3 Questions for ‘Rededicate 250’
An event on the National Mall today, “Rededicate 250,” seeks the “rededication of our country as One Nation to God.” For participants and attendees, both in-person and virtual, I have three questions.
Who is this for?
Is this event for all Americans or just Christian Americans? The website’s FAQ claims, “All Americans are invited,” which would seem to be a straightforward answer, but that is followed with “—individuals, families, churches, ministries, and communities from every state.” Why no mention of mosques, temples, or synagogues, for example? This event is tied our nation’s 250th birthday. The Declaration of Independence affirmed the equality of all people. Therefore, should an event celebrating that demonstrate pluralism?
Is this a Christian Nationalist event?
I understand this term, “Christian Nationalism,” is overplayed and sometimes confusing. Too many on the left have begun using it as a catch-all term for everything conservative and Christian they oppose. Ignore that for a moment and let’s stick to a standard definition: belief that certain types of Christians should have a privileged place in law, government and culture. Is that what you believe? If so, how does that square with our Founders’ support for religious freedom?
What should a nation dedicated to God look like?
This event is sponsored by Freedom 250, a White House-backed initiative. This begs the question, would God approve of Trump administration actions? I could give many examples, but here are just three: mistreatment of immigrants, getting rich off grifting supporters and fleecing taxpayers, and the creation of Trump idols (both figurative and literal). According to Old Testament prophets, all of these make God angry.
Malachi 3:5 is one of many verses referencing how we treat immigrants:
“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.”
Micah 2:1-2 has this to say about fraud:
“Woe to those who plan iniquity,
to those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning’s light they carry it out
because it is in their power to do it.
They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them.
They defraud people of their homes,
they rob them of their inheritance.”
And regarding idol worship, Ezekiel 14:7-11, delivers a stern warning to both speakers (prophets) and listeners (“one who consults him”) who use God to validate their selfish desires:
“‘When any of the Israelites or any foreigner residing in Israel separate themselves from me and set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet to inquire of me, I the Lord will answer them myself. I will set my face against them and make them an example and a byword. I will remove them from my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
“‘And if the prophet is enticed to utter a prophecy, I the Lord have enticed that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people Israel. They will bear their guilt—the prophet will be as guilty as the one who consults him. Then the people of Israel will no longer stray from me, nor will they defile themselves anymore with all their sins. They will be my people, and I will be their God, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”
Why I Ask
Time to put all my cards on the table. If you believe that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, and dedicated to God 250 years ago, we can agree to disagree on that. But if that is what you believe, I invite you to consider both 1) how the values upon which our nation was founded might be upheld, and 2) what a nation “rededicated” to God might look like.
Regarding the first, speaking as a fellow citizen, we’re a nation founded upon religious freedom for all. This means everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs (including atheists and agnostics), should be have the freedom to live according to their beliefs, and government shouldn’t privilege certain religions over others.
Regarding the second, speaking as a fellow Christian, the sponsor of “Rededicate 250” is engaged in much of the wickedness that biblical prophets warned us about. What changes, therefore, should you make in your relationship with the current administration?
Recommended Reading
John Inazu: “Political Violence is On the Rise”
Pape also identifies what may be distinctive about the present moment: support for political violence is rising on both partisan extremes at the same time. Earlier periods had a more dominant ideological direction. Today, right-wing violence intensifies left-wing fear and left-wing violence intensifies right-wing fear; each side narrates its own aggression as defensive and the other side’s aggression as proof that normal restraints no longer apply.
Our modes of communication worsen these dynamics, but Pape rightly warns against making modern technology the whole explanation. Americans managed to produce political violence before smartphones, cable news, and social media. The deeper problem is not technology alone; it is existential politics—politics experienced as rejection, humiliation, and loss.
The Atlantic: “The Assassin’s Delusion: Violence serves an authoritarian agenda.”
The greatest delusion of all—one shared by both the would-be shooter and the president he targeted—is that violence is an expression of strength, and nonviolence a symptom of weakness. Now, I am not a pacifist. I do not believe that violence is always wrong. And I am not arguing that it is always ineffective. But the Trump administration’s greatest failures have been connected to its obsession with violence, and its opponents’ most dramatic victories have resulted from the organized and courageous use of nonviolence.
The Guardian: “13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’”
“Despite the US claim that the strikes are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is that young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted,” said María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of the CLIP.
“The US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán,” she added.
The investigation also underlined what other reports and security analysts have concluded: that the strikes have not reduced the flow of drugs to the US, but have instead torn apart communities already fractured and weakened by organised crime and state neglect.
“There are communities where they stopped fishing for several weeks – and if they do that, people go hungry – because they were terrified of being bombed,” said Ronderos.
ABC News: “Judge says DOGE grant terminations are unlawful and ‘troubling’”
“There can be no serious dispute that the review process implemented by DOGE did not conform to, or even resemble, NEH’s ordinary grant-review process,” Judge McMahon wrote.
…
“Treating Black civil-rights history, Jewish testimony about the Holocaust, the oft-forgotten Asian American experience, the shameful treatment of the children of Native tribes, or the mere mention of a woman as a marker of lack of merit or wastefulness is not lawful,” she said.
…
“The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself. Today’s decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation — to seek the truth, know ourselves, and build a better future on that knowledge,” said the American Council of Learned Societies President Joy Connolly in a statement.
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