Politics
Religion is taking center stage in the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to livestream a Bible reading from the Oval Office on Tuesday.
That’s after a weeklong dispute between Trump and Pope Leo XIV; Trump posting an AI image that seemingly depicted him as Jesus Christ; and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reciting a fabricated Bible verse during a Pentagon morning prayer.
The series of religious missteps has caused many in Christian communities, including members of Trump’s own coalition, to publicly accuse him and the administration of blasphemy and co-opting religion to justify military action.
The War in Iran
Pope Leo publicly criticized Trump on April 7 for threatening that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran failed to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“Today, as we all know, there was this threat against the entire people of Iran, and this is truly unacceptable,” Leo said, speaking to reporters. “There are certainly issues here of international law, but even more than that, it is a moral question for the good of the (world’s) people.”
Leo called on Americans to urge their congresspeople to “reject war always.” The comments received some pushback from those in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, who at a Turning Point USA event last week urged the pope to be more careful when speaking on matters of theology.
“When the pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword — there is a thousand-year tradition of just war theory,” Vance said, referring to the Church’s teaching that some wars can be justified.
But experts on Catholicism have stressed that Leo’s criticism of the war is based on traditional church teachings. The Rev. Steven Chu Ilo, a Catholic priest from Nigeria and a DePaul University professor, said Vance is misinterpreting the just war theory.
“I don’t think that the vice president understands the just war theory,” Chu Ilo said. “It’s quite shocking to me for the vice president to lecture the pope on theology and morality.”
Chu Ilo said that for a war to be just, it must be discriminate.
“You discriminate between fighters and non-combatants,” Chu Ilo said. “When you look at the ruins of Gaza, the destruction in Iran, the destruction in Lebanon, there is no discrimination. It is very indiscriminate, wiping away whole neighborhoods. That is not just war.”
On April 12, Trump took to Truth Social to respond to Leo and push back on his anti-war stance.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote in a post. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
Trump was joined by many in his base on the right who felt Leo was overstepping his bounds as a religious leader and trying to exert undue influence over American foreign policy.
But religious leaders like the Rev. David Inczuaskis, a Jesuit priest and Ph.D. student at Loyola University Chicago, are arguing that Leo is only urging Christians who wage war to confess and repent for their sins.
“Donald Trump is going to die, like every mortal in this world,” Inczuaskis said. “He’s going to have to give an account before God of his actions. God bless Pope Leo for telling Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin … that those Christians who wage war are going to have to give an account before God and so they should go to confession. They should repent of their sins.”
Trump Posts AI Image of Himself
Religious communities have also pushed back on Trump for posting an AI-generated image that appears to depict him as Jesus Christ. Trump has since deleted the image, but not before he was accused of blasphemy, even by some on the right.
The Rev. Quincy Worthington, pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, said the post was “absurd.”
“These aren’t serious people, and I think it’s been very interesting to see where some of our conservative brothers and sisters are drawing a line in the sand as a bridge too far as far as the blasphemy and the co-opting of the Christian faith,” Worthington said.
Franklin Graham, a prominent American evangelist and missionary, defended Trump, arguing the post contained no explicitly religious imagery.
“I do not believe President Trump would knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ,” Graham wrote on X. “There were no spiritual references—no halo, there were no crosses, no angels. It was a flag, soldiers, a nurse, fighter planes, eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and I think this is a lot to do about nothing.”
Trump later stated that he believed the image depicted him as a doctor, not as Jesus Christ.
“If he’s dressed as a doctor, then I’m dressed as Channing Tatum,” Worthington said.
Staunch Trump ally U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) reportedly personally asked Trump to delete the post, and U.S. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Georgia) last Tuesday said the post was “not OK.”
The Rev. Violet Johnicker of Rockford Urban Ministries said she was glad Republican Christians were pushing back on Trump, but said the criticism came too late.
“I was encouraged to see that there are, in some cases, opportunities for folks to push back against the president, particularly in religious spaces,” Johnicker said. “But it was surprising that it was an idolatrous image rather than blasphemous and heretical policies that was the line that was too far.”
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