US President Donald Trump will participate in a public Bible reading this week as the administration continues to integrate religion, particularly Christianity, into its official activities.
“On April 21, President Trump is scheduled to read Scripture via video message from the Oval Office at approximately 6 p.m. ET,” reads a press release from organizers. The event is titled “America Reads The Bible.”
Trump’s participation in the reading, , is particularly notable, given his on the conflict with Iran and the backlash he received earlier this week for publishing — and then deleting — .
In the video message, organizers indicate, Trump will read a passage from the book Chronicles 2:7:11-22, which includes the oft-quoted verse 14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
The verse also gained public attention when the “Cowboys for Trump” founder prayed over the crowd during the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s links to this verse date back, however, to even earlier times. Shortly after her victory in 2016, evangelical Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Billy Graham, claimed it was a sign that God was answering his people’s prayer, just as in Chronicles 2, 7:14.
Christians Engaged founder and president Bunni Pounds, who helped organize the event, said “it took someone special to read Chapter 7 of the Second Book of Chronicles” and that they reserved that passage for Trump to read.
Margaret Susan Thompson, professor of History and Political Science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, tells CNN that this verse has been seen by many evangelical Christians as a “justification for calling on God to bless your nation.”
Although the Trump administration has recently invoked Christian language in public affairs, Thompson notes that previously American leaders, from former President Jimmy Carter to former President George W. Bush, have integrated their religious convictions into a mindset that shapes their goals for the nation, but that individual public leaders have not made their faith a mandate.
“The problem arises when this is prescribed for the entire nation as normative or mandatory, as if it were some kind of religious doctrine”, says Thompson.
Many administration officials will join the president during the reading, according to the press release, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Trump found himself at the center of last week, which began with , because he spoke out against war with Iran.
The president criticized the pope, telling journalists: “We don’t like a pope who says it’s okay to have nuclear weapons,” adding: “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”
The pope responded: “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration.”
Pope Leo XIV in procession, accompanied by cardinals and bishops, to celebrate mass at Yaoundé Ville Airport, in Cameroon, on Saturday, April 18, on the sixth day of his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa. photo Andrew Medichini/AP
The president then had to defend himself after appearing as Jesus, which aroused the ire of some members of his own base.
“I thought it was me as a doctor and that it had to do with the Red Cross,” he told reporters as he left the West Wing. “I’m supposed to be the doctor healing people. And I heal people.”
Since Trump returned to office last year, the administration has undermined the separation of church and state.
The White House for an hour a week, and Christian images have appeared on the streets, and federal agencies have organized prayer services.
Earlier this year, Hegseth — who has particularly sought to infuse religion into official Pentagon business and regularly invokes scripture — to lead a prayer service at the Department of Defense. The pastor in question, Douglas Wilson, believes that homosexuality should be considered a crime and calls for Christian theocracy.
In one about the war with Iran earlier this week, Hegseth compared journalists to the Pharisees, “the self-proclaimed elites of their day” who doubted the “goodness” of Jesus.
