Controversy has dogged various activities for America’s 250th anniversary year. Even the sporting events chosen involved squabbling.The linking of FIFA soccer to the 250th leads some to ask, “I thought we were Americans?” Others have charged that the UFC match “desecrates” the White House lawn. Ironically, many of these critics cheered, defended, or shut their mouths during the public monument iconoclasm of the early 2020s. Now the White House lawn is sacred? The most controversial of the activities, however, are actually religious. The May 17 event on the National Mall titled “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving” drew criticism for its purported creeping “Christian Nationalism,” the ubiquitous bogeyman of the last decade. The charge never seems to surface when Democrats give sermons in black churches or during photo shoots of the “devout” Joe Biden entering Mass or posing before a stained-glass window, rosary wrapped around his hands.
The problem with Rededicate 250 was that it signaled the wrong kind of religion. CNN’s worried article on the event focused on the speakers, who were mostly Evangelical Protestants. The authors quoted legal scholar Douglas Laycock’s contention that the event was “flagrantly unconstitutional” because by it the government promoted “a fairly specific version of one particular religion.”
