{"id":12114,"date":"2026-04-21T04:20:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/21\/trump-faces-pushback-from-religious-communities-following-ai-post-feud-with-pope-wttw\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T04:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:20:24","slug":"trump-faces-pushback-from-religious-communities-following-ai-post-feud-with-pope-wttw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/21\/trump-faces-pushback-from-religious-communities-following-ai-post-feud-with-pope-wttw\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Faces Pushback From Religious Communities Following AI Post, Feud With Pope – WTTW"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Politics<\/a> <\/h4>\n

Religion is taking center stage in the Trump administration.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump is\u00a0scheduled to livestream a Bible reading<\/a> from the Oval Office on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s 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\u00a0fabricated Bible verse<\/a> during a Pentagon morning prayer. <\/p>\n

The series of religious missteps has caused many in Christian communities, including members of Trump\u2019s own coalition, to publicly accuse him and the administration of blasphemy and co-opting religion to justify military action.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The War in Iran\u00a0<\/h3>\n

Pope Leo publicly criticized Trump on April 7 for threatening that a \u201cwhole civilization will die tonight\u201d if Iran failed to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cToday, as we all know, there was this threat against the entire people of Iran, and this is truly unacceptable,\u201d Leo said,\u00a0speaking to reporters<\/a>. \u201cThere are certainly issues here of international law, but even more than that, it is a moral question for the good of the (world\u2019s) people.\u201d <\/p>\n

Leo called on Americans to urge their congresspeople to \u201creject war always.\u201d The comments received some pushback from those in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, who at a Turning Point USA\u00a0event<\/a> last week urged the pope to be more careful when speaking on matters of theology.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword \u2014 there is a thousand-year tradition of just war theory,\u201d Vance said, referring to the Church\u2019s teaching that some wars can be justified. <\/p>\n

But experts on Catholicism have stressed that Leo\u2019s 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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that the vice president understands the just war theory,\u201d Chu Ilo said. \u201cIt\u2019s quite shocking to me for the vice president to lecture the pope on theology and morality.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Chu Ilo said that for a war to be just, it must be discriminate. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou discriminate between fighters and non-combatants,\u201d Chu Ilo said. \u201cWhen 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.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On April 12, Trump took to\u00a0Truth Social<\/a> to respond to Leo and push back on his anti-war stance. <\/p>\n

\u201cPope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,\u201d Trump wrote in a post. \u201cLeo 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.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Trump was\u00a0joined<\/a> 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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump is going to die, like every mortal in this world,\u201d Inczuaskis said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to have to give an account before God of his actions. God bless Pope Leo for telling Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin \u2026 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump Posts AI Image of Himself<\/h3>\n

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\u00a0some on the right<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The Rev. Quincy Worthington, pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, said the post was \u201cabsurd.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t serious people, and I think it\u2019s 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,\u201d Worthington said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n

Franklin Graham, a prominent American evangelist and missionary, defended Trump, arguing the post contained no explicitly religious imagery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not believe President Trump would knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ,\u201d Graham\u00a0wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cThere were no spiritual references\u2014no 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.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump later stated that he believed the image depicted him as a doctor, not as Jesus Christ.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cIf he\u2019s dressed as a doctor, then I\u2019m dressed as Channing Tatum,\u201d Worthington said. <\/p>\n

Staunch Trump ally U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) reportedly personally asked Trump to\u00a0delete<\/a> the post, and U.S. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Georgia) last Tuesday\u00a0said the post<\/a> was \u201cnot OK.\u201d <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was encouraged to see that there are, in some cases, opportunities for folks to push back against the president, particularly in religious spaces,\u201d Johnicker said. \u201cBut it was surprising that it was an idolatrous image rather than blasphemous and heretical policies that was the line that was too far.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politics Religion is taking center stage in the Trump administration.\u00a0 President Donald Trump is\u00a0scheduled to livestream a Bible reading from the Oval Office on Tuesday. That\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114","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=12114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}