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RECYCLED VID OF HIM BADLY READING THEN MISINTERP BIBLE ~ THE BISH BARBER?

RWW 5 26

[Christian Nationalism ## Much-Hyped ‘Rededication’ of U.S. to God Can’t Draw Trump Off the Golf Course

President Trump called for an event "rededicating" America to God, but he couldn't be bothered to show up for it.

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/much-hyped-rededication-us-god-cant-draw-trump-golf-course

05/18/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

*Commentary

Trump administration officials and Christian nationalist leaders hyped Sunday’s event to “rededicate America as one nation under God” as a historic moment and turning point for the nation, but President Donald Trump skipped it to go golfing.

The same was true for the Saturday evening worship gathering organized by musician and MAGA activist Sean Feucht on the grounds of the Washington Monument; while his followers gathered, Trump went golfing.

The snub was particularly noteworthy because Trump owes his election victories to the overwhelming support he got from conservative Christian voters, thanks in part to religious-right figures telling their audiences over and over again that Trump was anointed by God to lead and save America.

Religious-right figures who helped promote the event made a big deal out of the spiritual importance of Trump as president calling for the nation’s rededication to God. Dominionist anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist Lou Engle has organized many prayer events over the years that drew much bigger crowds, but he said that this one was special: “This solemn assembly is different than any other solemn assembly, for the president of the United States has called this day.”

But the president couldn’t even be bothered to make a video greeting for this “historic” moment like Vice President J.D. Vance did. Instead, organizers played a video of Trump reading a scripture passage from a religious-right organized Bible-reading marathon event a few weeks ago. Engle added that when Trump read that passage, “he opened a door for the greatest awakening America has ever seen.” He called it “a hinge of history moment.”

If Trump cared enough to think that a gathering of “prophetic” leaders might call him out the way Old Testament prophets called out unjust political leaders, he needn’t have worried. None of the speakers calling for personal and national repentance suggested that Trump should repent for his cruelty or corruption. As the Religion News Service noted, neither Sen. Tim Scott nor religious-right activist Alevda King, who spoke about the Black church’s central role in the Civil Rights Movement, mentioned the current MAGA assault on the Voting Rights Act.

Even White House Faith Office Director Paula White didn’t attend in person, sending a short video.

:{:{Ben Carson, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump administration and is now National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the Department of Agriculture, did show up in person. He was one of a few speakers who talked about the need for national unity. There are “forces” that want Americans to think they are one another’s enemies, Carson said. “We are not enemies.” He did not acknowledge Trump’s central role in creating bitter divisions or his ongoing demonization of his political opponents as traitors—or for that matter his religious-right backers’ portrayal of Trump opponents as demonic.}:

And if the organizers of the event were really interested in promoting national unity, or transcending politics as House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed, they would have created an interfaith event that celebrated America’s exceptional religious liberty and religious pluralism. Instead they created an event overwhelmingly dominated by MAGA Christians.}:

MAGA pastor Franklin Graham delivered a video diatribe about the moral state of the country, quoting scriptural warnings about people being lovers of money, arrogant, abusive, heartless, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and more. While Graham said this list could apply to America today, he ignored the obvious fact that all those traits apply to the president he unwaveringly promotes.

Samuel Rodriguez, a MAGA pastor, New Apostolic Reformation figure, and head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, gave an opening prayer. He spoke for about four minutes, calling for love and justice but failing to utter a single word about the immigrants and other people in their communities who have been terrorized by the Trump administration’s brutal mass deportation efforts. So much for prophets speaking truth to power.

MAGA pundit Eric Metaxas used his time on the platform at the Sunday rally and the Saturday worship service to promote his new book about the American revolution.

At Feucht’s worship on Saturday, Metaxas claimed that every single one of the founding fathers understood that the national narrative of the revolution was, “We are re-establishing the Sinai covenant.” That kind of claim doesn’t bode well for the credibility of his book, but then, there wasn’tmuch hope for that anyway.

On Sunday, Metaxas said God’s hand had guided American leaders beginning with George Washington. After talking about the British burning the White House during the War of 1812, he added jokingly, “It’s hard to believe it that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait 200 years.”

The actual “prayer of rededication” was delivered by Speaker Johnson, who invoked God’s support for the MAGA war on wokeness and truth-telling history:

In recent years we’ve seen sinister ideologies sow confusion and discord among our people. We’ve witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes, and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this nation. These forces insist to the young and impressionable that our story, the American story, is one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure, and that this story can only be understood through the lens of our sins. Father, we reject that. We rebuke it in your name. … We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions, to deliver us from the forces of evil, oppression, injustice, and tyranny both within our borders and beyond our shores.

In asking for deliverance from oppression and injustice, Johnson was apparently not thinking of the authoritarian abuses of power that mark the Trump administration, because his only mention of Trump was to pray that God would “continue to bless our president with the wisdom, prudence, and strength to govern our nation in accordance with your will.”

Neither the smaller-than-expected attendance nor Trump’s apparent disinterest in the “rededication” ceremony mean that the rest of us should ignore that the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism of the administration and the MAGA movement threatens Americans’ religious freedom and the rights of people seen as undeserving by right-wing Christian nationalists.

// RWW

05/18/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

And the public may never know who their money was spent on.

Nine connected Polymarket accounts have raked in more than $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military actions in what digital detectives from the data analytics firm Bubblemaps have identified as a potentially egregious case of insider trading.

Speakers cast America as ‘morally rotten’ and sinful while embracing the ‘Christian nationalist’ label.

President Donald Trump's free eight-hour Rededicate 250 prayer event held at the National Mall in D.C. Sunday drew a notably sparse crowd, with Reuters photos capturing numerous empty seats.

The ancestors of today’s Christian nationalists weren’t the leaders of Christian America — they were the heretics.

The Christian worship performance scheduled for the National Mall is a religious show.

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RWW 18TH?

Mike Johnson Says ‘Rededicate 250’ Event ‘Transcends Politics’; So Why Are All the Speakers MAGA Christians?

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson addressing the 2026 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance (Image from CBN News coverage)

News & Analysis

05/15/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

A letter from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson promoting this weekend’s Christian nationalist ceremony to “rededicate” America to God was sent out by Freedom 250 Thursday evening.

In the email from Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump set up to wrest control of the national celebrations from the bipartisan and congressionally authorized America 250to promote himself and MAGA ideology, Johnson called Sunday’s day-long event “a unique moment for believers" and “a call for unity, repentance, and hope, and one that truly transcends politics.”

That is classic Trumpian gaslighting.

First of all, an event seeking to unify the actually country might in some way recognize the religious pluralism that is an essential part of what makes America exceptional, along with our Constitution’s protections of religious freedom and prohibitions on government-established religion or religious tests for public office.

Instead, every speaker listed in the schedule sent out by Freedom 250 is a Christian; most are evangelical and Pentecostal Trump boosters, along with a couple of right-wing Catholics and other denominations represented. Earlier speaker lists included a rabbi, perhaps as “Judeo-Christian” window-dressing, but he was not included in Thursday’s Freedom 250 email.

It’s a bad joke for Johnson to claim that Sunday’s event “transcends politics,” given that every speaker listed in the Freedom 250 email is a vocal supporter of President Trump, many of them on record declaring him to be anointed by God and some, like White House Faith Office Director Paula White, claiming that Trump’s opponents are enemies of God or demonic agents of Satan.

In reality, this is another opportunity for Trump to posture as a defender of the faith and bask in the adoration of his most loyal supporters at a time when his public support has hit record lows. And it is an opportunity for Christian nationalists to continue to send the false and exclusionary message that the only “real” Americans are the right kind of Christians, at a time when Christian-right and MAGA officials are trying to claim that Muslims and other non-Christians do not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.

The “moment of rededication” will be led by Johnson, along with former Archbishop of New York City Timothy Dolan, MAGA Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, and dominionist New Apostolic Reformation figure Lou Engle. Engle is a longtime anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist who led prayers that God would knock off Supreme Court justices to create vacancies for Trump to fill. In an Engle teaching guide called “The Keys to Dominion,” he preached:

“The church’s vocation is to rule history with God…The same authority that has been given to Christ Jesus for overwhelming conquering and dominion has been given to the saints of the most high….We’re God’s rulers upon the earth…We will govern over kings and judges will have to submit…We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God!”

Christians, secularists, and other Americans who reject the MAGA movement’s increasingly aggressiveChristian nationalism are speaking up in opposition to the “rededication.” This week, the Interfaith Alliance projected messages supporting religious freedom for all on the walls of the National Gallery of Art.