NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Bunni Pounds, a political fundraiser-turned-activist who lost a 2018 bid for U.S. Congress from Texas, was visiting the Museum of the Bible in Washington when she says God spoke to her.
At the time, Pound told attendees at a recent National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, she’d been thinking about Ezra, the biblical prophet who read the law of Moses aloud to the Israelites as they returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon and began rebuilding the city’s walls.
“I had an encounter with the Lord about Ezra, and it has never left me,” she said. What’s more, Pounds said, the United States needs the same kind of spiritual rebuilding as the ancient Israelites.
That idea led her to organize a week of public Bible reading in the nation’s capital. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if our national leaders from all spheres of influence, demographics and denominations would humble themselves in front of the American people and tell them that their dependence is in the Bible,” she said. “And then call the American people back to discipleship and Bible reading.”
This spring, from April 18-25, a group of pastors, politicians, authors and other Christian leaders — nearly 500 in all — will read the Bible aloud from …