What did Donald Trump do today?

He spent public money promoting a specific religious message and glorifying him as God's chosen one.

An event called "Rededicate 250" was held on the National Mall in Washington D.C. today. It was billed as a "national Jubilee" of "prayer and worship." Virtually all of the "faith leaders" who spoke were from a particular Christian nationalist sect, and all of them were political supporters of Donald Trump.

Speaker after speaker rained down praise on Trump by name, with many speaking of him as a present-day prophet or special instrument of God's will. This echoes Trump's own language on the special and unique place he says he has in God's plan, which he's made a part of his stump speech. At times, it verged on parody: one speaker, Eric Metaxas, expressed disbelief that it had taken God "two centuries to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand."

Trump himself was on the program, and has been trying to drum up a crowd over the past week, apparently worried about yet another underwhelming crowd response to one of his flashy public events. Early estimates are that a few thousand people attended, with crowds thicker on the ground than they were for Trump's disastrous Soviet-style military parade last year, but not nearly as many as attended (for example) the Boise, Idaho "No Kings" protest in March.

 

But in spite of the advance billing, Trump wasn't present, and he didn't even address the group live, as he sometimes does at events like this. Instead, attendees saw him reading a passage from the Bible from a teleprompter that had been taped weeks ago for an unrelated event. Trump was resting at one of his private DC-area golf courses while the recording played.

Trump's Interior Department has set aside $100 million in funds for this and similar events, although it hasn't said exactly how much was spent for today's "prayer Jubilee." Under the normal rule of law in the United States, public money could not be used to promote a specific religious agenda, or for what amounted to political campaign event. And the explicit endorsement of a particular form of Christianity was absolutely clear. As the Washington Post reported:

In an eight-hour lineup, speakers including top government officials framed America as a country founded to be explicitly Christian — and in danger if its population turns from their version of that religious faith.

Sitting, standing, dancing and praising with hands raised toward a blazing sun, attendees appeared riveted as speakers took the stage during “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving.” Many said they were thrilled to see an event that tied the nation and its government so overtly to Christianity.

“We welcome Jesus into this place!” worship leader Andy Frank said at the start of the event, belting from a stage with ivory-colored pillars that evoked the neoclassical architecture of the capital’s federal buildings.

Trump hasn't been shy about embracing the Christian nationalist declaration that, Constitution be damned, the United States is and ought to be an explicitly Christian place. This is not a popular view with American Christians or Americans in general, most of whom believe that having the government endorse one religious belief over another is an infringement on freedom and a desecration of faith.

But then, neither is Trump repeatedly comparing himself to Jesus, and that hasn't stopped him.

Why does this matter?

• Cynically trying to coopt people's religious beliefs to drum up political support is what tinpot dictators do.  

• The United States government is a democracy, not a theocracy, and not a cult of personality.

• Whatever he may personally believe, Trump is not God, the son of God, or anything like a god.