One of Donald Trump’s most loyal and long-standing evangelical supporters believes the president knows the Bible better than the leader of the world’s largest organized religion.
“It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about the role of government than the pope has,” Pastor Robert Jeffress said on Fox News on Friday, speaking on the topic of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Thursday meeting with the pontiff.
Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, has supported the president since 2016, serving on his evangelical advisory board and even delivering a sermon to him on the morning of his inauguration during his first term.
The admiration Jeffress has for Trump, 79, seems to go both ways, as the president has called the virulently anti-Catholic pastor “a wonderful man” and promoted his “great book,” A Place Called Heaven, in 2017.
Their relationship has seemed to continue, as the pastor revealed on Friday that he was in the Oval Office with Trump and other faith leaders just three days after the U.S. began war with Iran on Feb. 28.
“I thanked him then for having the courage to fulfill his God-given responsibility to protect our nation,” Jeffress said on Fox.
The controversial pastor has previously teased the idea of “using force to topple evil,” releasing a statement that said, “God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
“I wanted to clarify that I believe the Bible, especially Romans 13, does give President Trump moral authority to use whatever force necessary, including assassination or even war to topple an evil dictator like Kim Jong Un,” the pastor told Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy in 2017.
On Friday, Jeffress reiterated the claim that “the role of government is to protect citizens from evil doers,” while also criticizing Pope Leo XIV for his stance on the war with Iran.
“The pope is a good man, he’s sincere in his faith, but he is sincerely wrong when it comes to Iran,” Jeffress—who has previously declared the Catholic Church a “counterfeit” religion—said.
This opinion follows that of the president, who has escalated his largely one-sided feud with the first American pope over the last few months, saying he was “endangering a lot of Catholics” by not speaking out about the war in Iran and calling the head of the Catholic Church “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” on Truth Social.
In response to Trump’s criticism, Pope Leo said he hopes he is “listened to for the value of the words of God,” adding that the church has spoken out against nuclear weapons.
Yet Pastor Jeffress appeared to offer the pope his own advice on what he “oughts to know,” claiming that “God created both the church and government for two different, distinct purposes.”
“The role of the church is to point people into faith in Jesus Christ, but the role of government is to protect citizens from evil doers,” Jeffress said.
