Love him or loathe him, Americans would agree that President Donald Trump delivers bombshell policies and critiques like no one else, yet on April 13th he sent a message to the American people that left me speechless when my daughter first read it to me.

In his “Presidential Message on Holy Week, 2025,” Trump opens with this jaw-dropper:

This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.

His message defined Holy Week as a time for Christians “to prepare their hearts, minds, and souls for His miraculous Resurrection from the dead.” Trump then reminds us:

In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.

The president also assured Americans:

This Holy Week, my Administration renews its promise to defend the Christian faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government. We will never waver in safeguarding the right to religious liberty, upholding the dignity of life, and protecting God in our public square.

Just before asking for God’s blessing on families and on America itself, this message states, “We pray that America will remain a beacon of faith, hope, and freedom for the entire world, and we pray to achieve a future that reflects the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in Heaven.”

Once I had recovered from so open a display of Christian faith, I decided to compare it to an Easter message from a previous president and randomly selected Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “Radio Address to the Nation on the Observance of Easter and Passover.” Speaking on the day before Easter, Reagan spoke of Communist oppression, “human pain and suffering,” good deeds done by some American sailors in Australia, a letter from a Massachusetts elementary school class asking if the world would ever be at peace, and a hope that we will “live our lives and dedicate our country to truth, to love, and to God.”

At one point only did Reagan reference Christ: “Tomorrow, as morning spreads around the planet, we’ll celebrate the triumph of life over death, the Resurrection of Jesus.”

Still curious, I next checked out Trump’s “Presidential Message on Easter, 2020,” the final year of his first presidency. Here I found only a pale likeness to his 2025 greeting. With the nation in the early stages of its coronavirus debacle, this earlier document cited 1 Peter 4:10 with its command to use whatever gifts we possess to serve others. It mentioned as well “the light of Christ” and that “Christ has risen.” About half the text praised and encouraged first responders and the many others who were helping their fellow Americans through this pandemic.

In addition to his much stronger 2025 Easter message, President Trump also celebrated Holy Week and the approach of Easter with a Wednesday evening dinner and prayer service and a Thursday prayer and worship service.

Furthermore, in February Trump replaced “the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” with the “White House Faith Office,” an action by the president that included a lengthy list of that office’s objectives and duties. Perhaps indicative of a greater emphasis on faith, this office is now located in the White House.

In our secular age, most politicians would avoid such conspicuous initiatives and pronouncements. So, what happened? Did Trump’s encounter with death in Butler, Penn., on July 13th, 2024, bring him closer to God? That’s a real possibility, for just days after that assassination attempt Trump himself said, “It changes your attitude, your viewpoint on life. you appreciate God even more.”

Does that appreciation account for the president’s greater emphasis on Holy Week and on the Christian meaning of Easter? Perhaps. English writer Samuel Johnson once observed, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” A high-velocity bullet missing one’s skull by a quarter-inch may have a similar effect.

Whatever the reason, Trump’s Easter message would have sounded quite familiar to our nation’s founders, who made the Old and the New Testaments foundation stones in the building of our republic. For an eye-opening take on this biblical influence, pay a visit to “The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity and the Bible.” Here you’ll find listed dozens of our founders along with excerpts from their writing that demonstrate the links between Scripture and our liberties. President of the Continental Congress Elias Boudinat, for example, wrote that “we are Christians on whom the eyes of the world are now turned… [L]et us earnestly call and beseech Him, for Christ’s sake, to preside in our councils….”

With the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution already underway, Trump’s bold actions and words this Easter season are a timely reminder of the great debt our republic owes to the Bible and to Christianity.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Flickr-Trump White House, Public Domain