By 10 a.m. yesterday, the line of people wishing to dedicate America to God was more than three hours long. They came ready with prayer flags to wave the Holy Spirit into action, and shofars to scatter demonic forces. They wore T-shirts declaring the sort of Christians they were. A muscular man wore one that read Prayer Warrior. A woman in cargo shorts announced that she was an Intercessor for America. An elderly woman wore one that read I Am the Weapon.
“You understand you’re not going to be able to get in with that,” a security guard told a man wheeling a huge cross toward the entrance to the National Mall, as thousands of people began spreading out across a swath of grass that many of them now considered a kind of occupied territory in a cosmic spiritual war.
“We are here to bring the Earth into alignment with God,” a man named Joel Balin, who had come with a friend from Atlanta, told me. “To bring the kingdom of heaven to Earth.”
The rally, called Rededicate 250, was billed as a “jubilee of prayer, praise and Thanksgiving” for “God’s presence” in American history. It was part of a series of events celebrating the nation’s anniversary put together by a Donald Trump–aligned nonprofit called Freedom 250, which is being funded by a public-private partnership that includes corporate donors such as Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir and for which Congress has allocated $150 million. Critics of the event denounced the reliance on government funds, the participation of administration officials, and the near-total lack of religious diversity as an attempt to make a certain version of Christianity a national religion. A minor protest went on outside the barricades—a small group of people holding signs supporting LGBTQ people, immigrants, and all of the other Americans they believed to be under threat from the Trump administration. They blasted metal music, and a woman with pink hair screamed into a bullhorn.
The people in line paid them little mind. The event was a long-sought triumph for those who came and for millions more grassroots believers who helped elect Trump twice, embracing prophecies that God anointed him for the great spiritual battle against demonic forces that they understand to be animating current events. This idea was the work of the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic movement that began gathering momentum in the 1990s and is now the leading edge of the Christian right. Sunday was a clear display of the influence of the movement, whose leaders were instrumental in mobilizing voters to turn out in recent elections and to take part in the January 6 insurrection, when many people believed that they were taking the U.S. Capitol for God’s kingdom.
Speakers yesterday included Paula White-Cain, an apostle who now leads the White House Faith Office; Lou Engle, an apostle and prophet who is known for organizing the kind of mass-prayer gatherings that characterize the movement; and Guillermo Maldonado, an apostle who leads one of the largest Latino churches in the country, El Rey Jesús, in Florida. Administration officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose own theologies do not exactly align with the movement, told stories about God deploying miracles at key moments in the nation’s history, leveraging these anecdotes to argue that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. Historians say this is a clear misunderstanding of the American Revolution. Trump, just back from China, appeared in a prerecorded video in which he reads from the Old Testament, which seemed to be the same video that he had recorded for a marathon reading of the Bible last month. More revealing than any of these speakers, though, were the thousands of people willing to stand in line for three hours and then roast for seven more in the hot sun.
Balin, who leads a men’s ministry called Wednesday Warriors, told me that by enabling the event, Trump was “opening up a door for us to do spiritual warfare,” and that the very presence of so many believers gathered in the nation’s capital was scattering demonic forces and advancing the kingdom. He said that church-state separation is a “myth” and that, really, any separation from God is a foolish denial of the cosmic reality of the spiritual battle under way. He said that people he knows are tired of “materialism” and “dualism” and “an Enlightenment mindset” that fails to account for how supernatural forces affect earthly life. “There are so many things happening in the supernatural realm, and in the ancient world and other cultures, they recognized this—there was no separation,” he said. “I think we are rediscovering that as Americans.”
It was past 11 a.m., and people were spreading out blankets on the green grass, taking selfies, and livestreaming to congregations back home. “This is Pastor John!” a man in a blue suit said into his cellphone. The crowd was mostly white, but many people I spoke with emphasized that their movement is international and multiethnic, even as some expressed skepticism about accepting Muslim and other non-Christian immigrants into the country. MAGA hats abounded.
On the stage, the first of many praise bands blasted the surging worship music common in charismatic churches these days. People mouthed the words. A screen displayed what appeared to be two church windows, which sometimes were filled with images of stained glass, and sometimes with an American flag, and sometimes with swirling clouds and stars. In the crowd, several women danced free-form with prayer flags, and other people periodically blew a shofar, the hollowed-out ram’s horn used in traditional Jewish services and considered in charismatic circles to be a tool of spiritual warfare. Two women from the central coast of California looked around.
“This is what we’ve been praying for, for our country to turn back to God,” Debbie Cloud, a retiree, told me as she began to cry.
She and her friend Susan Fraze said that they are working on the long-shot campaign of an influential apostle named Ché Ahn, who is running for governor of California as a write-in candidate. Cloud said that she attends a nondenominational church called Calvary Chapel. Fraze goes to a nondenominational church called the Bridge. Almost everyone I spoke with had some story about how they used to be Baptist, or Pentecostal, or Methodist but had found their way to churches with names such as Oasis and Free Chapel and Anchor and Abundant Harvest, the kind of nondenominational congregations that are growing as most denominations continue to decline. At least 15 percent of all American adults now identify as nondenominational, and most of them are embracing charismatic ideas about signs and wonders and spiritual warfare. Many people told me about their involvement with prayer groups, prayer rooms, prayer closets, and so-called prayer furnaces, spaces dedicated to intense, dayslong prayer sessions that people believe can shape the spiritual destiny of the country.
Under the shade of a tree, a man named Adriel Lam told me that he’d flown in from Hawaii, where he works for Capitol Ministries, an organization that seeks to bring prayer into state capitols. Lam is also running for Congress. He said that yesterday’s gathering was more evidence that an outpouring of the Holy Spirit is under way across America, a moment that he described as “post-postmodernism.”
“Modernism told us, Let’s know our chemistry. Let’s know our physics. Science can explain the world,” he said. “Then postmodernism said, Let’s question the foundations of everything. Post-postmodernism is people saying, Let’s go back to zero. Let’s go back to the first century, when Jesus united the physical and the spiritual. God is moving our generation for renewal.”
On a blue towel in the grass, David Hitt, an accountant from Atlanta, huddled and kneeled with several friends. He told me afterward that they were submitting themselves to Jesus and aligning their spiritual posture with God.
“We underestimate what’s going on in the invisible realm,” he said. “Our assembly, our worship, our prayer is creating openings for God to do his will.” He elaborated that he meant actual openings, portals where the Holy Spirit could enter into battle against actual demonic forces. He estimated that the prayer of just one person could put 1,000 demons in flight, and the prayer of two people could eject 10,000.
“So here we’ve got how many people focused on God?” he said, envisioning legions of demons fleeing the capital.
“Praise Jesus,” someone said. A man walked by in a T-shirt that read Jesus is King, Repent or Die. Another wore one that read Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness.
Outside the metal barricades, the capital was quiet. People jogged and went to the Smithsonian, and beyond a block or so, you couldn’t hear the music or the loud cheers when House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “We hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.” Inside, though, the message was clear.
“We are the kingdom,” a woman named Robin Noll, who’d come to Washington, D.C., on a bus with 29 others from western Pennsylvania, told me. “God is driving us into the battlefield.”
