{"id":12072,"date":"2026-04-20T03:49:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/20\/trump-tests-his-luck-with-the-religious-right-amid-feud-with-pope-and-ai-jesus-posts-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T03:49:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:49:44","slug":"trump-tests-his-luck-with-the-religious-right-amid-feud-with-pope-and-ai-jesus-posts-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/20\/trump-tests-his-luck-with-the-religious-right-amid-feud-with-pope-and-ai-jesus-posts-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump tests his luck with the religious right amid feud with pope and AI Jesus posts – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Donald Trump\u2019s depiction of himself as Jesus Christ and recent spat with Pope Leo XIV<\/a> could come back to bite him and the Republican party in the midterm elections, according to experts, with some newly aggrieved Christian groups set to play an outsized role in key races across the US.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s Trump-as-the-Messiah Truth Social post sparked immediate criticism among some Christians, including some on the right. Trump, 79, said he thought the AI image of him administering an ethereal light to a stricken man\u2019s head as translucent figures descended from the heavens represented him as a doctor.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlasphemous,\u201d was the verdict<\/a> of Douglas Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist who believes women should not be able to vote, and a confidant of Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should be deleted immediately. There\u2019s no context where this is acceptable,\u201d Sean Feucht, a Christian activist who is partnering with the Trump administration on a \u201cWorship Tour\u201d, posted<\/a> on social media.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s post was ultimately taken down, although the level of his apology was brought into question when he then posted an AI image of what appeared to be Jesus Christ cuddling him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did seem to cross a line for some of his Christian supporters,\u201d said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor at Calvin University and an expert on white American evangelicals. She noted that Trump\u2019s supporters have been prepared to put up with plenty of other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, from day one, with him bragging on camera that he assaulted women in the Access Hollywood tape to, even just very recently, threatening to annihilate an entire civilization. He is also detaining children, and there are allegations right now related to the Epstein files.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot out there that arguably should concern Christian supporters, and the fact that it was this AI-generated image that sparked this outcry is worth pondering. I think it felt like it crossed the line for some because it was just so blatant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Du Mez said not all the outrage may have been sincere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sense that there was this kind of performative aspect that enough Christian leaders knew that they needed to be on record saying: \u2018We don\u2019t approve of this. But again, that\u2019s something very different from them actually withdrawing their support from him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Feucht, the Worship Tour guru, certainly got over it quickly. Within hours he had uncritically reposted Trump\u2019s \u201cdoctor\u201d explanation. Riley Gaines, a Christian, anti-trans activist, initially responded<\/a> to the Trump image: \u201cA little humility would serve him well.\u201d Later that day, Gaines wrote on social media: \u201cI love the President and I\u2019m so grateful he\u2019s in the Oval Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion<\/a> Research Institute (PRRI), said Trump\u2019s support among white evangelicals and Christian nationalists would probably endure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just more conservative than Catholics are. They\u2019re heavily concentrated in the south, so they come out of this kind of southern US history, and they\u2019re frankly more motivated by racism. So the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam drumbeat is kind of fuelling the Maga movement. And the flip side of that anti-Islam, anti-immigrant drumbeat is [the right wing\u2019s] positive vision of a white Christian America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attacks on Pope Leo \u2013 the president has called him<\/a> \u201cwrong on the issues\u201d and, bizarrely, \u201cweak on crime\u201d \u2013 also may not be important to that white evangelical base: some have even backed Trump\u2019s attacks on the pontiff. But those Christians are likely to be less important than others in this year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite evangelicals, except for maybe in Georgia and North Carolina, aren\u2019t actually going to help the Republican party in the midterms that much, because most they\u2019re mostly concentrated in fairly safe, red states and red districts. They\u2019re heavily concentrated in the south, where Republicans<\/a> are going to win anyway,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ask, though, who are the biggest religious groups in the more competitive states and districts, the answer is Catholics.\u201d<\/p>\n

White Catholics, in particular, could have a big say in the midterms, PRRI data shows<\/a>. A majority of them voted for Trump in 2024 \u2013 Hispanic Catholics tended to support Harris \u2013 meaning a loss in their support could influence competitive races.<\/p>\n

And unfortunately for the Republican party, white Catholics are overrepresented in several swing states, where there are seats which fluctuate between Republican and Democrat. White Catholics make up 12% of the nation as a whole, according to PRRI, but in Pennsylvania they make up 18% of the population; in Wisconsin 22%, and they overindex in Michigan, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn these more competitive districts and swing states, if he loses 10 points among white evangelicals, he and Republicans might be able to weather that. If they lose 10 points among white Catholics, that\u2019s going to be game over in many elections in the midterms,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s depiction of himself as Jesus Christ and recent spat with Pope Leo XIV could come back to bite him and the Republican party in the midterm elections, according to experts, with some newly aggrieved Christian groups set to play an outsized role in key races across the US. The president\u2019s Trump-as-the-Messiah Truth Social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}