Gazing across the National Mall on Wednesday, visitors saw a once-in-250-years-style state fair. A 110-foot Ferris wheel, a rodeo pen where callers introduced goats and pavilions showcasing American inventions and art.
Jason Jimenez saw a mission field.
“Has anyone told you that God loves you and that he has a plan for your life?” the 38-year-old Bible student began each conversation as he moved in the baking, bright sun.
For Jimenez and the more than 1,000 other missionaries who came to Washington, D.C., to win souls for Christ at the Great American State Fair, the Trump-administration-run event was “the perfect environment,” he said.
The reasons: The crowd was significant, and the nation’s anniversary brings out “patriotic people” who tend to be more receptive. Jimenez also thought the people at the fair were more likely than some other Americans to agree that their country was founded on God.
“People are more receptive than usual,” said Jimenez, a former automotive worker who joined Revival Ministries International two years ago in a search for meaning and relief from anxiety. “Being able to pray over people is very easy.”
Revival Ministries, led by the influential South African megapastor and conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard Browne, appears to be the biggest evangelistic player at the fair among a cluster of such groups. Small ministries on the Mall, and the occasional one-man band, see the nation’s semiquincentennial as a moment that brings history, emotion and faith together in a way that is ripe for spreading the gospel.
What Jimenez said bore out in a day of interviews, with almost every person he and a partner stopped on the Mall welcoming the chance to pray and talk briefly about how they believe loving God is part of what it means to be an American.
“This country was based on faith, and we believe God has his hand on this nation,” Jacyln Stursman, 46, a tax accountant from Iowa, said as a Mennonite vocal group performed behind her on a huge stage.
“In the Constitution it says ‘under God,’” her daughter Abigail, 20, who is studying to become a teacher, said — incorrectly. The Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “under God.” The Constitution’s text makes no mention of a deity.
“If the hand of God is removed,” Jaclyn Stursman said, “we’ll look like any other country.” She bemoaned Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s that removed school-led prayer and mentioned European cities where Muslim populations have boomed. “Our country will lose our identity if we don’t keep with what we started with. Times change, but values shouldn’t.”
President Donald Trump and his administration have cast the nation’s 250th birthday in a revivalist light. Freedom 250, which runs the fair, hosted a daylong “Rededicate 250” prayer Jubilee on the Mall last month, framed around asking the country to dedicate itself to Christianity to mark the anniversary.
Into that atmosphere come the evangelists, who are trying to stay away from partisan politics while still tapping into the revival atmosphere the White House has helped elevate.
Democrats and Republicans are “the same snake with two heads,” Eric Gonyon, crusade director at Revival Ministries, said after leading the first of three daily “soul-winning training” sessions Wednesday morning.
The theme of the fair that day was “faith, values and inspiration.”
Smaller groups of evangelists roamed around, some distributing tracts and others taking religious testimonies in the FIFA fan zone area.
David’s Tent, a 24-hour prayer ministry that includes flag dancing and singing and has been operating on the Mall for 11 years, expanded for the fair to add a baptismal pool. One woman wailed “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” through tears as two other women eased her out of the water.
Browne, whose ministry includes a 3,000-person congregation, Bible school, school of government and culinary institute, sat for interviews in the “Faith, Family and Art Pavilion.” His books include those about being a virtuous woman, opposing socialism and the conspiratorial idea that the media and secretive bankers have been out for centuries to harm America.
The pavilion displayed a very narrow slice of American religiosity — a handful of conservative Christian organizations that included Browne’s group, Focus on the Family, Hillsdale College and Moms For America.
Browne preaches that God told him that missionaries must come to the United States from other countries to create a revival. He said he is working through events like the fair to convert 100 million people.
Behind him was a drawing of George Whitefield, an evangelist credited with starting what’s called the First Great Awakening in the Colonies in the 1700s. Browne’s evangelists hope they’re starting the third Great Awakening (the second was in the 1800s).
America’s Founding Fathers were impacted deeply by the Great Awakening, Browne said on Wednesday, adding that Americans don’t understand sufficiently the role of faith in the founding.
“How did America come about? How did those words [about religion] get on so many buildings around here?”
As morning turned to afternoon, Jimenez described some of the tactics of the missionaries he works with. All Revival Ministries missionaries at the Mall have a “stat card” where they write the goal of how many souls they hope to save that day, how many people they spoke with and whether those people said yes or no to Christ. His team also uses an app that reflects the by-minute numbers and where missionaries are on the Mall, so the group doesn’t annoy people by crowding up and reaching out more than once.
Around lunch time, his app said about 40 teams that day had reached 2,231 people.
Gonyon said in the week that Revival Ministries had been at the Mall, 150,000 people had prayed with one of their missionaries. Their group evangelizes all over the world, and has come to D.C. over July Fourth many times over the years. This year, with the significance of the anniversary, holds a special power and opportunity, he said: “People are hungry.”
Exploring the Massachusetts booth at the state fair was Lauren Clifton, 30, a high school English teacher who grew up evangelical in Texas and lives in D.C. She said she was upset that such a significant national anniversary had, in her view, been turned into a partisan event by Trump. She said she also struggles watching Christians praise Trump amid policy changes such as transforming the U.S. refugee programso almost everyone coming in are White South Africans.
“I want to be excited about the 250th. I love America,” Clifton said. However, she said doesn’t totally understand Christian conservatives she grew up with.
“I don’t see how based on those values they’re not outraged at what the Trump administration is doing,” she said. She hopes the next major national anniversary is nonpartisan.
“I hope this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Next to the baptismal pool in David’s Tent, Todd Smith said all he wants is to stay neutral so he can help people through his faith-healing ministry in Dawsonville, Georgia.
“People are in lots of pain. I don’t care if they’re blue or red when they walk up here.”
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