04/20/2026
This is the hypocrisy that’s happening…
The public reading of the Bible at the Museum of the Bible is being framed as some kind of spiritual reset for America, with hundreds of participants reading Scripture aloud over several days leading up to the nation’s 250th anniversary. And yes, even Trump has reportedly been included among those scheduled to read.
That sounds noble on the surface. It always does. But history, and truth, won’t let that narrative go unchallenged. The Bible has never just been read in America. It has been used, weaponized, and twisted into a theological shield for brutality.
Slave masters quoted Scripture while holding Black bodies in chains. Colonizers invoked it while erasing Indigenous nations from their own land. Segregationists preached it while building systems of apartheid dressed up as “order.” The same book that speaks liberation was turned into a tool of oppression, because the issue was never the text, it was the hands and hearts interpreting it.
So no, the problem in America is not a lack of Bible reading. The problem is a lack of Bible living.
You can read Genesis to Revelation out loud for seven straight days and still deny healthcare to the sick. You can quote the prophets and still criminalize the poor. You can recite the words of Jesus and still turn your back on immigrants, the elderly, the disabled, the very people He called the least of these.
That’s not revival. That’s performance.
And I’m not impressed by symbolism masquerading as spirituality.
Especially not when the same political figures participating in this public display are actively promoting policies that contradict everything Jesus stood for. You don’t get to read Scripture in the nation’s capital while endorsing cruelty, exclusion, and economic violence, and expect God to be honored by it.
God is not moved by public readings when private actions are unjust. God is not impressed by ceremonies that contradict His commandments. God is not fooled by loud religion and silent compassion.
And let’s deal with the contradiction plainly: reading the Bible one week after threatening mass violence and genocide on resurrection Sunday is not faith, it’s hypocrisy dressed in religious language.
America doesn’t need another staged moment with an open Bible. America needs people who will embody it. Because until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream, all of this is just noise in the microphone.
This is symbolism with no substance, scripture with no obedience, and religion with no righteousness.
And God has never been impressed with that kind of show.
Talbert Swan
