- Oct 17, 2011
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“On April 21, President Trump is scheduled to read Scripture via video message from the Oval Office during the 6 p.m. EST hour,” a press release from organizers reads. The event is called “America Reads The Bible.”
Trump’s participation in the weeklong reading is particularly notable given his recent feud with Pope Leo over the Iran conflict and the backlash he received earlier this week for posting – and then deleting – an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus.
In the video message, Trump, according to organizers, will read a passage from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, which includes the frequently quoted verse 14: “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.”
[It seems to me that if religious leaders are sposeta stay out of politics in their public comments, politicians should stay out of religion in their public comments.]
Since Trump returned to office last year, the administration has chipped away at the separation between church and state.
The White House has asked Americans to pray for an hour a week, Bible verses and Christian imagery have appeared on official government social media accounts, and federal agencies have hosted prayer service.
[Prof] Thompson noted 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 is when it is prescribed for the entire nation as normative or as mandatory as a religious kind of doctrine,” Thompson said.
Trump’s participation in the weeklong reading is particularly notable given his recent feud with Pope Leo over the Iran conflict and the backlash he received earlier this week for posting – and then deleting – an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus.
In the video message, Trump, according to organizers, will read a passage from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, which includes the frequently quoted verse 14: “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.”
[It seems to me that if religious leaders are sposeta stay out of politics in their public comments, politicians should stay out of religion in their public comments.]
Since Trump returned to office last year, the administration has chipped away at the separation between church and state.
The White House has asked Americans to pray for an hour a week, Bible verses and Christian imagery have appeared on official government social media accounts, and federal agencies have hosted prayer service.
[Prof] Thompson noted 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 is when it is prescribed for the entire nation as normative or as mandatory as a religious kind of doctrine,” Thompson said.
