An all-day prayer event on the National Mall drew large crowds on Sunday, featuring video messages from President Donald Trump and other administration officials as part of celebrations marking America’s upcoming 250th anniversary. The gathering, called “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” was organized by Freedom 250, a nonprofit tied to the National Park Foundation, and used a combination of taxpayer funds and private donations.
Crowds gathered despite warm temperatures, many wearing red, white and blue attire. A large stage with white columns and images of the Founding Fathers in stained glass stood at the center of the activities. Trump appeared in a video message late in the day, reading briefly from the Bible’s Book of Chronicles. House Speaker Mike Johnson followed with a prayer for renewed “piety and patriotism” in the country, while Vice President JD Vance stated in his own video that “we have always been a nation of prayer.”
Freedom 250 senior adviser Danielle Alvarez described the event beforehand as “a powerful moment to reflect on where we have been, recommit ourselves to the ideals that define us, and look toward the future with renewed hope and purpose.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers called it a “beautiful and unifying moment” that would celebrate “freedom of religion for all people of faith.”
Attendees included mostly evangelical Christian leaders, along with one Orthodox rabbi and two conservative Catholic bishops. Brittany Baldwin, a White House senior policy adviser, had earlier referred in a planning webinar to the nation’s “heritage as a Judeo-Christian” country. Visitor Vicky Kanaga, who traveled from Massachusetts, told reporters she came to help “turn our country back to God.” Ryan Phillips, visiting from Mississippi with his family, said he viewed the separation of church and state as meaning “the government should not come into the church, not the other way around.”
Legal experts offered differing assessments of the event’s constitutionality. Northwestern University professor Andrew Koppelman said the gathering was permitted because no court had issued an injunction, yet it ran “contrary to the fundamental purposes of the Constitution.” He added that “this kind of divisive embrace of a particular religion and trying to associate the incumbent administration with that religion is bad for religion, bad for government and bad for America.” University of Texas law professor Douglas Laycock called the event “flagrantly unconstitutional” because it amounted to “explicit government promotion of religion, and not just religion in general, but of a fairly specific version of one particular religion.”
Villanova law professor Michael Moreland took a different view, noting that prayers occur at congressional sessions and presidential inaugurations. He argued that “it’s kind of overemphasizing that idea of separation to think that an event like this raises any constitutional problems.” Johnson, speaking on Fox News, defended the gathering as a recognition of the nation’s “religious and moral tradition.”
Critics have linked the event to broader efforts by the Trump administration to emphasize Christian themes in government. Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said the term “Judeo-Christian” often serves to “co-op Judaism and subsume it within a triumphal view of Christianity and feeds right into a White Christian nationalist narrative.” Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, described the event as a “government run-church service” intended to establish “this administration’s narrow view of Christianity as the American religion.”
Administration officials have repeatedly connected the country’s founding to Christian principles. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated at a National Prayer Breakfast this spring that “America was founded as a Christian nation” and said in a promotional video that “our rights don’t come from government, they come from God.” Johnson dismissed concerns about Christian nationalism on Fox News, saying critics use the term as “a pejorative, a derogatory term” to “silence the influence and the voices of Christians.”
Historian Gregg Frazer of The Master’s University has written that while many Founding Fathers were Christians, “they did not intend to create a Christian nation.” He noted they were “religious men who wanted religion — but not necessarily Christianity — to have significant influence in the public square.” The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
The Trump administration has pursued several faith-related initiatives since taking office. These include opening meetings with prayer at multiple agencies, hosting regular faith services, and posting Bible verses on social media. In February, Hegseth invited a self-described Christian nationalist pastor to lead a worship service at the Pentagon. In April, Trump joined Cabinet members and faith leaders for a marathon Bible reading tied to the 250th anniversary. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent an Easter message to employees that drew internal complaints and prompted a lawsuit from a federal employees’ union.
Funding for the Sunday event came through Freedom 250, which uses both public and private dollars. Congress allocated $150 million last year for 250th anniversary activities in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” though the exact amount directed to this particular event remains unclear. A Freedom 250 spokesperson pointed to the long history of public prayer in the United States, dating back to the Second Continental Congress.
Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute noted that research shows Americans increasingly see the country as religiously diverse. “There is great diversity, not only in the country, but I would say … within Christianity itself, and I think that’s worth noting, and the thing that’s really quite absent if you look at this event,” Jones said. The event is one of several planned commemorations ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026.