America is not a Christian nation

Today is Shavuot, a Jewish holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. It’s an important holiday that ties the Jewish people to the Torah and to the land of milk and honey. Chag Sameach to all celebrating.

Imagine if we Jews took our religious practices, such as the celebration of Shavuot – cheesecake, late-night Torah study, and all – to the National Mall for a nine-hour taxpayer-funded prayer festival, and declared America a Jewish nation. It’s a bizarre concept, but it’s exactly what thousands of Christians did on Sunday in a “National Jubilee of Prayer” orchestrated by the Trump White House.

There are many things to be outraged about this week, including the president’s brazen scam to settle a phony lawsuit with himself and create a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay January 6 insurrectionists. Even some Republicans seem to have had enough; members of Congress abruptly left Washington yesterday after abandoning funding for Trump’s one billion dollar ballroom.

Amid the incessant corruption, attacks on democracy, and norms broken by the president – enabled by complicit Republicans in Congress – Jewish Americans should be particularly outraged about Trump’s erasure of the separation of church and state, including false claims that America was founded as a Christian nation.

While many of our nation’s Founding Fathers were Christian, they established a government separate from religion and without favor for any one religion. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states that the government cannot establish a national religion, endorse any particular faith over another, or favor religion over non-religion. The Trump White House appears to view America as Christian, diversity as a weakness, and the Establishment Clause as an irrelevant nuisance.

Trump’s Christian nationalism was on full display last weekend at Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, which was a large church service on the National Mall to “give thanks for God’s providence, reflect on our nation’s story, and rededicate America as One Nation under God.” It was the largest example yet of the Trump White House’s false claim that America is a Christian nation.

On Christmas, I wrote about the religious messages sent out by multiple White House officials using the collective “we” to falsely describe a nation that shares a single “Lord and Savior.” The overtly religious Christian language by Trump administration officials has continued, and federal employees are suing the Department of Agriculture for “government-sponsored religious coercion, religious sermonizing, and denominational preference that the Establishment Clause prohibits.”

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has repeatedly invoked Christian nationalist rhetoric, including to justify war. According to the New York Times, “More than any top American military leader in recent history, Mr. Hegseth has framed U.S. military operations…as bigger than politics or foreign policy. Often he has imbued these actions with a Christian moral underpinning that suggests they are divinely sanctioned.”

Both the Departments of Defense and Labor are being sued by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) for holding organized prayer services. AU is also suing the State Department for information related to its “Anti-Christian Bias” task force, which was established by the president’s February 2025 Executive Order on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” in government.

These allegations of Christian persecution in government by the Trump White House are hard to believe, given its ongoing attempts to indoctrinate others with Christian nationalism. Per the Establishment Clause, the U.S. government should remain neutral with respect to religion to protect both freedom of religion and government, but Trump doesn’t appear to care.

The separation of church and state should be of deep concern to every Jewish American and any other religious minority. In honor of Shavuot – and any other religious observance – we must continue to fight for freedom of religion and separation of church and state, and elect those who will defend both as we celebrate America’s 250th year.

Shabbat Shalom,

Halie Soifer

CEO, Jewish Democratic Council of America