I Thought I Was a Doctor: Trump, the Pope & the Most Chaotic Week in Religion News with Diana Butler Bass
Author: Dr. Tripp Fuller
April 16, 2026
Duration: 1:28:51
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.
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This conversation was originally for our Substack members, but we’re sharing a portion with all of you – join us at The Process This or The Cottage to catch future episodes live!
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is an award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality.
a Few Previous Episodes with Diana & Tripp
How the Lectionary Kept Me Christian
Two Books, One Night: Finding Beauty in What We Can’t Control
Religious Liberty & Violence – Unpacking the First 100 Days of Trump 2.0
The Interlocking Crises of Religion & Democracy
Faith in a Toxic Public Square
The Resurrection of Jesus
2024: The Sequel
The Christology Ladder
The Indictment Edition of Ruining Dinner
American Saints in a Cynical Age
You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube
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