Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

As the United States marks 250 years of independence, senior officials are making bold declarations about the nation’s spiritual foundations — and not everyone is pleased.

The man who could be Trump’s 2028 successor delivered some powerful Presidential remarks about faith, family and freedom early last month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio marked the US’s 17 May rededication of the nation with a 4-minute video dedicated to God.

Titled A National Jubilee of Prayer, Rubio dropped a brief history course on life, liberty, civics, and Christian nationalism.

In the short speech, he reminded the world that the soul of the United States “has been rooted in the Christian faith.”

Christianity, Rubio explained, was at the core of “our country’s beginning, and for as long as America has embodied freedom and exceptionalism.”

Faith, Founders, and the Christian West

“The resolution of the Continental Congress,” he recounted, “called on the 13 colonies to humble themselves in preparation for the coming war.”

They committed to a “true penitence of heart and the most reverent devotion publicly to acknowledge the overruling providence of God.”

Over three months later, the colonies would be at war.

“Many on both sides of the Atlantic thought their cause was a suicide mission.”

“The founders were not naive men,” he said.

“They had no guarantees of victory. They knew that what they were trying to do had never been done before in human history.”

Yet “they did what Christians have always done across place and time for 2000 years.”

“They turned their eyes to heaven and placed their fate in the hands of God.”

“Before the Christian West,” Rubio said, “most societies and civilisations, for that matter, thought in stagnant cycles: the flooding of the Nile, the return of the rains, the cycle of the harvest.”

“History for them was a wheel to nowhere. But our faith calls us outwards, into the limitless darkness of the unknown.”

“It tells us to go forth and preach the Gospel to [all] the world.”

From that “command came America.”

“Our nation,” asserted Rubio, “more than any other in history, was shaped by this Christian idea.”

Drawing from historical examples, the Trump Secretary of State drew on the Puritan’s proclamation of Christ’s Lordship over America, as a city on a hill.”

Rubio also highlighted the role of Christians who responded to the call to take the Gospel into the “Westward expansion.”

From Morse’s first telegraph quoting the Book of Numbers to Apollo astronauts quoting from Genesis in their 1968 Earthrise orbit of the moon.

“This is who we are,” Rubio declared.

“It is who we have always been.”

Critics Push Back

Responses varied.

Some welcomed the speech, while others disingenuously accused the Cuban-American Secretary of State of being the Taliban and Ayatollah.

Echoing the protests of Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), one X user slammed the speech as “ideological bigotry”.

FFRF was unsurprisingly unhappy with Rubio’s pre-recorded exhortation about the evidence of God’s providence and grace working throughout the history of the United States.

They weren’t just cheesed about the Christ-centred assertions, which included short spots from Vance and President Trump supporting the event.

The group took the entire Christ-centred event to task for breaching their “separation of Church and State” interpretation.

“We live under a godless constitution,” FFRF’s Co-President protested.

“America was founded on Enlightenment principles, not biblical authority. No amount of prayer rallies or revisionist history can erase that.”

The “only references to religion in the Constitution are exclusionary.”

Angered by the participation of the White House in the event marking 250 years since America’s founding, FFRF claimed that “Trump’s Christian Nationalist rally fell flat.”

The organisation laughed off the rededication event as a failure, stating that actual numbers did not reach attendance estimates.

Speaker Johnson Leads the Nation in Prayer

Undeterred by critics, Mike Johnson, a committed Christian and Speaker of the House, expressed his own gratitude through the event by leading those gathered in prayer.

For the 250th anniversary of our independence, we rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.

Last Sunday’s gathering was an important moment in our history.

May the Lord grant us all the courage and conviction to preserve this extraordinary republic. pic.twitter.com/DP5Q5ovAF2

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 24, 2026

“Our Heavenly Father, we thank You,” Johnson prayed.

“Thank You so much for this great day that You’ve given us here, as we remember that Your mighty hand has been upon our nation since the very beginning.”

“Lord, today, our people gather once again in Your name.”

“We have humbled ourselves before You.”

“We acknowledge that the miracle of our founding, and the countless miracles that have followed, are Your doing.”

To this, the US Speaker of the House added,

“We remember that we owe our nation – every victory, every hero, every good deed she has brought forth – to You, Almighty God.”

Johnson also petitioned that God would “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.’”

“Look upon us with favour, upon Your country as we celebrate this momentous anniversary.”

“And let Your Holy Spirit descend upon this land so that future generations will look back at this day, in this present age, and once again, see Your providential hand at work.”

“I ask this today, Lord; I pray it, and I believe it, in Your holy name, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”