Anti-Christian Nationalism

On The Ground at Trump's Taxpayer-Funded Prayer Jubilee

Can we talk about praise music real quick?

I am told that God created the heavens and the earth. He created the birds in the air and the fishes in the sea. The piranha. The Great White Shark. Those freaky angler fish guys. God created the platypus and the capybara. Ever see a giant redwood? God's work also.

And you're telling me that God—that awesome, creative, sadistic cosmic freakazoid—wants to hear the exact same chord progression over and over? The soft and sexless tenor of a soft and sexless man? The gentle crooning of a generically attractive woman with long hair and heavy make-up? Sorry: I don't buy it.

To each their own I guess. All I know is that, around hour 7 of Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, the praise music began eating into my skull. The hell-hot DC sun didn't help any, nor did the $18 half-charred, half-raw personal pizza I'd eaten few hours earlier. Or maybe it’s the devil in me. Who can say.

“Do you believe we're all sinners?” a woman in a long sundress, white with blue flowers, asked me earlier in the day as we stood in the long, slow line to get into the event.

“Absolutely,” I replied emphatically. It was a follow-up question to whether I'm a believer, which I’d visibly struggled to answer. That hesitation was a clear opening for proselytizing, and I have no one to blame but myself for not having prepared an answer for this very predictable question.

The other woman in this conversation was a missionary. Her and her husband have spread the good word globally for over three decades, most recently in Laos where they've finally gained permission to open a rehab clinic. Her benevolence shone through as she explainined to me that Christ had taken all my sin upon himself at crucification. The debt has been paid. God loves me that much.

It's really important to understand this belief if you want to understand American evangelism. How can a follower of Christ believe that Trump—the thrice-married philandering hedonist, the rapist who groped Miss Teen USA contestants and partied with Epstein—is our most Christian president? Same reason they can forgive their faith leaders for lapsing into homosexuality or cover up child molestation within the church: we are all sinners, but Christ has redeemed us of our sin. All we have to do is believe. God will take care of the rest.

This missionary has dedicated her life to helping people. A lot of hardcore Christians are like that: good people who can’t imagine taking advantage of God’s forgiveness in that way. They are grateful to be relieved of the burden we all carry and eager to bring that same relief to the rest of us. I refuse to set that burden down, and I suppose that means I’m going to hell. At least there won’t be praise music there.

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Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving was a taxpayer-funded event at which “Americans of every background across the country prepare[d] for the nation’s 250th birthday with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and rededication of our country as One Nation to God.”

This nine-hour prayer revival featured two Catholic bishops, a single rabbi, a million Protestant faith leaders and the administration’s most zealous minions. I confess I didn’t listen very closely. It’s a bit of a blur, really: speech, speech, praise music, speech, praise music, speech…the brain rebels after a while. There’s only so many times you can hear the specifically evangelical pronunciation of the word “Jeeeeesus” before the mind starts to wander. Besides, there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see. A Noah’s Ark play structure with a huge cross nailed to the mast. An enormous Freedom 250 merch tent selling baseball caps for $40 (where are the profits going? Who knows!). A free TPUSA button that says WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.

Cannot emphasize enough that your taxpayer dollars paid for this event.

Your tax dollars also paid for this enormous stage on the National Mall, and I have never in my life seen anything that so perfectly encapsulates this moment in our history.

“Rededicate America” implies an initial dedication, which is the point of this event: a propaganda blitz to convince us that American government was always Christian government. Speakers were relentless on this point. The framers were Christian, they told us. Abolitionism, with its core belief that every human is equal in the eyes of God, was a fundamentally Christian movement. Pastors led the civil rights movement, and their congregations mobilized to march, boycott, and ultimately defeat Jim Crow. That's just history. You can't dispute the facts.

And I’m not going to dispute any of those things. There’s some revisionism in here, but sure: let’s round up. America's framers did often invoke God in their rhetoric and defense of human rights, though many were deists and would have despised charismatic Christianity. People of faith have been central to every subsequent human rights struggle in this nation, though many other groups joined in those fights as well. That’s all true.

Here's something else that's true: every single one of these movements directly challenged the state. All were considered subversive. All were criminalized. And all were opposed by the Christians in closest proximity to power. A state-backed religion could never have accomplished any of those things.

The deeper argument here is that freedom can’t exist without religion. Again and again, Sunday’s speakers reminded the crowd that our rights come from God, not government, and I could not agree more. Call it God, call it natural law, call it whatever you want: governments exist to preserve our inalienable human rights, not bestow them. They belong to us by birthright. They can be violated, but never taken away.

I have some notes, though. First: if I were affiliated with the Trump administration, I’d probably avoid reminding people that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. Second: I can’t imagine a better argument for keeping church and state separate than the one where our rights stem from a higher power:

IF: government = religion

AND: religion = source of human rights

THEN: government = source of human rights

QED.

The majority of people who attended this taxpayer-fueled revival believe that merging church and state will make religion stronger and government less powerful. The dream of a godly government, guided by biblical principles. The architects of the plan know good and goddamn well that’s not how things would go down. They want to eliminate the church as a power base for resistance and turn government itself into a state religion.

Here’s the thing about praise music: it flattens God’s creation into something saccharine and sterile. The lyrics explicitly invite us to offload all this world's complexity and ugliness onto God the Father and trust him to sort everything out while we bliss out on his love. Standing on the National Mall with hands outstretched and a beatific smile, swaying as we mainline Christ: God’s perfect lambs, juicy and delicious. The approach strips agency and watchfulness in exchange for the ultimate evangelical virtue: an unshakeable belief that Father will keep his children safe.

But good fathers don't want their children to need their protection forever. Kids are supposed to grow up, venture into the world, and take responsibility for their own lives. The love between parent and child endures, but becomes something deeper and more complicated than blind worship. God created us in his own image. Failure to self-actualize is a rejection of his will.

Bad fathers, on the other hand, keep their children weak and dependent so they can maintain full control. From the grifting televangelists who fleece their trusting flocks to the fascists gnawing on the wires of American democracy, those who lust for power want their victims as young and inexperienced as possible. Evangelical churches are rife with abuse of all kinds: not because most evangelicals are bad people, but because any ideology that makes a virtue of blind trust and helplessness is ripe for exploitation.

It’s very important to the Dominionist types that you see their side as God’s side, and people mostly let them have that framing. But few things have ever been more anti-Christ than Christian Nationalism. They twist faith into a framework of submission, flense agency from the human spirit until it cries out for orders to follow, and burn the bible on their altar of earthly power. Christian Nationalism is an attack on religion itself. No atheist ever hurt God’s cause so much.