Trump’s Obscene Bible Hawking

Buzzing the Bible

The country is abuzz with Bible talk. That’s the best I can say about Donald Trump’s new product endorsement, the God Bless the USA Bible, selling for $59.99 before shipping. A family member who routinely buys Bibles in bulk suspects the wholesale cost of Trump’s large-print, faux leather book is $4-$5 per unit. That’s a handsome return. From information on the Bible’s webpage, Trump has a deal with the promoters that compensates him for his praise of the product and seems to give him a cut of the action.

Trump’s Dollar Doctrine

Many famous people have sold Bibles, but Donald Trump’s entrance into the arena is especially troubling. First, he has been working the “Christian market” for personal gain since his 2016 presidential campaign. It was even before that because he first had to enlist evangelical support for his primary bid. As early as 2010, I watched Trump misuse a Bible as he brandished one while entertaining a ballroom full of evangelical leaders at Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson’s 80th birthday bash. It was clear to everyone at my table that Trump knew nothing of the venerable volume in his hand, but he told us how important it was to him. No one I knew bought it, but they humored him nonetheless.

What is most disturbing about Trump’s current hawking of Holy Scripture is that it suggests his imprimatur makes his choice a superior, more desirable Bible for his constituents. If there is one thing true about God’s Word, it needs no celebrity endorsement. For true Bible believers, Sacred Writ is not the result of marketing geniuses, research and development departments, or human ingenuity. It is instead the fruit of divine inspiration, communal acclamation, and careful, in-depth, vigorous religious debate and historical vetting that created the cannon of sixty-six books that Protestants and evangelicals accept as the Old and New Testaments. To Trump, though, it’s a cash cow.

Nobody owns the copyright to biblical content. Somebody did not create the Bible to benefit one person, a group of investors, or a family’s legacy of wealth, but Trump is coopting it for just that end. Like so many scripted endorsers chosen for their fame, not for their actual familiarity with a product, Trump claims unconvincingly that the Bible is his “favorite book” and that he has many. The latter may be factually accurate in that many well-intentioned supporters have given him Bibles as gifts. Still, in context, he implies he has lots of them because their content is meaningful to him. There is no objective evidence that this is the case. 

The Salesman’s Biblical Illiteracy

Almost everything Trump says in his ad contradicts what conservative Christians believe about the Bible. More importantly, he contradicts what the Bible says about itself. First, Trump says he is “proud” to partner in this Bible-merchandising enterprise. In a blog post entitled, Good Bible Reading Requires Humility renowned and highly respected evangelical pastor, Bible teacher, and theologian John Piper reminds us that Scripture admonishes readers to “receive with meekness the implanted word.” (James 1:21). He goes on to remind believers what God said through the prophet, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2) Piper summarizes his point this way, “If God will not ‘look to’ a proud person who reads the Scriptures, it is certain that the proud reader is not going to receive his help.” [Piper, John. “Good Bible Reading Requires Humility.” Crossway, Crossway Publishing, 10 July 2021.]

Trump is anything but a humble man. He is boastful, arrogant, self-congratulatory, and contemptuous of others. In commercializing the Bible for his financial gain, Trump suggests his endorsement makes his branded version a better Bible–better than other non-endorsed brands. The merchant’s website reinforces this by emphasizing, “This is the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” Taking ownership of what is for Christians, the timeless sacred text is, at best, disrespectful, likely sacrilegious, and may even be blasphemous.

And There’s More . . .

There’s much more for earnest Christians to find objectionable in the Trump-endorsed Bible: 

• In his ad about his Bible, Trump claims that he “wants a lot of people to have it.” If that’s so, why not give the Bibles away free to anyone who asks for them? He recently bragged to Fox journalist Brian Kilmeade, “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do.” Does he want everyone to have one of his superior Bibles or just those who can afford to pay so he gets a royalty? Bibles for America gives away some 85,000 free study Bibles annually, even though it reports only a $3-4 million annual budget, far less money than Trump brags he possesses. Anyone can request a free Bible from one of the various international, national, or regional Bible Societies. Gideons International makes them available in bulk without cost to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, the military, first responders, and prisons. Certain church denominations give Bibles away; most libraries have them on their shelves for borrowers. Why does Trump require you to fork over the equivalent of what it costs to fill your tank with gas? Because his Bible will put millions in his pocket.

•  Trump says he is selling this Bible because we “must bring Christianity back into our lives.” Every indication is that Trump has never brought Christianity into his own life, let alone into anybody else’s. Trump says he attended Marble Collegiate Church in New York from childhood until midlife. Still, one of the congregation’s pastors told me over dinner that there is little evidence Trump has attended services more than a few times, and there is even less evidence that he gave any volunteer time or money to the church. Once the former New Yorkers took up full-time residence in Florida, observers reported a similar pattern with the nearby Episcopal church where Trump and his third wife, Melania, were married. The Trumps appeared there only on rare holidays before he declared himself a “non-denominational Christian,” but without associating with a church outside of political appearances in supporting pulpits. Despite keeping company with numerous big-name evangelical figures, Trump has never identified anyone as his actual pastor. 

• The overwhelming majority of Christians will identify Jesus as central to Christianity. The Bible Trump is vending states, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;” (Hebrews 1:1-2) This makes Jesus the key to correctly interpreting the text. The Gospel of John opens by telling us, “the Word was made flesh” in the person of Jesus. In the New Testament’s original Greek language, “Christian” meant “little Christ.” It is Jesus Christ, the embodiment of God’s Word and the founder of Christianity, who defines what it means to bring Christianity into one’s life–and it’s a stiff challenge for all of us, and most certainly Donald J. Trump:

When the Son of man (Jesus) shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:31-46) 

Trump Fails the Test

Even to the casual, non-religious observer, Trump fails the test of faithfulness to the Jesus of the Bible, who blessed the poor, those who have suffered profound human loss, the humble, the hungry, those who pursue what is right at great cost, the merciful, the sincere, peacemakers, and the persecuted. 

Finally, it’s peculiar that Trump would not only “endorse” a King James Version of the Bible but also stress that translation in his ad. Catholics are not allowed to use the King James Version (it’s worth reading the history on that), and a large sector of American evangelicals do not prefer it, considering its “thees” and “thous” too antiquated and alienating for the average person. Mega churches typically use contemporary translations like the New International, English Standard, and Christian Standard Bibles. And while Trump no doubt considers the US founding documents in the same category as Scripture, the vast majority of American Christians would not. Merging the sacred with the secular in the God Bless the USA Bible will be at least cringeworthy to many American believers, if not revolting.

Bible Busking a Bust

Trump’s Bible market trading will prove to be a major faux pas. No doubt it will make him a few million quick bucks, which he needs badly, but it will significantly damage the integrity of the Christian witness in the United States, not to mention dividing Christians among themselves while dissing non-Christian citizens in the process.