Trump and state imposed right wing religion

[Jitendra Hydonus]

Trump's White House is turning America's 250th birthday into a 9-hour Christian Nationalist revival, and they're using YOUR tax dollars to pay for it.

The event is called "Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving." That's the actual name. A nine-hour worship service, with direct White House involvement, branded around the message that America is being "rededicated" as a Christian nation to God.

There is one small historical problem with that premise. America was never originally dedicated as a Christian nation.

The Founders explicitly built a secular government. No religious test for office. No establishment of religion. The First Amendment is the very first thing in the Bill of Rights for a reason. The men who signed the Declaration would be horrified to learn it was being repurposed 250 years later as the marketing campaign for a televangelist tent revival.

But the actual history has never mattered to this crowd.

Look at the speaker list. Franklin Graham. Robert Jeffress. Sean Feucht. Eric Metaxas. Mark Driscoll. A complete who's-who of the most extreme MAGA Christian Nationalist preachers in the country.

There are virtually no Muslims invited. No imams. No rabbis from non-Orthodox traditions. No representatives from historically Black churches. No Indigenous faith leaders. No mainline Protestants. Not even moderate Catholics.

Just a single hand-picked slice of right-wing white evangelical Christianity, paid for by a country that includes hundreds of millions of people who do not belong to that tradition.

The military is being roped in to provide the music. Millions of public dollars earmarked for the national 250th celebration are funding this partisan religious rally.

Tax money from atheists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and every other American is paying for a stage that explicitly tells them they are second-class citizens.

This is what Christian Nationalism actually looks like in practice. Wrap the ideology in a flag. Claim victimhood while dominating every government event. Insist the Founders wanted a theocracy when their own writings prove the exact opposite. Scream about "religious freedom" while demanding special treatment and government endorsement for one specific religious faction.

The Declaration of Independence was written to free Americans from a state-imposed religion. Now its 250th anniversary is being hijacked to impose one.