"One Nation under God": US President Trump joins national prayer rally • FRANCE 24 English

[0:00] Donald Trump and several top officials from his administration will join Christian clergy [0:04] for a prayer gathering on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. [0:08] The event is billed as a rededication of America as one nation under God. [0:15] Here's one of the promotional videos. [0:16] Faith in God is the value that most shapes America. [0:23] And it's people of faith who have been the bedwalk, the driving force behind our nation. [0:27] We are celebrating what God has done in this great nation called America. [0:36] That video put out by the Freedom 250 account on YouTube. [0:39] 250 is a reference to this being the 250th year since America was founded. [0:44] Now, one of the most outspoken critics of this event has been California Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman. [0:50] He says Trump is trying to falsely rededicate America as a Christian nation. [0:55] Take a listen. [0:55] This is part of their project to redefine America and what it means to be a real American. [1:02] Everyone else, the moderate and progressive Christians and Jews who support church-state separation, [1:09] the Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, humanists, agnostics, and atheists who collectively make up the majority [1:17] of this diverse, pluralistic nation, they're all deemed to be something less than true Americans. [1:23] So as America marks its 250th anniversary on July 4th, there is also a proxy battle to reinterpret the past, [1:31] to help define the future, and what it means to be American. [1:35] For more, we can speak to André Gagné, a professor and the chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. [1:42] He's also the author of American Evangelicals for Trump, Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times. [1:49] André, thank you for speaking to Paris de Rack. [1:51] First of all, what is the ultimate goal of the organizers today? [1:57] Why do they want to rededicate America? [2:03] Essentially, like you showed it very well in the segments, [2:06] it's this idea that America's founders were rooted in Christian notions. [2:16] It's trying to bring back this idea, this notion that the founding of America is Christian. [2:24] And many of the leaders, religious leaders, Christian leaders particularly, believe that the nation cannot survive, nor can it prosper without God. [2:36] Like, when you look at the situation, Trump also has promoted this event. [2:42] And the event is, of course, to energize his conservative supporters at the center of the 250th anniversary of the nation. [2:53] And, of course, it's presented as a kind of a very patriotic religious celebration. [3:03] The administration uses this, of course, to frame the anniversary around faith, unity, and a return to traditional values amid, we have to say, political polarization. [3:16] And what's fascinating is that the people that will be involved are largely Christian, and I would say most specifically evangelical Christians and leaders. [3:29] People like Franklin Graham, we have Paula White Cain, who is in charge of the faith office, Robert Jeffress. [3:35] You also have very popular individuals, like Jonathan Rumi, who is the actor in Jesus, who acts as Jesus in the series The Chosen. [3:47] You have Mike Johnson, who is an evangelical, Pete Headset also, Marco Rubio, and you have several Catholics, not a lot, but mainly people that are evangelicals. [3:59] And like those that oppose or critic, the critics of this event, they say that this event is a heavily Christian MAGA-oriented spectacle to promote a very narrow interpretation of America's history and identity. [4:19] And it doesn't really celebrate religious liberty. [4:23] It serves rather Christian nationalist ideas. [4:27] Yeah, I want to ask you about that, first of all, just to bring up that America's founding, there were Christians among the forefathers who founded the United States. [4:35] But if you look at religious and constitutional scholars, a lot of them say it was not founded as a Christian nation. [4:41] Andre, there's some really interesting data on the Gallup website. [4:45] Two decades ago, 42 percent of U.S. adults attended religious services nearly weekly. [4:50] A decade ago, that figure fell to 38 percent. [4:52] Today, it's only 30 percent. [4:54] So why is religion conservatism so influential today, despite declining attendance at church? [5:03] That's a very good question. [5:05] The basic idea around that is because the president has had such a strong support among evangelicals and other Christians. [5:17] For example, if you have a strong support from evangelicals and if evangelicals are now close to the president, they will have impact on the president, on his ideas, on what he has to do. [5:31] And we know that evangelicals have had a transactional relation with Donald Trump at least since 2016. [5:40] 81 percent of white evangelicals have voted in 2016 and 2020 for Trump. [5:46] And in 2024, 85 percent of white evangelicals voted for the president-elect. [5:54] You have also white Catholics that voted at 59 percent. [5:58] And you have non-evangelical Protestants that voted at 57 percent. [6:04] Now, of course, it seems to be the case, according to some of the statistics that you've shown, that you've mentioned, but we still have to remember that America, as a nation, there's 350 million people in America. [6:19] There's at least 250 million people that declare themselves Christian in some capacity. [6:26] They're not all evangelicals. [6:28] There's a good proportion of them, but that makes a difference also. [6:33] In terms of what I think what's also important is if we look at the relationship with Trump, which I said is very transactional. [6:42] With everything that's going on now, with the war in Iran, you know, the gas prices and so on, there has been a new NBC-PBS poll conducted near the end of April that found that 64 percent of white evangelicals approve of Trump's job performance. [7:03] Of course, that's a drop from January where they were at 72 percent. [7:09] Despite that, they remain loyal, and these leaders have large followings. [7:17] They are very, very influential on social media. [7:20] So it gives us the impression that, you know, religion seems to be at the forefront, and it is because it's promoted by Donald Trump, his administration. [7:30] But again, it's this transactional nature between Trump and evangelicals that give us this impression that we are seeing a rise in religious events. [7:42] Yeah, and Andre, just to talk about some of the images we're seeing as you're speaking to us, you know, Donald Trump was in this heated, his administration at least, in this heated argument with the Pope. [7:55] Donald Trump posting on social media, this artificially AI-generated image of him as Jesus. [8:03] I mean, there are a lot of people who I think before Trump was in power would have said this is something you could never do in the United States, that this would be blasphemous. [8:14] But his base seems to just shrug it off. [8:20] Yeah, this is a great example of why, up to a certain extent, among certain Catholics, there has been a drop in support, Catholics that had supported Trump. [8:32] The issue for Catholics was more of the diatribe that Trump engaged with, were against the Pope, calling the Pope a progressive, weak on crime, pro-nuclear, and so on. [8:46] The AI-generated image bothered more the evangelicals than, I would say, the Catholics. [8:53] And what's very interesting, even evangelicals had called, when that AI-generated image was produced and posted by Trump, called the president to remove it. [9:04] But what's fascinating is that the president did remove it, you see, and did not remove his criticisms towards the Pope. [9:13] And if you remember, when the Pope was elected, a little over a year ago, Trump posted an image of himself as a Pope, and he never removed that image. [9:26] So what we're seeing is that, I was going to say Pope Trump, but what we're seeing is actually Trump is privileging his evangelical base, because these are the ones that really helped him get into power. [9:41] So the question with all of this, and we see it in this event, is which form or which type of expression of Christianity will dominate in the U.S.? [9:54] Will it be a kind of evangelical conservative Christianity, or is there room for more diversity? [10:01] And even if you have very conservative Catholics, in this case, they're not overly represented in this event. [10:10] Yeah, and I just want to ask here, we're looking at the administration's use of religion here, but there is some criticism that could be doled out to the churches, the megachurches in the United States. [10:19] I mean, some pastors have painted Trump as being chosen by God. [10:24] Some had said God spared him during some of those assassination attempts. [10:29] So who's most guilty here, the pastors who say this, the churchgoers who may believe it, or Trump, who might not speak up against it? [10:36] In fact, it's the reading that these people have of who Trump is. [10:44] At least since 2016, they've been comparing Trump to some kind of chosen figure, making comparisons with biblical personages that you find in the Bible, making comparisons between Trump and Jesus. [11:00] Even recently, this was done. [11:03] So these people have a very, very large following. [11:06] They do shape Christian public opinion. [11:10] And they're, in a sense, they're the ones that promoted Trump and that idolized Trump in a certain sense. [11:18] So Trump knows how to mobilize this kind of rhetoric and use it to his own benefit. [11:25] That's what he's been doing. [11:26] When he talks about himself having been spared during this assassination attempt, he talks about it in divine terms, that God has spared his life. [11:37] But this has been all already mentioned by these pastors, by these evangelical influencers, that God is with Trump and that God had protected Trump. [11:48] So Trump just uses the rhetoric to his advantage. [11:52] Well, Andre, let me ask you, I mean, one of the pillars of U.S. democracy is the separation of church and state. [11:57] You mentioned that the relationship between Trump and the evangelicals is transactional. [12:01] How do you think they would want that boundary between church and state to move over the coming years? [12:09] The thing is, for them, the goal is to make sure that Christianity becomes the hegemonic religion. [12:17] That's what they would want. [12:18] They would want, like, the laws to reflect biblical values. [12:22] There's a strategy that we can call dominionism. [12:30] It's about the fact that Christians would exercise their authority and their influence in all spheres of society by taking control of cultural, social, and political institutions. [12:43] But under that system, would everyone have equal rights? [12:47] No, no, definitely not. [12:51] And we're seeing it, even in this event. [12:53] You see, we're seeing that this event is not the reflection of the democracy to which we are used to in the U.S. [13:02] Democracy involves pluralism. [13:04] It involves the fact that people have a share. [13:07] So it's treating Christians with more privileges than any other type of other religion. [13:18] So it's—in America, America has always been a pluralistic society, and that's the value of democracy. [13:27] And here, what we have been seeing is that the Trump administration has been appointing people that are Christian in various important federal positions. [13:38] And we're seeing this kind of pluralism being eroded with such events like the one that we are seeing today. [13:48] One final question, real quickly. [13:51] Religion is often flaunted in the United States. [13:54] You don't see the same thing here in Europe or perhaps where you are. [13:58] Why do you think that is, culturally speaking? [14:00] Why do we see religion so often front and center as opposed to elsewhere in the world? [14:07] But again, I think it comes to the fact that there are—of course, in the history of America, there has been room for religion. [14:16] There has been place for religion to express itself. [14:21] And that pluralism gives that opportunity to do so. [14:27] At the same time, I think that the demographics of Christianity is there. [14:33] You see, like I said, on 350 million people, you have 250 million people that claim in some capacity to be Christian. [14:43] And if you just drive across the U.S., every street corner has a church. [14:49] So it's part of who they are, and it's how they—a lot of them define themselves. [14:54] And they're trying to bring that back to the fore. [14:56] They feel that, you know, with secular humanism and so on, they feel that they're losing cultural capital, and they're trying to regain that. [15:07] So this is why it's put forward. [15:09] I think that we see it more than ever because of social media also. [15:15] These mega pastors, mega church pastors that you're talking about, these evangelical influencers, they have millions of followers. [15:22] And people now connect through social media. [15:25] This is why we have the impression that it's omnipresent. [15:29] And also, the news, the journalists, newspapers, and so on, they talk about it. [15:37] This was less the case in the past. [15:39] So this is why we have the impression that we constantly—there's not a week that goes by that we're not talking about Christianity and religion in the U.S. [15:48] Yes, very good point. [15:49] Andrei, thank you so much for your time. [15:50] Andrei Gagnier, professor, joining us from Montreal. [15:53] Thank you.