President Trump joined the “America Reads the Bible” challenge on Tuesday, with a pre-recorded message. The marathon is put on by Christians Engaged and is billed as “a national Scripture-reading event” in honor of America’s 250^th birthday this year. The event runs from April 19 to April 25, with 12 hours of daily Scripture reading at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, with the purpose of reading through the whole Bible. The event will feature some 450 readers, with the likes of Candace Cameron Bure, former presidential candidate Ben Carson, and many others joining in.

President Trump read from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, which takes place after King Solomon has completed the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem. God responds to Solomon’s prayer for the kingdom of Israel by promising to relent from punishing Israel after the people have sought true repentance. The passage includes the familiar phrase, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” It’s a verse often cited as a call for national repentance.

The President released a statement acknowledging the event and acknowledged the Bible’s influence on many formative events of the United States’s history, from the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock to the writing of the Declaration of Independence, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt praying a national prayer over the radio just before the United States and its allies stormed the beaches of Normandy in what would later be called D-Day. “Today, during our 250th year of American independence, the America Reads the Bible [Initiative] invites all citizens to once again acknowledge our Nation’s extraordinary Biblical foundations and to give thanks for the countless ways in which God has been the sacred source of our unity and national strength,” the President noted, adding that “Together, we will honor Holy Scripture, renew our faith, usher in a historic resurgence of religion on American shores, and rededicate the United States as one Nation under God.”

Many of the President’s supporters applauded his participation, while critics pointed out the President’s recent social media snafu where he shared an AI image that appeared to depict himself as Jesus healing the nation. Writing prior to the President’s reading, however, Paul M. Neuberger, founder and CEO of Christian networking organization C-Suite for Christ, called for the event to be “not a political moment.” “It is a spiritual crossroads,” he wrote in a blog post. “A line has been drawn, not by a man, but by the Word of God. And every person, every leader, every believer will choose where they stand. Because the reality is simple and unchanging: A nation that honors God stands. A nation that rejects Him falls.”