Over the weekend, President Donald Trump issued the first presidential message in recent memory celebrating the Christian feast of Pentecost, honoring persecuted Christians, and vowing to uphold religious liberty in America. In doing so, he broke with his Democratic predecessors’ habit of ignoring Christian holidays while upholding obscure non-Christian religious observances or far-left “holidays” praising transgenderism.

On Sunday, the president released an inspiring, theologically precise statement extolling the “glorious feast day” of Pentecost as “one of the most sacred events of the Christian faith.”

“Today, I join in prayer with Christians joyfully celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost,” wrote President Trump. “We commemorate the fulfillment of Jesus Christ’s earthly mission and the birth of His holy and living Church.” He then summarized the feast’s biblical meaning and enduring importance for Christians: The Holy Spirit empowered the 12 Apostles “to withstand tremendous danger to bring hearts, minds, and souls to the Christian faith — marking the beginning of the Church, against which even the evils of hell shall not prevail. More than 2,000 years later, the Holy Spirit continues to descend upon all those who proclaim Christ’s name — enabling them to spread The Gospel.” 

The 47th president took the opportunity to “honor all Christians who, like the Apostles, have willingly endured persecution because of their faith for their faith around the world.” The president has backed up his words with deeds, again designating Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for religious freedom after the Biden administration, which removed the nation despite ongoing anti-Christian raids from Muslim extremists. 

But Trump also noted the U.S. government has not acted as a custodian of religious liberty in recent years. He noted that he created the White House Faith Office and “proudly instituted” the White House Religious Liberty Commission to “safeguard and promote America’s founding principle of religious freedom,” as well as “protecting God in the public square and emboldening every believer to live their faith freely, openly, and without threat of persecution.”

The president’s panegyric to Pentecost joins his beautiful homage to Holy Week (another potential first), as well as a video message noting the importance of Easter. “Through the pain and sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, we saw God’s boundless love and devotion to all humanity. And in that moment of His resurrection, history was forever changed with the promise of everlasting life,” he said.

Trump’s encomium to a major yet little-noted feast of the Christian faith — which perhaps hundreds of millions of Americans Christians celebrated with a season of preparation followed by prayers, hymns, and rejoicing on Whitsunday — is newsworthy in itself. The president broke with the recent, lamentable Democratic tradition of ignoring or replacing the observance of Christian holidays with those of non-Christian religions or days celebrating liberal causes.

While conservatives often note liberalism’s penchant for wealth redistribution, the Left has covertly engaged in another form of decades-long redistribution: the redistribution of respect. The great foe of all things Western, Barack Obama, issued presidential statements and proclamations on such notably obscure holidays as Diwali, Eid-al-Fitar, hajj and Eid al-Adha. In 2011, Obama issued no presidential proclamation for Easter nor Good Friday — but he released a lengthy proclamation on the dread importance of Earth Day, which fell on Good Friday that year. Not to be outdone, Joe Biden celebrated invented holidays, as with last Easter’s Transgender Day of Visibility. Candidate Trump jokingly called election day the “Christian Day of Visibility”; now, as president, he is making Christian holidays visible again.

President Donald Trump prefers to communicate through short, exclamatory messages on social media and long, humorous speeches at mass rallies, but his official proclamations on Christian holidays show the administration’s understanding and respect for America’s Christian majority faith.

God’s word contains life-creating power to enliven the souls of its hearers. When anyone shares divine truths, it opens the possibility of kindling the reader’s heart and opening his affections to enter a spiritual manner of living, seeking a living and vibrant relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That makes such biblically accurate public statements about Christian holidays vital — and mixed, muddled, or absent statements so damaging. May the Trump administration’s words about the descent of the Holy Spirit cause new hearts to burst aflame with its glow.