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Was that lightning in the distance? The sound of God’s fury thundering over the White House? Probably not. But thanks to a series of incendiary moves by Republican lawmakers, it sure feels as though we’re witnessing the preceding events to some Old Testament plague. They include President Donald Trump insulting Pope Leo XIV, a now-deleted AI image the president posted of himself appearing as Jesus Christ, and prominent Republicans suggesting that the pope isn’t a very smart Catholic.
“I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vice President JD Vance said at a recent Turning Point event. “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful; you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.”
So it’s against this apocalyptic anxiety that I reached out to Heath W. Carter, a religious historian at the Princeton Theological Seminary who specializes in Christianity’s role in public life, to hear what he had to say about all of this.
What was your initial reaction to Trump’s attacks against the pope?
The president, in his criticism of the pope, didn’t reflect a deep understanding of the office of the pope or of the kind of Catholic theological traditions out of which the pope speaks about war. Various Catholics have since responded to say that the pope isn’t a warrior of American political life and rather that the pope is speaking out of these deep Catholic traditions about “just war” theory. It wasn’t clear to me in the president’s messages about the pope that he has a great depth of understanding of that tradition.
For sure. Even the president claiming that the pope is “weak on crime” really calls into question whether Trump understands what the pope even does. Can you clarify this for him? What is the pope’s role in the Catholic Church, and how does that reality contradict Trump’s insults?
The pope is the leader of a global church that is millennia old, and a church that would understand itself as being animated by the gospel, by the good news of Jesus Christ, and by the teachings of the Christian tradition for millennia. So in some sense, when the president attacks the pope as “weak on crime” and whatnot, it misunderstands the pope’s role. He isn’t some kind of player in American politics. In fact, the office of the pope is a global leadership office. Part of what’s so remarkable about the Catholic Church is that it is a church that spans borders, nationality, ethnicity, and language. It is, in its own way, a remarkably big-tent church. The church doesn’t understand itself to be an actor in American politics or a democratic boss in a big city or something like that. Not at all. It’s a global church that stands on truths that go beyond any given moment or any given nation, but are rather timeless.
“I’ll stop short of pronouncing any kind of eternal judgment. But all I can say is this: The biblical teaching is clear about the need for leaders to care for the people.”
The Trump administration keeps employing deeply religious, evangelical language to promote its policies. At the same time, one could make the argument that their policies are at odds with Christian doctrine.
Christians in the US have found themselves on all sides of any given political, social, or cultural question across the decades and the centuries of the nation’s past. So in that sense, [Trump’s rhetoric] isn’t that unusual. We know that part of how this president has gotten elected twice is by the support of a lot of, especially, white evangelicals. For sure, we know, you know, they overwhelmingly have supported this presidency—but also white mainline Christians, white Catholics have also supported this presidency, and in great numbers, at the same time.
But Christianity doesn’t belong to the right, and it never has. There are Christian communities around this country that would say that the policies and priorities of this administration fly in the face of deeply Christian ideas. For example, the idea of protecting the stranger, which is the Bible’s way of talking about migrants and immigrants. They would say that the cuts to social services fly in the face of widespread biblical imperatives to care for the poor and the oppressed and to lift up the lowly. Those traditions have also deeply shaped the nation’s past, and there are lots of Christians today who are pronounced critics of this administration and see the administration’s policies as a betrayal of the gospel in the ways that the pope called out of this war.
[Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth and other leaders of this administration have been invoking Christ’s name and the authority of Christianity to pursue projects around the world. I think this could end up initiating a strong backlash. It was striking to me that even folks who have been supportive of this presidency are deeply critical of [the AI image of Trump depicted as Jesus]. That was encouraging to me. I do wonder if they’re out over their skis a little bit with these criticisms of the pope.
I’ve similarly been taken aback by how many prominent Republicans seem to be comfortable chastising the pope. What does Scripture have to say about men who behave like this?
I’m not a Bible scholar, but one of the big themes in the Bible is that God opposes people who abuse power and people who use power to oppress the poor and the lowly. That’s something that God hates. This is where you can get powerful critiques of people in power who are not using their power to pursue the common good and not using their power to care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. This is a major theme across both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, that God sides with the poor and the oppressed and the lowly. It’s a worrisome thing if you’re a person in power who is involved in oppressing the poor.
“There’s a deep sense of God’s willingness to forgive, even those who humans would say are unforgivable. But part of what is needed is repentance.”
Over the years, Trump has suggested that he does not think he is going to heaven. Do you think he should be concerned?
I’ll stop short of pronouncing any kind of eternal judgment. But all I can say is this: The biblical teaching is clear about the need for leaders to care for the people. Again, I’m not in the business of pronouncing a kind of final judgment on anyone—that’s God’s role. But anyone who reads the Bible carefully and finds himself in a position of leadership should have a sense of fear and trembling with the kind of responsibility that is involved in that leadership, especially when you have so much power. Here’s the other thing I can say: The way we treat people in the here and now is another major theme in the Bible. The way we treat people in the here and now has major consequences. And God cares about that stuff. One of the places in the Bible that is really stark on these matters is Scripture like Matthew 25, separating the sheep and the goats. It’s on the question of whether you cared for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. That’s what Matthew 25 argues: that God and the final judgment are going to separate the sheep and the goats on that basis.
But if the president is on the track to damnation, is there anything he can do to reverse course?
Another thing that I deeply believe, and that I think the Bible is also really clear about, is that it’s never too late to repent. It’s never too late to change your mind. That our God forgives and that our God’s mercy is endless. There are many examples in the Bible of prophets who came to kings who were unjust. [These prophets] called on them to repent. Some of these kings repented, and some of those kings didn’t.
In the Bible, there’s a deep sense of God’s willingness to forgive, even those who humans would say are unforgivable. But part of what is needed is repentance, the turning from the wrong.
Can you define blasphemy for us? And are you concerned that the president and his allies have committed blasphemy?
Blasphemy would be taking the name of the Lord in vain, or in some way claiming to be God, or in some way defaming God. For a lot of folks, that image of Trump as Jesus was blasphemous. One of the fundamental teachings of Christianity has always been that there’s a distinction between human beings and God and that human beings are all sinners, and we all need God’s grace, that we all rely on God’s grace. So for the president to post an image of himself in which he appears to be our Lord and Savior, [a figure] the Christian tradition is always taught was without sin and who is the one through whom salvation comes—that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the distinction between a human being and God.
