AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

In Washington, D.C., thousands of people gathered on the National Mall Sunday for a taxpayer-funded Christian evangelical service backed by President Trump. The eight-hour lineup featured song, prayer and speeches, including video messages by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump reading the Bible, a video of him. This is House Speaker Mike Johnson addressing the gathering.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Almighty God, we ask that you hear these solemn petitions. Just as we in the beginning dedicated this land to your most holy name, today, here, Lord, in this 250th year of American independence, we hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.

AMY GOODMAN: Other speakers at the prayer service included a number of religious leaders and the conservative radio host Eric Metaxas.

ERIC METAXAS: It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait 200 years.

AMY GOODMAN: The Freedom from Religion Foundation blasted the government-sponsored prayer rally as an “unprecedented and shocking mix of church and state,” adding, quote, “Our Constitution is godless by design. The government has no authority to organize religious revivals, much less use them to promote a Christian nationalist agenda,” unquote.

We’re joined now by two guests. Sarah Posner is author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind. She’s host of the podcast Reign of Error. And we’re joined by Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer for Repairers of the Breach, founding director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. He took part in a counter-event on Sunday called Redirect 250.

Sarah Posner, let’s begin with you. Talk about the significance of this gathering.

SARAH POSNER: Well, this is another example, another prominent example, of the administration’s Christian nationalist agenda. His Christian nationalist followers contend, falsely, that America was founded as a Christian nation, that God intended America to be founded as a Christian nation, and that the Christian nation has fallen away from that divinely intended founding, and that it’s their job, both spiritually and politically, to restore the Christian nation.

What does that mean? To them, the political, social, legal progress of the 20th and 21st century are the things that they think have caused America to decline and fall into sin. So, this is really a battle for the soul of America. Are we going to be a pluralistic, secular nation governed by secular laws that protect equal rights for all, or are we going to be a Christian nationalist country, where the religion of Mike Johnson and Paula White is imposed on the rest of us?

AMY GOODMAN: I heard one of the — one of the people on the Mall yesterday saying, “People understand the separation of church and state the wrong way. Yes, we don’t want the government intervening in the church,” he said, “but we do want the church intervening in the state.” I’m wondering if you can talk about the significance of taxpayer money being used to fund this Christian revival.

SARAH POSNER: Well, for a long time in our country, this would have been considered a significant breach of church-state separation to have the taxpayer fund a specifically religiously oriented event that is intended for one particular audience and also intended to project the government’s favoring of one particular religious orientation. Over the past several decades, the Supreme Court, which has also, I should point out, been shaped by Donald Trump, has eroded that church-state separation. And even apart from what might be legal or not legal under the current Supreme Court jurisprudence, Trump has run roughshod on almost every norm and value that we have, including spending taxpayer dollars for his own projects, including his own project of Christian nationalism in this case.

AMY GOODMAN: And yesterday during this nine-hour prayer event on the National Mall — and is it significant that the Trump administration, they all were beamed in, whether it was President Trump reading from a Bible a few weeks ago or Vance or Rubio or Hegseth?

SARAH POSNER: Well, I think that, obviously, Trump couldn’t even be bothered to produce a new video for this event. They just replayed the same video that they had produced for a previous Christian nationalist event called America Reads the Bible. And he could barely read the Bible in the video, I should point out. I think viewers should go take a look at it and see how haplessly he read the Bible verse and discussed it. But the fact that he went golfing instead, couldn’t be bothered to show up at the event, nor could some of the top administration officials, shows that they don’t care enough to be immersed in with the crowd, but they care enough to have the crowd provide the support for them. And I think, you know, if you’re going to host an event like that, showing up in person is a truly significant thing for a politician. But to project that it doesn’t matter enough to you, yet you expect this worship from the crowd, is very telling.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Bishop Barber into this conversation. Can you talk about what you participated in yesterday, Redirect 250, as a direct counter to the religious nationalist festival, the differences between a government-imposed prayer event, or supported, taxpayer-supported, and a grassroots movement?

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, thank you.

First of all, Amy, let me say a little bit about this whole event, because yesterday, of course, many people were in Montgomery, Alabama, retracing the steps of Dr. King. We deeply supported it. I was actually at Yale graduating students in public policy and public theology that takes on this very kind of heresy that we saw in Washington, D.C.

But prophets and preachers are supposed to be the conscience of the nation. We have plenty of Scriptures that Donald Trump and them would never read, that say that what we’re supposed to do is challenge the nation to care for the least of these, the poor, the hungry, the sick, those who are pushed aside, the least of these, and the immigrant.

Nothing was Christian about what we saw yesterday. And we have to challenge even repeating that it’s Christian nationalism. It’s not Christian nationalism. This is idolatry. This is heresy. This is a form of religious nationalism. This is Trump worship. This is trying to make someone a messiah figure.

And it’s very dangerous, because the Scriptures say — the Scripture that Trump actually read yesterday is condemning of him and what they’re doing, because it says that people are supposed to turn from their wicked ways, and wickedness in the Scripture is when you hurt the poor, when you hurt women, when you mistreat the least of these.

So I’m deeply offended as a person of faith for something like this to be done, because what we are supposed to do, as Dr. King once said, the church is supposed to be the thermometer of — thermostat of society, not the thermometer. We’re not merely measuring the temperature; we’re supposed to change the temperature.

And everything that he has done and his group has done is counter anything that Jesus said. Notice they never mentioned Jesus yesterday. They never mentioned justice yesterday. And that is the fundamental problem with what they’re doing. Any gathering in this moment that’s not saying anything about poverty and anything about the denial of voting rights and anything about taking people’s healthcare away and anything about unholy war and anything about the mistreatment of immigrant brothers and sisters, and claims to be Christian or religious, is actually fundamentally flawed and blasphemy.

I’m using some strong terms this morning, Amy, because that’s where we are. And we have to stop calling it — they want us to call it Christian nationalism, but it is not. There’s not — they did not base anything they did yesterday on Jesus. Jesus is the example of Christianity, and Jesus was killed by the state because he chose to stand up to the state and stand with the least of these. So, not only is it a violation of the Constitution, as a clergy, as a public theologian, this is a violation of the basic principles of Christianity, Judeo-Christian traditions in itself. It is fundamentally wrong. And for them to say it took 200 years to raise up somebody, as though he’s some messiah figure that’s now been sent by God, is ultimate blasphemy. It is ultimate idolatry. And we must challenge it. And the church must challenge it and stand flat-footed.

That’s why today in D.C. we’re preaching in front of the White House. We’re having Moral Monday. We’re going from Saturday to Moral Monday in front of the White House in D.C., standing up. Preachers are going to be preaching in front of the White House, following one of the great Jewish prophets, Jeremiah, who said, “Go down to the palace and tell the king, 'Stop hurting people. Stop mistreating people. Stop murdering people.'” And so, from Saturday, people by faith coming together, saying, “We will not bow down to the sin of voter suppression. We will not bow down to the injustice of taking people’s God-given right,” to today in front of the White House, we’re going to be a direct challenge to what happened on yesterday.

We’re broadcasting on 25 different sites. And ministers, leading clergy will be preaching the Gospel and preaching a true faith, and not allowing what we saw yesterday to even be claimed Christian. We can’t even call it Christian. There’s nothing Christian about what they did yesterday. That is a human worship and idolatry and blasphemy and heresy at the worst form.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah Posner, as the nine-hour prayer event, taxpayer-funded, happened on the National Mall, rededicating the United States to God, they said, President Trump once again threatened to destroy Iran, saying on Truth Social, “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” he wrote on social media. I’m wondering if you can talk about the piece that you wrote about, what you said, evangelicals are “working overtime to spin the Iran war,” Sarah.

SARAH POSNER: Well, white evangelicals are the most supportive religious group of Trump, in general, and in particular of his war in Iran. Evangelicals, for decades, have been marinating in Christian Zionist theology and ideology, which holds that, in their view, America has a biblical duty to defend Israel, and in particular defend Israel from aggression, both nuclear and otherwise, from Iran. So, for decades, they have exaggerated Iran’s access or ability to obtain a nuclear weapon, and have been cheerleading Republican administrations, since George W. Bush, to attack Iran and wipe out its nuclear capability.

And so, for them, the war in Iran is not an illegal war. It is not an immoral war. It’s an imperative to them. And they have supported Trump from the beginning. They have pushed Trump to do this even in his first term. So, they look at the war in a completely different way than most of the rest of the nation does. They don’t see it as an illegal foray that lacks congressional authorization and lacks the legal justification for a war. To them, Donald Trump is the savior of America, and, in fact, probably the savior of Israel, in their view. And they don’t see the war as a strategic failure, either, because they can’t admit any strategic failure by their savior, Donald Trump. So, for them, the war — looking at the war in the way that, say, Reverend Barber does is just not part of their thinking.

AMY GOODMAN: Bishop Barber, if you can talk about President Trump taking on the pope, Pope Leo; retweeting a picture of himself as Jesus Christ, though he said he thought it made it just look like he’s a doctor; and also the 22-foot gold-covered statue of Trump raising his fist, known as “Don Colossus,” dedicated at the Trump National Doral Miami last week? One of the pastors, Mark Burns, defended it on social media, saying, “Let me say this plainly: this is not a golden calf.”

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, it’s not. It’s a golden image. It comes straight out of the Book of Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar raised an image of himself and wanted people to bow. And the prophets Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Daniel said, “No, we will not bow down to you.” Remember, Saddam Hussein did something similar.

I mean, this man is committed to being a strongman. And his followers are not Christian. They’re not even evangelical, I have to say. I’m an evangelical. But evangelicalism in the Bible, according to Jesus, starts with good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, recovery of sight to the blind, relief to the captive and with welcoming all those who’ve been unwelcome.

There is so much sinfulness in this. When he put up that picture to worship — first of all, if he was a doctor, that’s a bad doctor; I wouldn’t go to the doctor. But trying to put himself as Jesus with bombers flying over the head — not a halo, but bombers — the pope not only challenged him, but — the pope not only challenged him, but the church challenged him, all of the archbishops, since Vatican II. Vatican II has said anyone promoting war that is talking about the annihilation of people, it is unholy. It is outside of even any concept of just war. War itself is unholy, particularly in a nuclear age. It is dangerous. It is immoral.

What we see happening right now is, time and time again in Scripture, we see places where worshiping of a person leads to the destruction of a society. And what he did, every church person, person of faith, should name that as a form of idolatry. I wrote about it. We talked about it at our national conference on what are the moral issues of this particular political moment. And it is extraordinarily dangerous. But we see it. We saw it in the Bible. We saw it with Pharaoh. We saw it with Nebuchadnezzar. We’ve seen it with Hitler. We’ve seen it with Saddam. We’ve seen it with so many people that attempt to mesh themselves, place themselves in some kind of religious holiness.

And what is most shameful about all of this is that those who would dare call themselves evangelicals are not even acting like biblical evangelicals. They’re acting the opposite of it, which is why I refuse to call them evangelical, because they want us to call them that name.

We are in a moment where this president is playing with dangerous things. This is why the pope said this. He said —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: — “I’m just preaching the Gospel.” The pope said, “I’m just telling him the Gospel, and I’m going to continue to preach the Gospel. And if that’s what he’s upset about, he’ll have to remain upset, because,” the pope said, “I’m not backing up.” And thank God that the pope said that.

AMY GOODMAN: Bishop Barber, we just have 20 seconds, and I was wondering if you can just talk about the settling of your federal discrimination lawsuit against AMC Theatres, stemming from you going with your mother to the movie The Color Purple in 2023 in Greenville, North Carolina.

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, yesterday, we went back to the same theater, had the chair, had my mother, had 80-some people with disabilities. I can’t talk a lot about the settlement, but I can say we’re saying to disabled people, “You don’t have to hide. You don’t have to run.” I’ve been in pain for 40 years, every minute of my life, and I refuse, like other disabled people, to be pushed to the side, to be turned away. Yesterday, we went back to that same theater, went in with the chair, went in with the people, and looked at Michael Jackson on the big screen. And we’re saying, “Everybody, come on out, regardless of what your different ability is. Don’t be in the corners. Don’t be in the shadows. Let people see you and know who you are. The laws protect you, and God loves you.”

AMY GOODMAN: Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.

Coming up, Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin has just introduced legislation to target corruption and President Trump’s efforts to profit from the presidency. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Do You Believe in Rapture?” by Thurston Moore, performing years ago at Smith College.