Ahead of America’s 250th birthday, faith and government leaders are planning to remind the people of the nation’s founding – by reading the Bible.
Faith and government leaders are partnering to plan America Reads the Bible, a weeklong scripture reading in Washington, D.C., from April 18 to 25, 2026. The nonprofit Christians Engaged is organizing the event to remind Americans of the nation’s spiritual foundation.
“Wouldn’t it be awesome if our national leaders from all spheres of influence, all demographics, and all denominations, would humble themselves and say, ‘You know what? We need the Bible each day to make it,’” said Christians Engaged CEO and Founder Bunni Pounds to The Dallas Express.
The Museum of the Bible will host the Bible reading event, hoping to bring 14,000 people to experience it live, according to Pounds. Meanwhile, Great American Pure Flix will stream the entire event.
The White House Faith Office is assisting the event, according to Pounds. Director Jennifer Korn and Senior Advisor Paula White-Cain — a televangelist — have already committed to participate by reading the Bible.
“They are already working with the president and the vice president to get their commitment to be readers in the program, and also helping us with additional cabinet members,” she said. “They’re fully on board.”
Other prominent supporters include Turning Point USA, Samaritan’s Purse, Prison Fellowship, and Bethel Church, according to Pounds. Christians Engaged has invited Republican and Democrat federal legislators to participate, and is pursuing certification from America 250.
Several groups from the Dallas-Fort Worth area are also backing the event, according to Pounds. These include UPPERROOM worship from Dallas, the nonprofit Wall Builders from Aledo, evangelism groups Time to Revive from Richardson and LIFE Outreach International from Euless, and religious freedom firm First Liberty Institute and the ministry of Prestonwood Pastor Jack Graham – both from Plano.
“We’re getting amazing, amazing buy-in from Christian TV and radio,” Pounds said.
Pounds said she hopes to remind Americans of the Bible’s foundational place in the nation’s history.
“What if we did that in the backdrop of the 250th birthday of America, where we could say that the Bible truly is our founding document?” she said. “Everything that the founders gave us in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was founded on scripture, and because of that, our Constitution has outlasted every constitution in world history.”
Pounds had previously been involved in political campaigning and consulting, before she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018 to represent Texas’ 5th District, according to Ballotpedia. During the campaign, she said she realized Christians had a problem.
“A lot of times Christians or people of faith talk about the importance of voting, but they’re not really voting, especially when it comes to primaries and runoffs and local elections,” Pounds said. “So I set off to create, almost in a campaign style, a get out the vote system for Christians.”
Her group, Christians Engaged, would offer believers an onramp to involvement by making a commitment to pray for America regularly, to vote in every election, and to “start engaging for our country.” Pounds said the group began tracking Texas elections, and sending four emails and four text messages, with a five-step guide on each race.
“We created a strong call to action. We call it our pledge to pray, vote, and engage,” she said. “We started networking with churches, speaking in churches, doing social media, speaking wherever we could, and publicizing it as much as we could.”
Christians Engaged launched in 2020, and in 2022, 79,000 Christians across Texas had signed on, according to Pounds. After that year’s election, the group expanded across all 50 states.
“Now we track every election in the country, every special election, every primary,” she said.
While the group cannot track every local election, it currently covers statewide elections, according to Pounds.
Christians Engaged has recruited 850,000 believers before the most recent election. Pounds expects to reach 1 million Christians by the end of 2025, then 1.5 million to 2 million in 2026.
Pounds said the group has grown so quickly through mass media and marketing efforts, “geofencing” and reaching Christians in battleground states, and strategic ministry partnerships.
She pointed to Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano as an example of “one of our top discipleship partners.” There, according to Pounds, Graham has worked with Christians Engaged for four to five years – promoting voter registration, civic awareness, and the pledge to pray, vote, and engage. The group also provides free video curriculum to the church.
Organizers of the upcoming presentation are pursuing a Guinness World Record for the largest Bible reading event in U.S. history, according to Pounds.
“It’s a huge feat to just organize all these readers, it’s just a massive project for our team,” she said. “But we know we’re called to do it, and we know that God’s going to bless it. And he’s blessing it already by bringing everybody together.”