Donald Trump’s latest act seems ripped from the American literary canon. In addition to running for the highest office (again) and fighting some 90 criminal charges in court, the former president is now hawking a $60 copy of the King James Bible that also includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the “handwritten chorus” to the country song “God Bless the USA,” by Lee Greenwood. (Naturally, it is known as the “God Bless the USA Bible.”)

This Bible has been the subject of yearslong controversy for, among other things, promoting “the idea of the United States as both a Christian Nation and a nation especially favored by God,” as experts interviewed by Slate’s Molly Olmstead have put it.

But Trump clearly hopes to expand the product’s niche market of customers (those who buy Bibles as political identity statements) and to receive royalties—along with fees for the use of his likeness—along the way.

In doing so, he has stepped into a role American film and literature have long associated with grift. A rhetorical cousin to the traveling snake oil salesman or the villainous priest, the fictional Bible salesman has, through books and movies, become the metaphorical manifestation of the biblical warnings against those who “peddle the word of God for profit” (2 Corinthians 2:17, NIV). Real-world embezzling Bible salesman William P. Evans (who was jailed in 1931, after a Bible publisher received dozens of complaints about his activities) may have been one source of inspiration, but these wolves in sheep’s clothing appear in works from Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” to films like Paper Moon(1973) and O Brother, Where Art Thou?(2000).

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In other words, upselling Bibles—after being found guilty of fraud—is really on the nose, even for Trump.

In O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” the well-educated Hulga doesn’t believe in God, but she still falls for Bible salesman Manley Pointer’s performance of innocence. When he shows up unannounced at the rural Georgia farm where she and her mother live, he self-deprecatingly refers to himself as “just a country boy” and says all the right things to get invited to dinner. Hulga initially plans to meet up with him the next day as a “great joke,” then arrogantly imagines she’ll give him a “deeper understanding of life.” It’s not until Pointer coaxes her to take off her artificial leg, leaving her dependent on him, that her internal alarm bells start to go off. They keep ringing as he reveals the whiskey, pornographic cards, and condoms he’s stashed inside a hollow Bible in his sales case. Pointer steals Hulga’s leg and brags that he’s gotten “a lot of interesting things that way.” His Bible sales-based con is more rooted in the power he can gain over people with his lies than it is in profit.

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By contrast, in the Coen brothers’ bluegrass-fueled jailbreak comedy adaptation of TheOdyssey, the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the psychotic, one-eyed, loquacious Bible salesman Big Dan Teague (John Goodman) never appears to be innocent. Big and sweaty, he makes no secret of the fact that “it’s all about the money, boys.” After all, he declares, “people are looking for answers, and Big Dan sells the only book that’s got ’em.” Teague might be a smooth talker when it comes to selling “the truth,” but he beats Ulysses (George Clooney) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) senseless with a tree branch before running off with their car and cash.

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Big Dan is also a member of the Ku Klux Klan and an active participant in an attempted lynching in the movie. Through this side of his character, the story adds to the Bible salesman trope, linking violence and theft disguised by religion to the South’s history of racial violence in the name of “culture and heritage.” Big Dan’s career as a Bible salesman is a metaphorical hood that allows him to get away with theft, while his Klan hood allows him—and the rest of the hate group—to get away with murder at night while maintaining the veneer of upstanding citizens by day.

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In Paper Moon, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and set in Kansas in the early 1930s, Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) combs newspaper death announcements for recently widowed women, then sells them personalized Bibles under the pretense that their husbands ordered the deluxe editions before they passed. When Pray is tasked with escorting an orphaned child to her relatives’ house in Missouri, the orphan inserts herself into the grift—inflating his prices to get even more money. The two become a duo against the world, running from the law and starting new cons after the Bibles run out. These winning, down-on-their-luck characters inject enough charm into the movie to counteract the sleaziness of the trope, although their victims are grieving elderly women, a uniquely vulnerable cohort.

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Reinterpreted in songs, comedy sketches, a 2008 novel, and plenty of other narratives, the door-to-door Bible salesman remains a subject of continual interest for creatives, to some extent because the trope’s blend of capitalist ambition and evangelism allows writers to comment on the sinister undersides of both forces.

Even though door-to-door sales have given way to influencer marketing, American culture continues to be shaped by the fact that, to quote the opening line of the 1969 documentary Salesman, “the best seller in the world is the Bible.” It’s not surprising, then, that as a mask for greed and shamelessness, upselling bibles is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

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• Donald Trump
• Evangelicals
• Religion
• 2024 Campaign

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