This weekend two stories in the news caught my attention. The first was Peggy Noonan’s column in The Wall Street Journal* and the second was David French’s column in The New York Times.** Both addressed Trump’s corruption of religion to bolster his power and importance.
Noonan was her conciliatory and entertaining self while pointedly criticizing the president and his lieutenants of blasphemy and ignorance in their criticism of the pope. Especially appalling was her relating the comments of Paula White-Cain, head of the administration’s Faith Office, in comparing President Trump to Jesus. “It was quite something,” Noonan wrote; “If you really believe in Christ, as a Christian preacher should, you wouldn’t compare him to any leader in this world….What is going on with this administration and it’s use and abuse of Christianity? Shouldn’t the great churches of America be thinking about this, and at this point talking about it publicly, thoughtfully?”
Think about Noonan’s observation, “WHAT IS GOING ON WITH…CHRISTIANITY? SHOULDN’T THE GREAT CHURCHES OF AMERICA BE THINKING ABOUT THIS, AND AT THIS POINT BE TALKING ABOUT IT PUBLICLY, THOUGHTFULLY?”
David French adds to Noonan’s examples and her support for the right and obligation of the pope to speak out against violence and war. He writes “Pope Leo’s pleas for peace are hardly unprecedented. I distinctly remember Pope John Paul’s strong objections to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet an American president has never responded to a pope with personal attacks and lies as Trump has.” By now the president’s blasphemous postings of himself as Jesus and his apologists’ comments continue to stir controversy.
French comes down hard on Franklin Graham as a prominent evangelical minister and zealous supporter of Trump. Graham accepted Trump’s laughable explanation that he thought he was posing as a doctor when he posted himself depicting Jesus. Graham can’t be that gullible, but he can be vehemently partisan, apparently, when it comes to prostituting himself for the MAGA fellowship. “I think his enemies…” Graham wrote, “are always foaming at the mouth at any possible opportunity to make him look bad.” Clergyman Graham clearly makes no distinction between church and state in Trump’s case.
Interestingly, French who comes from a conservative protestant background, doesn’t believe that “it’s possible to separate Trump’s public fight with Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church from his own sense of divine authority.” And if this is not bad enough, French warns that Trump’s attacks could “stir up long-buried divisions between Catholics and Protestants.”
My take away from all this is that the Trump establishment’s growing use of Christian symbols and religious language to wage war and deprecate others is an abomination that needs calling out. As Peggy Noonan wrote, “Shouldn’t the great churches of America be thinking about this …talking about it publicly, thoughtfully. And, as I’ve written in an earlier post, speaking out does not simply mean chatting with our congregations and issuing platitudes about peace, love and non-violence. The titular heads and prominent theologians of all major Christian denominations need to speak publicly as well.
*Peggy Noonan, “Trump Meets His Match in Pope Leo,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2026.
**David French, “i Missed the Part About there Divine Right of Presidents,” New York Times, April 19, 2026.