Tuesday, May 19, 2026

The Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, sparked a national controversy that Albert Mohler argues reveals more about contemporary cultural panic than historical inaccuracy. While the event itself—featuring evangelical leaders, public officials like Speaker Mike Johnson, and a focus on Christianity’s role in America’s founding—was predictable and historically grounded, the backlash from media outlets like USA Today and the New York Times exposes a deeper ideological struggle. Mohler contends that the secular left’s outrage isn’t about facts, but about maintaining a narrative that America was secular from the start, a claim he dismantles with historical evidence: the overwhelming Christian worldview of the founding generation, the explicit religious language in founding documents, and the widespread acceptance of religious symbolism in American culture—such as the painting of George Washington at prayer—until recently. He highlights that even scholars on the left now admit the founding was not secular, yet the controversy persists as a political weapon. Mohler also critiques a separate incident at NYU, where students protested Jonathan Haidt’s commencement speech for calling their generation 'coddled,' only for Haidt to deliver a banal, unremarkable address that underscored the absurdity of the protest.