A video of President Donald Trump reading a Bible passage in the Oval Office will be aired Tuesday night as part of a marathon Bible reading organized by a coalition of far-right Christian groups. Officially, “America Reads the Bible” is part of the coalition’s events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July. Unofficially, the timing is propitious, coming days after Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV and sparked backlash by posting a (now deleted) artificial intelligence-generated image of himself depicted as Jesus Christ.
The list of readers includes many high-profile participants, among them Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (who recently adapted a monologue from “Pulp Fiction” in place of a real Bible verse). As the president, though, Trump almost certainly had his pick of the entire book. And his choice of passage reflects the essence of his appeal to Christians: not piety, but power.
Trump will read 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, in which God tells the ancient Israelites:
If My people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
This passage is a favorite of Christian nationalists, who falsely portray the United States as being founded to be God’s new spiritual and political home. They love this passage because it frames national renewal as a matter of spiritual performance. It is a theology of restoration that conveniently asks nothing about who has been excluded from the land, who built it and who still isn’t free in it. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin even recited the verse while praying over the crowd at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The irony of Trump, who has proudly said he has never asked for forgiveness, reading about repentance is a cruel joke on Americans.
Far-right Christians have consistently forgiven Trump’s many sins, from war and deportations in office to adultery out of it. They know Trump isn’t a pious Christian. That’s obvious for all to see. But they know they can use MAGA to maintain political power, because they view him as a bulldozer to their enemies. Born in response to the desegregation of public schools, the modern religious right movement sees wickedness in the past half-century of civil rights advances for people of color, women and LGBTQ people. Trump is their wrecking ball, and his infidelity to God is peripheral to their political and theological project.
Trump can’t read the entire Bible, of course — the whole livestream is running 12 hours a day throughout the week. But if he tunes in at other times, there are many other verses from which he could learn. He could listen to Matthew 25, in which Jesus says the way we treat “the least of these” (the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner) is the way we treat him. He could hear Jesus’ words “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) as he fumes at the pope for warning of “woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain.”
The president who posted an image of himself as Jesus could learn from Paul’s letter to Christians in Galatia: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Instead of living for Christ, the president turned himself into Christ.
No leader of a nation committed to religious freedom for all should promote any one religious text.
Trump can also listen to Isaiah 58, in which the prophet demolishes the idea that public displays of religion substitute for justice. “Is not this the fast that I choose,” God says through Isaiah, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free?” The prophet was describing people who looked religious but exploited workers and ignored the poor.
Or he can heed the prophet Micah. Micah 6:8 delivers perhaps the most concise moral instruction in all of scripture: Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. It also reads as the antithesis of MAGA.
It is good that Trump is opening the Bible and not just using it as a prop like he did after clearing Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Square. Yet it would be better if he didn’t take part in this reading at all. No leader of a nation committed to religious freedom for all should promote any one religious scripture. It alienates Americans who don’t view the Bible as a sacred text and manipulates and devalues the faith of those who do.
But Trump’s participation in this reading and his choice of passage shows us what the president and his Christian nationalists want to emphasize about their version of religion. Christian nationalism doesn’t engage the Bible as a text that makes demands. It mines scripture for verses that seem to endorse existing political agendas about national strength, cultural dominance and the idea that God has chosen this nation and, by extension, its current leadership. The verses that challenge power are ignored. The ones that can be wielded as props get amplified.
The result is what we saw this week: A defense secretary sermonizing with fake scripture while justifying a war. A president posting an image of himself as the Son of God. A White House issuing proclamations about the Bible while attacking the vulnerable in unimaginable ways.
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance and the author of "Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity."