The Trump Bible is the Bible America deserves
(RNS) — For me, the ideal Bible is the Gideon Bible. I’m not talking about the KJV translation, which is what the Gideons use and I know has its issues. I’m just talking about vibes. When you finally set your suitcase down in the cheap hotel with the Stone Age coffeemaker and jet engine AC unit, you can pop the nightstand open and there she is. Fake ass faded leather cover, stark “HOLY BIBLE” in all caps on the front, 66 books and zero fluff.
It’s comforting, the way anything familiar is comforting. The way you know the hotel TV is going to have “Price Is Right” reruns and the hotel pool is going to smell like it has enough chlorine to bleach your hair, you know the hotel desk stand is going to have a Gideon Bible.
(I once read that whenever Ian McKellen comes across a Gideon Bible, he tears out the pages with the verses that forbid homosexuality. So now I check any Gideon Bible I come across for a sign that Sir Ian’s been there. No luck yet!)
America, alas, does not deserve the Gideon Bible. A free gift just sitting there for anybody who might want to read it? Well, that just seems like a slap in the face to all the hard-working Americans who had to pay good money to buy their own Bibles! Maybe the Americans who want to read the Bible should have thought of that sooner and planned ahead instead of sitting around waiting for the Gideons to bail them out.
No, the Gideon Bible may be ubiquitous but it does not capture the true spirit of the United States. For that, we must turn to a new kind of Bible, and a very different kind of salesman. We must turn to Lee Greenwood. We must turn to the God Bless the USA Bible. We must turn to America’s favorite Christian, former/future(?) President, convicted criminal and attempted insurrectionist Donald Trump.
Trump, of course, was hawking Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible on Truth Social. Like the Gideon Bible, the God Bless the USA Bible has a KJV translation. The similarities end there. The God Bless the USA Bible also has a copy of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and (I particularly like this detail) a “handwritten” copy of the lyrics to Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” In another marked contrast to the Gideon Bible, the God Bless the USA Bible will set you back $59.99 before taxes. Those legal fees aren’t gonna pay themselves.
“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in a video for the Bible, which now bills itself as “the only Bible to be endorsed by President Trump.”
“I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”
Now this I can get behind. Not the Bible America needs, but the one it deserves. History’s most widely available text bound up with a couple of the nation’s founding documents, government-sponsored poems and the lyrics to the worst song we have ever produced, all for three Jacksons?
Perfect.
It’s the literary adaptation of “In God We Trust” on the dollar bill. It is the perfect encapsulation of American Christianity. It is the inevitable climax of white evangelicalism.
It’s the Bible America deserves.
(Tyler Huckabee is a writer living in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and dogs. This article was originally published at his Substack, where you can read more of his writing. This column does not necessarily reflect the views of Religion News Service.)