America 250 and Faith in Public Life

I was contacted by a reporter this week who is covering the Trump-affiliated “Rededicate 250” event in Washington this Sunday. The reporter, evidently no fan of the Trump administration, basically wanted to know 1) how aberrant it is for the administration to sponsor a faith-oriented event, and 2) what Christian nationalists get wrong about the American founding.

I gave answers that were intended to provide relevant information and sources on these questions, and thought Substack readers might be interested in seeing them. I never know how much (if any) of my responses a reporter might use!

“Faith-related events at the White House and other venues have actually been a pretty constant feature of presidential history. For example, President Obama hosted Easter Prayer Breakfasts at the White House every year from 2010 to 2016.

Every president starting with Eisenhower has attended the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. (it began with Eisenhower’s first term).

Richard Nixon held worship services at the White House - they were a bit unusual in that they were weekly Sunday services that lasted into his second term.

Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden have regularly spoken to assemblies of pastors and at churches. Probably the most famous of Reagan’s speeches in such settings was at the National Association of Evangelicals meeting in 1983, better known as the “Evil Empire” speech.

The Trump administration’s invocations of America’s Christian heritage are fairly conventional, then, although the president himself doesn’t seem quite as prone to such statements as committed Christian cabinet members such as Secretary Hegseth are. Hegseth’s services at the Pentagon are unusual in their level of public notoriety, but of course the Pentagon has always hosted chaplain-led services for a variety of faith groups.

One unusual aspect of the speakers that the Trump administration assembles for events such as Rededicate 250 is the prominence of “prosperity gospel” pastors such as Guillermo Maldonaldo and Trump’s key faith adviser Paula White. Many practicing evangelicals regard the prosperity gospel, with its assurances that true faith will inexorably lead to health and wealth, as theologically aberrant and deceptive. But some evangelical pastors have concluded that promoting Christianity’s role in national history and supporting President Trump is worth the price of associating with heterodox figures such as White.

As far as what Christian nationalists say about the Founding: I would certainly agree that Christianity played a formative role in the American Founding and its animating ideas. The problem comes when Christian America advocates imply (or state outright) that all the Founders were born-again believers in the evangelical sense, or that the nation was somehow founded on the “gospel of Jesus Christ.” This suggests a religious uniformity among the major Founders that simply wasn’t there.

For example, Benjamin Frankin called himself a Deist and denied the divinity of Christ and the reliability of the Bible. Thomas Jefferson likewise denied the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, and he produced his own version of the Gospels with most miracles literally cut out with scissors.

However, both men were also deeply familiar with the Bible and they often used biblical concepts and phrases in their political writings. Franklin also proposed that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 open its sessions with prayer, a motion that the convention tabled.”

If you’re looking for books on the American Founding or the Founders, I encourage you to check out some of mine, including Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale University Press, 2022) and God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2010).