The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday that organizers say will reflect the country’s Christian origins and, they hope, spark “a movement of renewal” in America.
“Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” is partly funded by millions in public dollars earmarked for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers said. It will feature mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian.
While U.S. presidents through history have typically marked major commemorations with generic prayers of thanks to God, scholars of American religious history say the national jubilee is unprecedented in the modern era.
They say that’s because of its scope — nine hours and dozens of Christian speakers, including top U.S. officials ... — and its focus on American identity as aligned with a specific slice of conservative Protestantism.
About three-quarters of the 33 speakers listed on the
Rededicate website as of Tuesday evening are evangelical Christians, compared with about a quarter of Americans overall. Organizers said the final list of speakers is still being determined.
[At another event, senior faith adviser to the White House Paula] White-Cain assured those in the audience that the jubilee would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.”
The all-day event — gates open at 9 a.m. and it will wrap at 6 p.m. —includes military bands, six Christian musical performers and speakers organized around three “pillars,” which the web site listed as “miracles” God imparted on America in the past, “personal testimonies of God’s healing” and a “unified moment of rededication.”
It also will feature one of the six 18-wheeler “Freedom Trucks” created by Freedom 250, which are traversing the country to teach about the founding of the nation. The material was created by two organizations that have led efforts to inject conservative content in K-12 classrooms: PragerU, a nonprofit that offers “a pro-American, Judeo-Christian message,” according to its tax forms; and Hillsdale College, a Christian school in Michigan.
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