1. United States
2. Utah
3. Letter

Keep our country from being a theocracy! Keep the mandated separation of Church and State in America! The Trump White House plans to hijack 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence into a massive taxpayer-funded Christian Nationalist revival rally! The event, called “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” is being billed as a nine-hour (!) worship service complete with revival-style preaching, testimonies, military bands, and right-wing Christian speakers. With direct White House involvement, the organizers are pushing the message that America is being “rededicated” as a Christian nation to God. There’s just one problem: America was never officially dedicated as a Christian nation. The Founders deliberately created a secular government with no religious test for office and no establishment of religion. But facts have never stopped this crowd before. The lineup is a who’s-who of MAGA Christian Nationalists, including Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Sean Feucht, Eric Metaxas, and Mark Driscoll. There are virtually no Muslims, no representatives from historically Black churches, no Indigenous faith leaders, and no mainline Protestants. Even the military is being roped in to provide music for the show. Millions in public dollars earmarked for the national 250th celebration are helping fund this partisan religious rally. The White House is treating a major national commemoration like their personal revival tent, using your tax money to push the message that conservative Christianity is America’s official faith. Christian Nationalism always tries to wrap their extreme ideology in the flag, claiming victimhood while dominating government events, and pretending the Founders wanted a theocracy when they very clearly did not. They scream about “religious freedom,” but what they really mean is special treatment and dominance for their version of Christianity at everyone else’s expense. This grotesque spectacle, if no one can manage to stop it, dishonors the actual spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It turns a celebration of American independence into a partisan, exclusionary religious show that tells millions of non-Christian, non-religious, and even progressive Christian Americans that they’re second-class citizens in their own country. America is a nation of religious pluralism and freedom, not a theocracy for one political faction. This dangerous nonsense must be called out.