Then-US president Ronald Reagan went to Berlin on June 12, 1987, and demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The Berlin Wall was the symbol of what Reagan branded the “evil empire.” It stood for less than 30 years and was gone within 30 months of the president’s appearance.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday spoke to thousands of predominantly conservative white Evangelical followers who were gathered on the National Mall, demanding he tear down Thomas Jefferson’s wall, the one that has stood as a foundation of American democracy for 250 years, and declare the United States a Christian nation.
They want him to accelerate his dangerous efforts to tear down what the author of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution called the “wall of separation” between religion and state.
The United States had just broken away from a nation that had a state religion, and the head of the church was also the king. The founding fathers didn’t want to replicate that.
God and the Bible are not mentioned in the Constitution. Instead, the Bill of Rights specifically erects the wall of separation. Many of the founding fathers didn’t call themselves Christians but deists, indicating they believed in a supreme being but identified with no specific religion.
The founders were deeply committed to the separation of religion and state because they had seen what happened in Europe, where the blending of the two often led to religious wars and persecution not only of dissenting Christians but also of Jews, Muslims, atheists, free thinkers, and others who didn’t share their beliefs, Matthew Taylor of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, told MS NOW.
US 'not in any sense founded on the Christian religion'
In 1797, the US Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Tripoli, which explicitly declared the United States is “not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
But that doesn’t seem to trouble Trump and his Christian Nationalist flock, who believe America was founded as a Christian nation and that its explicitly Christian culture must be preserved.
Religious celebrations have been held on the National Mall in the past; Sunday’s is believed to be the first one organized by the White House, funded by taxpayers, and featuring top government officials.
Rev. Paula White-Cain, Trump’s faith adviser, assured supporters the celebration would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods,” The Washington Post reported.
The event had the trappings of a religious revival meeting. Trump, appearing by video, read a Bible passage “often cited by those who believe America was founded as a Christian nation,” according to the Associated Press.
It is not clear if he was reading from one of the personally endorsed Chinese-printed versions that he is peddling at $59.95 or the $1,000 personally autographed one.
Featured speakers were some of the most devout religious zealots in the government. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson “preached” of “sinister ideologies” sowing “confusion and discord” in the nation, The Washington Post reported.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who regularly hosts Pentagon prayer services and preaches the fictional gospel from Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction, appealed to the crowd by video to pray to “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R. South Carolina) told the gathering, “Our rights don’t come from the government. No, our rights come from God.” Hegseth said the same thing.
The founding fathers would have been appalled to hear such ignorance after they fought and sacrificed so much to get out from under the yoke of a country that demanded obedience to a state religion, and where the king and head of the church were one man.
What were they praying for on the Mall Sunday? They want to “return God to the classroom.” Trump and his administration actively support prayer in public schools and institutions, teaching the Bible in classrooms (preferably the one Trump gets royalties for), posting the Ten Commandments, and public funding for religious schools.
Trump, who has posted on his social media outlet memes of himself as Jesus and as a pope, and has said of himself, “I am the chosen one,” brought them to Washington to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday with a “rededication of our country as One Nation Under God.”
The prayer rally was not for all Christians. It was largely organized – with White House help and taxpayer money – by politically conservative Evangelical Protestants who embrace Christian nationalism.
Trump himself is not an Evangelical; he was raised Presbyterian but now calls himself a nondenominational Christian. He does not regularly attend church services, and scholars who have spoken with him say he appears to have only a superficial knowledge of the Bible and Christian teaching.
But he has successfully forged strong political ties with conservative Christians, particularly Evangelicals.
Christian nationalism is seen as a threat to those who do not share its brand of faith, notably more liberal Protestant sects, plus Mormons (who are not considered Christian by some traditional Evangelicals), as well as Jews, Muslims, free thinkers, atheists, and others who don’t share their beliefs. Even Catholics.
The president has been feuding with Pope Leo XIV, who has criticized the administration’s “extremely disrespectful” immigration policies and “unacceptable” threats to destroy Iranian civilization. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, a recent Catholic convert, told the pontiff to mind his own business and stick to theology, and leave politics and waging war to them.
Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien has said the president “has never been a spiritually or religiously serious person.” Many believe his declarations of religious belief are transactional, more political tools than guiding principles. He has railed against “atheists, globalists, and Marxists,” terms often considered antisemitic dog whistles.
Many of his followers also subscribe to the great replacement theory, which holds that white Christian Americans are under threat by “others” – Jews, blacks, other people of color, non-Europeans, and non-Christians – who are flooding this country with the intention of supplanting them.
The First Amendment and the Bill of Rights have made it possible for Jews to survive and thrive in the United States, and enjoy the same freedom and opportunity as everyone else.
Jews in America have more freedom to practice their religion as they see fit than in any other country, including Israel, where religious political extremists often have been able to hold the government hostage to their demands.
Israel celebrated Jerusalem Day at the Western Wall this month to commemorate reunification; it also needs a Jefferson wall of its own to enshrine respect for all beliefs and preserve its democracy.
Here in America, the assault on basic democratic principles continues, with Christian nationalism increasingly in the forefront – a change that should worry a Jewish community facing a rising threat of antisemitism.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.