MAGA Pastor Robert Jeffress Sparks Fury by Suggesting Donald Trump Outshines the Pope on Scriptural Knowledge

A prominent evangelical pastor who has backed Donald Trump since 2016 has triggered a storm of outrage this weekend by claiming the president has a deeper grasp of the Bible's teachings on government than Pope Leo XIV.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, made the assertion live on Fox News on 9 May 2026, two days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio's audience with the pontiff at the Vatican. His argument rested on a single passage from the New Testament and an unambiguous alignment of Trump's military decisions with divine will.

The remarks landed at a moment when relations between the White House and the Holy See were already at breaking point, prompting swift condemnation from critics who accused Jeffress of substituting political allegiance for scriptural discernment.

Romans 13 and the Claim That Shook Social Media

Jeffress opened his Fox News segment by acknowledging that Pope Leo XIV was 'a good man' who was 'sincere in his faith,' before pivoting sharply. 'He is sincerely wrong when it comes to Iran,' Jeffress said. 'The pope ought to know, and I think he does know, God created both the church and government for two distinct purposes.'

The pastor then cited Romans 13, the Pauline epistle on state authority, as theological justification for Trump's decision to join Israel's military campaign against Iran. 'The role of the church is to point people to faith in Jesus Christ, but the role of government is to protect citizens from evil doers,' he said. His conclusion was unambiguous: 'It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about the role of government than the Pope has.'

Jeffress also revealed he had been in the Oval Office with Trump and other faith leaders three days after the US-Israeli attack on Iran began. 'He told us that Iran was within weeks of getting a powerful weapon that would destroy Israel, much of the Middle East and could bring great harm to America,' Jeffress said. 'I thanked him then for having the courage to fulfil his God-given responsibility to protect our nation.'

The Rubio Visit and a Deepening Vatican Rift

Jeffress's Fox News appearance aired two days after Rubio met Leo at the Apostolic Palace on 7 May, a session the Vatican described as 'cordial talks' lasting more than 45 minutes covering international tensions and humanitarian concerns. Rubio told reporters the trip had been 'planned from before,' though he acknowledged 'we had some stuff that happened.'

The strains between Washington and the Vatican had been building for months before that meeting. The first major rupture came in October 2025, when Leo said that opposing abortion while supporting the 'inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States' was an irreconcilable position. When Trump threatened to 'completely destroy' Iranian civilisation, Leo called the statement 'truly unacceptable.'

Trump's response, delivered on Truth Social in April 2026, was blunt. 'I don't want a Pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,' he wrote, adding that Leo was 'Weak on Crime' and 'terrible for Foreign Policy.' Leo fired back during a flight to Africa: 'I have no fear of the Trump administration.' He also rebutted Trump's characterisation of his stance on nuclear weapons, telling reporters on 5 May: 'For years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point.'

A Decade of Political Theology

Saturday's remarks did not emerge from a vacuum. In 2010, Jeffress argued on his Pathway to Victory radio show that the Catholic Church was a 'counterfeit' religion with roots in what he called the 'Babylonian mystery religion.' 'Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's word; it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion,' he said. He later insisted the comments were taken out of context, but transcripts reviewed by the Dallas Observer showed the full remarks were consistent with that characterisation.

His invocation of Romans 13 to justify presidential war-making is equally established. In 2017, he told Fox & Friends that the same passage gave Trump 'moral authority to use whatever force necessary, including assassination or even war' when discussing the possibility of military action against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He has now applied the identical framework to Iran.

Jeffress is not a peripheral voice in American evangelicalism. He serves on Trump's Evangelical Advisory Board, a role he has held since June 2016, and delivered a sermon at Trump's private inauguration service at St. John's Episcopal Church in January 2017. Trump has publicly praised him as 'a wonderful man' and promoted his book A Place Called Heaven from the Oval Office.

Public reaction on social media was swift. Fred Wellman, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Missouri, said the remarks were 'just so disgusting.' Others described Jeffress's claim as 'the purest example of loyalty eclipsing theology,' adding, 'It's not a statement about scripture; it's a statement about allegiance.' Several commentators noted the irony of a pastor who has previously branded the Catholic Church a Satanic counterfeit now positioning himself as the authority on what Pope Leo XIV ought to understand.

Jeffress has been a fixture in MAGA evangelical circles since Trump secured the 2016 Republican nomination. Texas Monthly profiled him in 2019 under the headline 'Trump's Apostle,' examining the depth of his political commitment to the president. His willingness to wade into geopolitical disputes on explicitly theological grounds is, by now, a defining feature of that commitment, not a departure from it.

Jeffress's remarks represent a new threshold in the theological scaffolding being built around America's Iran war, and his readiness to name Trump as a more faithful reader of scripture than the bishop of Rome signals how far that project has travelled.