Annie Laurie Gaylor talks about the taxpayer-funded Trump regime religious rally in Washington, D.C., “Rededicate 250,” that featured white Christian nationalist rhetoric from speakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Franklin Graham, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others that the Freedom from Religion Foundation criticized as an “unprecedented and shocking mix of church and state.”
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Yes. Well, thank you so much for inviting me.
SCOTT HARRIS: So first off, please tell our audience about the work and mission of the Freedom From Religion Foundation that you co-founded at a very early age as I understand it. Some of our listeners probably have seen some of the TV ads featuring Ron Reagan Jr., who I think is one of your spokespersons, right?
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Well, yes. Well, he has recorded very generously this commercial as an endorsement. He doesn’t like to be called “Junior,” however.
SCOTT HARRIS: Okay. (Chuckles)
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Just Ron Reagan.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: And yes, the Freedom for Religion Foundation began nationally in 1978. I was part of the original founding in 1976 when I was a college student and the national founding and have been with it in some way or other ever since. And there were two of us originally and now we are over 41,000 members nationwide. And our members are mainly atheists, agnostics, people who are personally free from religion. And our purpose is also to keep religion out of government as our Constitution requires because we do have a godless and secular Constitution, first in the world to separate religion from government. And so we exist to protect that and it is very much under assault.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, I just wanted to read a quick summary of a prayer rally that was held in Washington at taxpayer expense that we’re going to be talking about and that you were part of a counterprotest at. But let me do that. And then I actually have a couple of clips of audio from speeches at that rally yesterday.
This is Rev. Franklin Graham addressing a crowd at this rally. I think this was prerecorded and was put on a big video screen there. But let me play that right quick here.
REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM: Things that never would have been talked about publicly just 30 years ago. Sinful behavior that should make us blush is now celebrated and flaunted on Main Street America. America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin. Transgenderism, same sex marriage, opening women’s locker rooms to men are just the tip of the iceberg. Why do we need to rededicate ourselves? When God sent the flood and destroyed the earth, it was because man’s heart had become so evil and violent. In the news, we see unimaginable violence, rapes, murders …
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, that was just Franklin Graham on a small clip. I want to play one other clip, and then we’ll get to you to talk more about what happened here at this rally.
SCOTT HARRIS: And that was a clip of actually a white Christian nationalist radio host. I’d love to hear your reaction to what you heard on the National Mall just yesterday.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Yes. And actually I have to say because I was part of the protesters and I flew in and out from Madison, Wisconsin to D.C. I didn’t go in. But of course I’ve been looking at what I can of the nine hours of speeches. And yes, it’s appalling. And Franklin Graham seems to be even much more right-wing than his father, who really was quite right-wing.
And so what they’re doing is a big lie. They’re saying we’re a Christian nation. They’re saying we’re one nation under God. Well, that phrase didn’t come up until the mid-’50s during the height of the McCarthy era when there was supposed to be a war between the United States and godless communism. And it was the religious lobby. Various ministers and religious groups have taken credit for it, but it was several of the religious groups and lobbies that made sure that got in the Pledge of Allegiance, but it was not part of our original wording.
“E Pluribus Unum” was the motto of our country “From Many, Come One,” not “In God We Trust.” That was also a 1950s tampering with our historic roots. So it’s just terribly important that people realize history is being completely distorted. There’s great big lies out there and we have to protect the First Amendment because it protects all of us—because once government gets behind one religion, it invariably means the other religions or non-religious people will be persecuted. And today the conservatives are working together, but if the evangelicals get control like they want, Catholics would not really have freedom or vice versa. They’re kind of working together right now, but it wouldn’t last. Persecution invariably follows when you have religion and government.
SCOTT HARRIS: I did want to ask you about the vision that some of these folks at this rally and who have been very supportive of Donald Trump’s regime—they often talk about establishing a theocracy or what’s sometimes referred to as “dominionism,” where we have a government that promotes one religious view and the minority of people in the country who don’t adhere to that are marginalized and discriminated against. That seems to be rejected by a majority of people. And there’s a recent poll I’ll just mention quickly. I’m sure you know about it.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Yes, there is. I mean, the majority of Americans at least nominally support separation of church and state and pretty strongly also support separation of religion and politics. But this is happening kind of in front of our eyes with people not realizing how dramatic their stronghold is getting in our federal government and in many of the state governments. And we could lose our First Amendment. We could lose our rights if people don’t speak out. But I also think most people don’t really understand what Christian nationalism is and it’s not—to oppose Christian nationalism is not to oppose Christians. Christian nationalism is a form of theopolitics where it’s based on the idea that certain Christians are the preferred citizens and that our American identity is tied up with that kind of Christian identity and it is typically conservative, evangelical Christian. So it would turn those people into the insiders and other people, even other Christians into outsiders.
And I’m very proud to say that our protest yesterday in Washington, D.C. was joined by Faithful America, which is a coalition of a number of religious groups, churches and so on, people who oppose Christian nationalism. There’s another group called Christians Against Christian Nationalism. There are many liberal Christians who are writing books, professors, scholars warning about Christian nationalism. So this is something that many religious people also oppose as they should.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right. We’re speaking with Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and author and she attended a counterprotest at the major prayer rally sponsored by Donald Trump and the Republicans on the National Mall, a taxpayer-funded rally in Washington. And Annie, I did want to ask you about Project 2025 briefly, the Heritage Foundation document that really sets out Trump’s second term agenda that explicitly in many places discuss white Christian nationalism as part of their sort of long-term goal in changing our country from a secular nation to a theocratic nation. You want to briefly address that?
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Yeah. Well, that is something that I was going to look and see where we are with that. I know that the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 has been about 50 percent successful with their environmental campaigns against climate change mitigation, against the science of climate change. I was looking that up on Earth Day. I think that’s pretty shattering.
I don’t know where we are with every other particular goal they had, but we are seeing, for example, mifepristone, abortion rights, the medication abortion pill. We narrowly averted a nationwide ban on telehealth for mifepristone with the Supreme Court punting for now and they’re I think on purpose trying to make sure that that doesn’t come up before the midterm elections because people would revolt. But it’s very much threatened. So Project 2025 is all about dictating a form of extremist Christian ideology, Christian nationalism upon our laws and the American public.
Things like, oh, there are absurd things that haven’t happened yet, but things like you couldn’t work for overtime on a Sunday unless you’re a religious group, that kind of thing because Sunday is the Sabbath and that’s how extreme it is.
They don’t want anybody to work on Sunday.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Well, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has taken over a hundred lawsuits and right now we’re involved in some of the major litigation against the passage of state laws mandating that every single classroom in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and now Alabama have to have 10 Commandments placed prominently where no kid can escape seeing them from kindergarten through 12th grade. And so that’s some of our very important lawsuits and people can find us at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Googling it or at ffrf.org. And we are taking action still with our Freedom of Information Act request against this unlawful government-sponsored prayerfest. And we are only able to do so because of our membership, our supporters. So if people are alarmed by this, if they believe in what we believe in, the First Amendment rights for free thinkers, we hope that you will sign up.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: That’s right.
SCOTT HARRIS: All right. Annie Laurie Gaylor, thank you so much for joining us tonight and appreciate you reporting on the rally yesterday on the mall. The taxpayer-funded rally for others.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Yeah.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well,
SCOTT HARRIS: Right. (Laughs) I saw that. We’ll post that photo on our website when we put this interview up.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Oh, great.
SCOTT HARRIS: All right.
ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR: Thank you so much.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you. And it was good to talk with you. Take care. Bye. That’s Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and author.
