- Things attendees to last weekend’s prayer rally said, and how they strike me as unhinged from reality;
- Heather Cox Richardson’s take: a turning away from “Enlightenment values of natural rights, equality, and self-government to one that requires Americans to accept that some people are better than others and to defer to their leaders”;
- Short items: Rubio wants to preach the gospel to the world; an Illinois Republican wants to stamp a religious slogan on all federal buildings;
- Robert Reich suggests that Trump’s Republican Party has become a criminal enterprise;
- And John Pavlovitz asks why MAGA Christians hate their neighbors? (Again: it’s because MAGA is about OT tribalism, not anything Jesus said in the NT).
The Atlantic, Stephanie McCrummen, today: Spiritual Warfare Comes to the National Mall, subtitled “What Trump’s prayer rally revealed about where American Christianity is heading”
By 10 a.m. yesterday, the line of people wishing to dedicate America to God was more than three hours long. They came ready with prayer flags to wave the Holy Spirit into action, and shofars to scatter demonic forces. They wore T-shirts declaring the sort of Christians they were. A muscular man wore one that read Prayer Warrior. A woman in cargo shorts announced that she was an Intercessor for America. An elderly woman wore one that read I Am the Weapon.
…
“We are here to bring the Earth into alignment with God,” a man named Joel Balin, who had come with a friend from Atlanta, told me. “To bring the kingdom of heaven to Earth.”
How long is this going to take? You’ve had two thousand years, already.
The rally, called Rededicate 250, was billed as a “jubilee of prayer, praise and Thanksgiving” for “God’s presence” in American history. It was part of a series of events celebrating the nation’s anniversary put together by a Donald Trump–aligned nonprofit called Freedom 250, which is being funded by a public-private partnership that includes corporate donors such as Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir and for which Congress has allocated $150 million. Critics of the event denounced the reliance on government funds, the participation of administration officials, and the near-total lack of religious diversity as an attempt to make a certain version of Christianity a national religion.
Followed by many, many examples,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose own theologies do not exactly align with the movement, told stories about God deploying miracles at key moments in the nation’s history, leveraging these anecdotes to argue that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. Historians say this is a clear misunderstanding of the American Revolution.
…
[Balin] said that church-state separation is a “myth” and that, really, any separation from God is a foolish denial of the cosmic reality of the spiritual battle underway. He said that people he knows are tired of “materialism” and “dualism” and “an Enlightenment mindset” that fails to account for how supernatural forces affect earthly life. “There are so many things happening in the supernatural realm, and in the ancient world and other cultures, they recognized this—there was no separation,” he said. “I think we are rediscovering that as Americans.”
…
“This is what we’ve been praying for, for our country to turn back to God,” Debbie Cloud, a retiree, told me as she began to cry.
…
“Modernism told us, Let’s know our chemistry. Let’s know our physics. Science can explain the world,” [Adriel Lam, from Hawaii] said. “Then postmodernism said, Let’s question the foundations of everything. Post-postmodernism is people saying, Let’s go back to zero. Let’s go back to the first century, when Jesus united the physical and the spiritual. God is moving our generation for renewal.”
…
“We underestimate what’s going on in the invisible realm,” [David Hitt from Atlanta] said. “Our assembly, our worship, our prayer is creating openings for God to do his will.” He elaborated that he meant actual openings, portals where the Holy Spirit could enter into battle against actual demonic forces. He estimated that the prayer of just one person could put 1,000 demons in flight, and the prayer of two people could eject 10,000.
These people are unhinged from reality. I know it’s impolite to say so, but these people sound and act like loony-bins. They are so saturated in their mythology, living inside a bubble, the real world makes no impression on them.
\
An historian’s view.
Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, last night: May 17, 2026
Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity.
The “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” event is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to use the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to rewrite America’s history, turning it from one that champions the Enlightenment values of natural rights, equality, and self-government to one that requires Americans to accept that some people are better than others and to defer to their leaders.
The last phrase is the theme of her book DEMOCRACY AWAKENING (reviewed here).
As is her wont, she provides much historical perspective on these current events. This post ends:
The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.”
But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America.
From its origins in resistance to the British government, the story of America has been the opposite of obeying. It has been about questioning, debating, criticizing leaders, and working to build “a more perfect Union,” as the Framers charged us to do. The story of America is how those who believed in the principles of democracy, those ideals articulated by the Founders however imperfectly they lived them, have struggled to make the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our government, come true.
\\\
- JMG, today, from USA Today: Rubio: “We Must Preach The Gospel To The World”
- No, you mustn’t. You’re missing the point of the United States. It’s not a theocracy.
\
- Friendly Atheist, today: Mary Miller’s “In God We Trust” bill is Christian Nationalism in a nutshell
- Subtitled: The Illinois Republican wants a religious slogan on federal buildings while Americans struggle with real problems
In a symbolic move intended to promote Christian Nationalism while helping nobody, Illinois Rep. Mary Miller—one of the more bigoted Republicans in a party full of them—introduced a bill that would force all federal buildings to display or inscribe the words “In God We Trust.”
The Hitler-praising Miller, who once said the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a “victory for white life,” said “We will never apologize for being one nation that places its trust in Almighty God.”
Dim.
\\
It’s not an accident that the religiously fervent don’t care about ordinary law.
Robert Reich, today: Has Trump’s Republican Party Become a Criminal Enterprise?, subtitled “Trump’s purge of all political opponents, including Senator Bill Cassidy, leaves it with no purpose other than helping Trump achieve his lawless goals”
On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)
\
John Pavlovitz, 16 May 2026: Dear MAGA Christians, Why Do You Hate Your Neighbor?
Trump-Supporting Christian, maybe you can help me clear something up.
You see, I used to think I was a Christian.
I was raised in a Christian home and went to a Christian school. After a few meandering spiritual wilderness years, I attended a Christian seminary, became a Christian pastor, and served in Christian churches for most of the past thirty-five years of my life.
I’ve read and studied and preached the Scriptures extensively, led community Bible studies and student retreats and overseas mission trips, ministered in tiny rural chapels and massive gleaming megachurches.
As a result of these decades immersed in the Christian tradition both personally and vocationally, I thought I had at least the gist of Jesus.
Now, I think maybe I’ve been doing this wrong all these years.
For my entire life, I assumed something that perhaps I shouldn’t have: I thought Christians were supposed to care about people.
With many examples of what Jesus said.
Yet another example of how MAGA, claiming to be Christian, really only express the priorities of OT tribalism. The Ten Commandments. I think I read that none of the speakers at the rally over the weekend actually quoted anything Jesus said. (But I may be wrong.)
