President Donald Trump is slated to read a few verses from the Bible Tuesday evening as part of the “America Reads The Bible” initiative.
The initiative kicked off on April 18 and ends April 25 and features Christian leaders, government officials, and celebrities all taking turns in reading the entire Bible. It goes from 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. ET every day:
Hosted by the nonprofit Christians Engaged, in partnership with Great American Pure Flix and a coalition of other ministries, the first “America Reads the Bible” week will be broadcast and streamed from the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. The timing of it is aimed at setting a sacred tone before celebrations this summer marking America’s 250th anniversary.
On Tuesday, President Trump will take his turn, reading 2 Chronicles 7:11–22, which includes the well-known scripture, “If my people who are called by my name 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 commander-in-chief is expected to read the verse from the Oval Office.
The entirety of the passage reads:
Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name 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. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’
“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’”
In a presidential message celebrating the nationwide Bible reading project, Trump said, “In every generation, through every trial and triumph, God’s Word has guided our people and our country to incredible new heights.” He quoted George Washington, who said in his First Inaugural Address, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.”
As part of the 250th anniversary celebration of America, Trump invited Americans to “once again acknowledge our Nation’s extraordinary Biblical foundations and to give thanks for the countless ways in which God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength.”
Other readers include Dr. Ben Carson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Rev. Franklin Graham, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Speaker Mike Johnson, and many, many more.