Trump to air prerecorded Bible reading amid feud with Pope

Donald Trump is set to re-enter the public faith debate on Tuesday, April 21, with a prerecorded Oval Office Bible reading that arrives while his feud with Pope Leo XIV and the backlash over a deleted AI image still hang over his relationship with Christian voters. The segment, scheduled for the 6 p.m. Eastern hour, features Trump reading 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, with organizers highlighting 2 Chronicles 7:14 as the heart of the passage.

The reading is part of America Reads the Bible, a seven-day event running April 19-25 at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., with an opening celebration held April 18 at Capital Turnaround. Organizers say the program will include about 84 hours of continuous Bible reading from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day, nearly 500 readers, and roughly 115 to 122 ministries. They have framed the effort as a commemoration of 250 years of the Bible in America, and the White House has backed that framing with a presidential message citing Christopher Columbus, John Winthrop, the Declaration of Independence, the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, and John Adams.

Trump’s participation also gives the event a clear political edge. The Bible passage he recorded is frequently invoked in American public religion for its emphasis on humility, prayer, repentance, and the healing of the land, a symbolism that fits neatly with an outreach effort aimed at faith voters. Bunni Pounds, one of the organizers, called the choice historic for a sitting president and said the selected verse is about repentance. The lineup around Trump includes Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Doug Burgum, Brooke Rollins, Doug Collins, Susie Wiles, and Paula White-Cain, underscoring how closely the event is tied to Trump’s governing circle.

The timing matters because Trump’s latest clash with the Vatican has turned into a broader test of his standing with Catholics and conservative Christians. CBS News reported that the feud with Pope Leo XIV escalated over the war in Iran, after the pope criticized the conflict and Trump answered with unusually blunt attacks, calling Leo “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” Trump also suggested the pope had been elevated in part because he was American. That confrontation carries electoral weight: Trump won 55% of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, according to AP VoteCast, even as many church leaders have bristled at his rhetoric.

The Bible reading follows another burst of backlash that crossed denominational lines. Trump posted and later deleted an AI-generated image that many viewers interpreted as depicting him as Jesus. Trump said he thought it showed him as a doctor healing the sick, but the image drew criticism from evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics, and populist conservatives. Speaker Mike Johnson said he asked Trump to remove it. Taken together, the Vatican feud, the deleted image, and the Bible-reading spectacle suggest a calculated effort to reset the story with religious voters, while also revealing how fragile that alliance has become.