A nine-hour prayer festival is set to take place on the National Mall in Washington on Sunday as part of the Trump administration’s program of events to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
The event, titled Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, is billed as a celebration of America’s Christian history. The prayer marathon lists Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Speaker Mike Johnson as featured speakers, along with dozens of other public officials, musicians and faith leaders.
The event will be part of the Trump Administration’s Freedom 250 program, a sweeping agenda of festivities to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
It is common for presidents and administrations to host prayer festivals and faith-based events. Unlike his recent predecessors, however, Mr. Trump has openly courted evangelical nationalism and brought a higher level of conservative Christian participation into White House events.
Along with public officials, Sunday’s prayer festival is scheduled to feature more than a dozen faith leaders, almost all of them evangelical Protestant. Central to the event, organizers said, is a celebration of the nation’s religious roots and a hopeful return to its Christian principles. According to the program, the Rededicate 250 event will also feature a message from President Trump.
“We hope and pray that this will be a historic moment to rededicate our country as one nation under God,” said Brittany Baldwin, a senior policy adviser and coordinator of the America 250 program, in a recent webinar for the National Faith Advisory Board.
Among the few non-Protestant voices are the retired Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who led the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and Meir Soloveichik, rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City.
The promotional material for the event includes an image of a painting of George Washington kneeling in solitary prayer by his horse at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-8. The image has been repurposed in recent months by the White House as a touchstone for the right and evidence of the piety of the Founding Fathers.
“The President himself has said that on May 17, we are rededicating this nation to God, as our founders did,” Rev. Paula White Cain, a televangelist who now serves as the White House spiritual adviser, said at the webinar.
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
The post White House Officials to Speak at Christian Prayer Festival appeared first on New York Times.
