Pope vs. Trump Is About the Value of a Moral Tradition

Opinion

by

Perspectives

Baptist News Global | April 14, 2026

The recent entirely predictable online attack by Donald Trump on Pope Leo XIV has made an argument over values into a personal dispute. But the issue between the two men is not a personal dispute. It is instead a powerful illustration of the value of a moral tradition when brought to bear on transgressions against it.

I keep thinking of three images that have been used in Christian ethics to describe what the Christian moral tradition at its best offers: Solid ground, plumbline and guardrails.

Solid ground

Dietrich Bonhoeffer more than once talked about the need for “solid ground under our feet” when dealing with the seductions and depredations of the Nazi party and then regime. He found that solid ground in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the mid-1930s when he was writing Discipleship and teaching dissident seminarians.

Still later, during World War II, he asked fellow conspirators in a circular letter, “Has there ever been a generation with less solid ground under their feet?”

The imagery of solid ground points to the reality of moral earthquakes in human life, of times when people or events make the ground sway, disrupt all normal points of orientation, bring older settled traditions crashing to the ground. Nazism was one such earthquake, and Christians in Germany were among those who lost their moral bearings. Bonhoeffer was trying to help his people find solid ground.

So is Pope Leo XIV when it comes to the Christian perspective on immigration — and the image of God in immigrants – and war and the default setting of the Christian moral tradition against war.

He is not attacking a person; he is locating solid ground.

Plumbline

A plumbline is a string or cord with a weight on the end that shows a perfectly vertical direction. It is used in carpentry to check if a wall is plumb or perfectly vertical.

Amos 7 picks up the image of the plumbline, with the prophet hearing God say, “I am setting a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel.” Judgment will come because Israel has not built straight and plumb, on the basis of God’s command for justice.

Pope Leo, like any competent Christian moral teacher, is assessing events and behavior on the basis of the plumbline of justice as embodied in the Catholic moral tradition which it is his responsibility to articulate.

He is not attacking a person; he is deploying a plumbline.

Guardrails

When I introduce Christian ethics to students, I use the image of an “Ethics Highway” and of guardrails on that highway as I try to describe the role of moral rules in Christian ethics. I say most human behavior is goal-directed (teleological), and the Christian moral tradition has much to say about what goals are worthy.

“It only seems personal to those who want to be free to smash through the guardrails.”

But it also has much to say about what rules set boundaries on the way goals may be pursued. So ethics is not just about right goals; it is about adherence to the rules of the road that keep everyone safe. The image of a highway in which there are those metal guardrails on the side of the road helps make sense of this concept.

In describing the teaching of the Catholic Church about war, and about migrants, Pope Leo is essentially saying, “As any government pursues its foreign policy goals, or its border security goals, it must stay within the guardrails of morality, of the relevant moral rules.” Thus, for example, you can’t do just anything you want to undocumented migrants, and you can’t bomb just any target that might be tempting in war.

In articulating such moral guardrails, Pope Leo is fulfilling his vocation as moral leader of the Catholic Church. It’s not personal. It only seems personal to those who want to be free to smash through the guardrails.

To anyone reading this post who occupies a position of Christian moral leadership, I say this: We are all responsible for offering solid ground, reminding of the moral plumbline and describing the moral guardrails our faith offers.

This task falls to all of us. And it is especially urgent when the ground is shaky, the plumbline is ignored, and the guardrails are ignored.

​David P. Gushee serves as Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, chair in Christian social ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and senior research fellow at International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is past president of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Christian Ethics. He also is author of 30 books, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust; Kingdom Ethics; Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies; Changing Our Mind; and The Moral Teachings of Jesus