Reuters reports on the ‘holy war’ against Iran:
“It’s the same language as the crusades of the Middle Ages. You know, we must stop the infidel, we must defeat the wicked,” said John Fea, a history professor at Messiah University who has written extensively about evangelicals and politics. “We’ve never seen anything like this in American history.”
The prominent evangelist Franklin Graham has praised the strikes on Iran in biblical terms and likened Trump to the biblical figure of Esther, a Jewish queen who, according to the Bible, was elevated by God to save her people from annihilation in ancient Persia, now modern-day Iran.
Ken Peters, leader of the Patriot Church in Tennessee, delivered that message to his congregation this past Sunday, voicing hope that the war would yield a “pro-Israel, pro-America Iran” — a comment that drew applause, according to a video recording the pro-Trump pastor shared with Reuters.
“We see Trump as a man of the world that God is using to help us,” Peters said in an interview, adding that he was supportive of framing the war in religious terms.
Hegseth in particular has used overtly religious language to frame the war. On Sunday, he likened the rescue of the U.S. airman inside Iran to the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.“A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing,” he said. “God is good.”
Critics of the current American regime might point out that there’s not an ounce of actual Christianity in any of them. In fact, they seem to take the Ten Commandments as a challenge.
Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon has even threatened the Pope himself:
Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.
“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.
The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope’s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo’s January 9 speech in which the pope argued that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”
There are also reports that Pope Leo has refused to return to the US while Donald Trump remains president, a wise decision to be honest. I imagine the Swiss Guard is on high alert.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
