# I Thought I Was a Doctor: Trump, the Pope & the Most Chaotic Week in Religion News with Diana Butler Bass

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/homebrewed-christianity-723917/i-thought-i-was-a-doctor-trump-the-pope-the-most-chaotic-week-in-religion-news-with-diana-butler-bass
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/homebrewed-christianity-723917/i-thought-i-was-a-doctor-trump-the-pope-the-most-chaotic-week-in-religion-news-with-diana-butler-bass.md
Podcast: [Homebrewed Christianity](https://stenobird.com/podcast/homebrewed-christianity-723917)
Published: 2026-04-16T12:49:00+00:00
Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NAANT8799452081.mp3?updated=1776344208
Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NAANT8799452081.mp3?updated=1776344208
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/homebrewed-christianity-723917/episodes/i-thought-i-was-a-doctor-trump-the-pope-the-most-chaotic-week-in-religion-news-with-diana-butler-bass
Duration seconds: 5331

## Resource

It's Ruining Dinner with Diana Butler Bass on Tax day! Also, apparently, the day the Vice President told the Pope to stop doing theology. Diana Butler Bass joined me for what was supposed to be a casual religion news roundup and turned into something I didn't entirely expect — a full-on church history seminar about what happens when empire tries to silence the gospel and why it never actually works. We started where everyone started this week: JD Vance, a newly minted Catholic who received what sounds like the Peter Thiel E-Z Pass lane through RCIA, publicly suggesting that the Pope — the Pope — should think more carefully before opining about theology. The same Pope who then responded to a Pentagon threat referencing the Avignon papacy by giving an even stronger anti-war speech. We talked about Trump's Easter posts, the Jesus meme, the "I thought I was a doctor" explanation, and the remarkable spectacle of evangelicals — evangelicals — saying the president might be demon-possessed. But Diana being Diana, she kept pulling the historical threads, and we ended up somewhere genuinely useful: the long story of how American Christianity split the sacred from the secular, why that split is breaking down, what it means for a congregation trying to figure out what to do with the 250th anniversary of a nation that's currently threatening popes and bombing people on Easter Sunday, and why Whitehead's image of the flickering Galilean vision might be the most honest thing you can say right now about where hope lives. We didn't ruin anything. The ruining is, as Diana noted, already adequately covered. Want to hangout with us in person?! ⁠⁠Join 600+ Listeners, 30 theologians, & 30 God-Pods at Theology Beer Camp 2026 this October 8-10 in Kansas City!⁠⁠⁠⁠ This conversation was origina…

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