The Church of Trump: How Trump Has Infused the 250th Anniversary With Politics, Religion, Extremism and Historical Whitewashing
By Alan Zibel
This summer, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence at a dark and strange time.
Instead of coming together to celebrate the country’s achievements, acknowledge the conflicts and complexity of our history and our rich demographic diversity, Donald Trump and his cronies are embracing an explicitly religious, largely white, Christian nationalist version of America.
On Sunday, the Trump administration will kick off the 250th anniversary festivities with an outwardly religious event called Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving which will focus on “the extraordinary story of how God has powerfully and wondrously shaped the United States of America—remembering the people, sacrifices, and defining moments in which God has powerfully manifested Himself in our history,” according to the official 250.gov website.
The agenda for this “jubilee” reads less like a traditional religious event and more like a program for the Church of Trump. Most of Sunday’s speakers are evangelical Christians. Most are white. No Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist speakers are scheduled, prompting criticism and protests. The religious celebration, advertised by Trump cabinet members on their Instagram feeds, will feature extremist right-wing Trump-supporting religious speakers, such as Robert Jeffress, the Dallas MAGA pastor and Trump friend who recently said, “It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the pope.”
In a webinar unearthed by the Washington Post, White House official Brittany Baldwin openly acknowledged the event’s lack of religious diversity, saying: “We worked very hard with the faith leaders we trust … to ensure that we hear their concerns and we have the right focus for our community of believers, across the country. So I think if you do see another religion represented, it would probably be in a modest way.”
Another White House official, Paula White-Cain, a Christian nationalist who runs the White House Faith Office and recently compared Trump to Jesus, assured the audience that the jubilee would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.” Cain will be speaking at Sunday’s event along with far-right preachers who, like Jeffress have expressed extreme anti-LBGTQ+ views
With their overtly evangelical Christian program, the event’s organizers exclude millions of Americans who are not Christian or decline to participate in religious observance. Despite this exclusionary approach to the nation’s semiquincentennial, major corporations are sponsoring Freedom 250, including MasterCard, United Airlines, Exxon Mobil and John Deere. These corporations have been perfectly willing to align themselves with Trump’s extreme right rhetoric and message of religious exclusion, a major shift for corporate America, which professed a few short years ago to care about inclusivity. MasterCard’s website, for example, quotes the company’s “chief community and belonging officer” as saying, “We strive to ensure everyone has access to opportunity and each person feels heard and valued. When we engage with and in our communities and create spaces where everyone belongs, we’re better as a company and as a business.”
Freedom 250 Sponsors
| Deloitte* | January AI | Oracle* | SAP* |
| Exiger | John Deere* | Palantir* |
Scotts Miracle-Gro*
|
| ExxonMobil | Lockheed Martin | Penske | UFC* |
| IndyCar | MasterCard | Phorm Energy* |
United Airlines*
|
*Indicates sponsorship of both Freedom 250 and America 250
The “Rededicate 250” event is the kickoff of Trump’s effort to seize control of the official 250th anniversary celebrations, launching a parallel Freedom 250 organization to supplant the bipartisan “America 250” celebration established by a bipartisan commission a decade ago. The parallel MAGA-approved version, selling corporate sponsorships and offering access to Trump himself for a $1 million donation, caused ample confusion among corporate donors. Even worse, the head of Freedom 250, a former software executive named Keith Krach, appeared to solicit foreign donations in Davos earlier this year, stating that “We’ve got toolkits for countries, states, companies, all of that, it’s all about, partnership and what could be funner than, marketing America,” Krach said.
The Trumpified version of the 250th anniversary has explicitly embraced a narrative of U.S. history that glosses over the uncomfortable parts, such as slavery and the movements to establish civil rights and women’s rights. Fitting that pattern, the right-wing Prager U and Hillsdale College are using taxpayer money for a fleet of “Freedom Trucks” complete with an AI-generated George Washington and content designed by conservative Christian organizations, rather than mainstream historians.
USA Today reported the exhibit was designed to allow viewers to “not learn about what America looked like based on an interpretation of some woke agenda,” according to Prager U’s top executive, who added that “We’ve been talking about how intentionally taking the Bible out of the classroom has effectively ruined America’s education system.”
In a similar vein, a multimedia display at the Washington Monument last December left out Native Americans, slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. The Department of Education placed a banner of Charlie Kirk on its building, an overtly political move that gave the late Turning Point USA founder equal historical importance as Booker T. Washington, one of the most prominent figures in African American history.
These celebrations will continue over the summer with events that appear targeted to the cultural appetites of the president’s base.
A year ago, Trump tasked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with a massive, shameful campaign of historical erasure across national park sites across the country, dubbed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
Under the direction of the Trump administration, the National Park Service removed signs about slavery, gay rights, and climate change. A confidential internal Park Service database exposed by the Post documented Orwellian “reviews” of numerous key events in U.S. history, with park managers even forced to review an exhibit on the 1955 killing of Emmett Till at a national monument commemorating the Black teen’s murder.
This highly politicized mess is not what Congress envisioned a decade ago in passing legislation creating an official commission for the 250th anniversary. House and Senate leaders of both parties were designated commissioners of the bipartisan body known as the United States Semiquincentennial Commission. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and former First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama were announced as honorary co-chairs.
A generation ago, Democrats and Republicans alike understood the wisdom of coming together to commemorate and understand our past. In February 1976, President Gerald Ford was clear about the need to confront the legacy of Japanese internment as the 200th anniversary approached.
“An honest reckoning… must include a recognition of our national mistakes as well as our national achievements. Learning from our mistakes is not pleasant, but as a great philosopher once admonished, we must do so if we want to avoid repeating them,” Ford said.
In these divided times, we would be wise to heed his words.