World Religions News

(RNS) — In the past several weeks, religious language has been used in American public life with unusual intensity and disturbing clarity. President Donald Trump ended an Easter morning obscenity-laced threat of violence to Iran with the mocking words “Praise be to Allah.” Also on Easter Sunday, several departments of the Trump administration posted messages celebrating Christ’s resurrection, including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Defense Department and the Justice Department.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to invoke Scripture to sanction the Iranian war, even as he has removed the Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., from his post, where he has been responsible for advising senior leaders on religious issues and troop morale.

None of these are isolated developments. They raise urgent and fundamental questions about what it means to speak about God in a time of war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent prayer at the Pentagon was particularly notable for its violent religious language. On Wednesday, March 25, he prayed that American forces be granted “overwhelming violence of action” against those who “deserve no mercy,” and that these actions be carried out “without remorse.” He asked God to “break the teeth of the ungodly” and “blow them away like chaff before the wind.” The language is jarring, but it is not original to Hegseth. It draws directly on some of the most violent passages in the biblical Psalms, like Psalm 58’s plea to God to “break the teeth of the wicked.”

Within the Christian tradition, the handful of Psalms quoted in Hegseth’s prayer are known as the imprecatory Psalms, and they are among the most difficult passages in the Bible. For millennia they have been interpreted with caution and often redirected inward, toward the human struggle against sin rather than the destruction of persons. For example, in his “Expositions on the Psalms,” Augustine of Hippo takes one of the verses used by Hegseth from Psalm 144, which addresses the God “who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle” and reads it as a description of the Christian life of charity. This “war,” Augustine teaches, is not against human enemies but against sin, and it is waged not through violence but through mercy. For Augustine, God is love as revealed in Christ, and therefore all of Scripture must be read according to this precept. To read a violent passage in Scripture as literally authorizing violence, the way Hegseth does, is to fundamentally misunderstand God’s nature.

Pope Leo XIV has condemned the Iran war in very strong terms. On Palm Sunday (March 29), he preached, “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” And on Easter Sunday, Pope Leo condemned the “abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.” Pope Leo is an Augustinian priest — so his understanding both of war and of the Psalms that Hegseth uses to justify and celebrate violence and destruction — is grounded in Augustine’s theological understanding. One summary of this understanding can be found in Augustine’s “On Christian Doctrine,”: “Whoever thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build up the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all.”

It is unlikely that Hegseth is aware of this theological tradition. He simply takes some of the most violent lines in the Bible and combines them into a seamless appeal for destruction. Reading the actual imprecatory Psalms in full, not just a cherry-picked selection of violent lines, reveals them to be powerful prayers of anguish and grief, arising from the Psalmist’s feelings of vulnerability as much as his rage or desire for vengeance. In Hegseth’s mashup, however, all the complexity and tension disappear, and only decontextualized biblical bloodlust remains.

While Hegseth uses Scripture to sanction violence and war, we are seeing other prominent religious figures — such as Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, both Catholic — lean on the imagery of Christianity for its symbolic power, especially for its association with authority and order. Matthew Schmitz, a religion editor and commenter, has recently described this phenomenon as “unreligious religiosity.” The problem, however, is not that the use of these symbolic objects and gestures lacks religion, but that it lacks theology.

One recent example is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance, holding a rosary, on the January 2026 cover of The Atlantic. The object functions as a signal of religious identity and authority, but without any real engagement with the theological tradition it represents. In this form of public religion, the rosary is not prayed but displayed; it operates as a symbol rather than as part of a disciplined devotional and intellectual practice. What results is a religiosity detached from the theological frameworks that give devotional objects and ritual practices their meaning.

The two tendencies — Hegseth’s, which invokes Scripture, and Kennedy’s, which invokes a particular material dimension of religion — are not different, they are symptoms of the same condition. In both cases, religion has been severed from the theological tradition that both limits it and gives it coherence. 

The Christian theological tradition insists Scripture cannot be read in bits and pieces, cobbled together irresponsibly in order to support an agenda of death and destruction. The Bible must instead be read in light of other Scripture and within a broader theological tradition. This means that Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies stands when it is most difficult — even and especially during times of war. Christian theology cannot be decided by any individual — no matter how powerful. Its meaning comes from a body of knowledge that has responsibly sought to interpret and understand the will of God for centuries. 

The danger is not only that military leaders are using religious language to justify violence, or that online influencers are using simplistic memes and images as religious shorthand. The danger is that in both cases, the discipline of theology that must give these texts and objects their meaning is absent. Theology places limits on what can be said in God’s name. Without those theological limits, God can be made to authorize and endorse anything — including hatred, bloodlust and merciless destruction.

(Karen E. Park, a former professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College, is the co-editor of American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism. She writes on Substack at Ex Voto. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Tim Schrader Rodriguez spent eight years trying to “pray out the gay.” He modulated his voice. He stopped listening to music with female lead singers. He sat weekly with a therapist who watched him come apart — and said nothing.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that therapists have a First Amendment right to pursue conversion therapy with their patients, upending a Colorado ban on the practice.

This isn’t history, nor is it a Colorado-only case. Bans that advocates spent years winning in state after state will unravel.

The number of LGBTQ+ youth being engaged in conversion practices nearly doubled in the last year alone — from 10 to 20 percent.

What Tim’s story makes clear is how ordinary this harm looks from the outside. It’s not electroshock. It’s not boot camps. It’s a weekly therapy appointment. It’s a trusted relationship. It’s the promise that if you pray hard enough and want it badly enough, God will change you.

And when it doesn’t work, the program tells you that’s your fault, too.

Amanda Henderson talks with Tim this week about what eight years inside that world actually felt like — and what it means that the one protected space survivors thought they still had is now gone.

(RNS) — On Easter Sunday (April 5), President Donald Trump shared a profanity-laced message for the people of Iran on his Truth Social platform, capping a Holy Week filled with both sacred and profane messages from the White House. 

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” the president posted early on Easter. He then added: “Praise be to Allah.” 

The post repeated Trump’s threat to destroy power plants and other infrastructure in Iran if the country did not lift a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for the world’s oil and gas.

Two days earlier, on Good Friday, Trump hosted an Easter lunch for a group of pastors, including Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Bishop Robert Barron, Marilyn Rivera and White House faith adviser Paula White, who compared the president to Jesus. Like Jesus, White said, Trump was “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused.” 

“Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price,” White said before leading a prayer for Trump. “It almost cost you your life.”

White went on to say to the president that, “Because of His victory, you will be victorious in all that you put your hand to, amen, because God is with you and God is using you.”

In his prayer, Graham compared the current conflict with Iran to the biblical book of Esther, in which a Persian leader threatened to kill Jews living in that country — only to be thwarted by a young Jewish woman named Esther. Graham said that God had raised up Trump, “for such a time as this,” a well-known quote from that book of the Bible.

“We pray for the people of Iran, who want freedom, to be set free from these Islamic lunatics,” he prayed.

Later that day, Trump posted a video message wishing the nation a Happy Easter and quoting John 3:16, a familiar passage. He also seemed to claim credit for a religious revival in the country — a claim that is hotly contested. 

“As I have often said, to be a great nation, you must have religion, and you must have God,” he said in that video. “In churches across the nation on Sunday, the pews will be fuller, younger and more faithful than they have at any time in many, many years.”

Trump also took time in the last week to fire Attorney General Pam Bondi, to criticize NATO and The New York Times and to threaten Iran.

“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” he wrote. “Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!”

Also on Good Friday, The Ingraham Angle, a popular conservative political talk show hosted by Laura Ingraham, followed Trump as he pulled back two large, dark blue curtains in the Oval Office to reveal a framed copy of Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ” painting on the White House wall. The portrait has long been one of the most popular images of Jesus in the United States but has come under criticism in recent years for depicting Jesus, who was a Middle Eastern Jew, as if he were Scandinavian. 

“Isn’t that great?” Trump said, showing off the painting in a clip of the show posted by his son, Barron. “It just went up yesterday.” 

Holy Saturday brought an anti-immigrant message, more criticism of Iran and a poll from CPAC showing support for Vice President JD Vance. 

He began Easter with a hopeful message, just after midnight, that an Air Force officer whose jet was shot down over Iran had been rescued. “WE GOT HIM,” Trump posted. “My fellow Americans, over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History.”

The president then added holiday greetings: “GOD BLESS AMERICA, GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS, AND HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!”

Then, hours after Pope Leo XIV gave an anti-war Easter message — “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” the pontiff said —  Trump posted his “crazy bastards” threat to Iran, followed by a video of performance artist Vanessa Horabuena painting a portrait of Jesus, with the song “So Be It,” from Elevation Church, playing in the background. 

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, who resigned from office in January after a public break with Trump, criticized the president’s Truth Social posts on Easter.

“On Easter morning, this is what President Trump posted,” she wrote on X, before accusing members of his administration of needing to “beg forgiveness from God” and calling Trump’s actions “madness.”

In the lengthy post, Greene said the U.S. and Israel had “started the unprovoked war against Iran,” criticized Trump’s threats to strike Iranian infrastructure and stated “our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians.”

Unlike the millions of Americans who flocked to church on Easter — one of the busiest days of the year for congregations — Trump did not go to church. Instead, The Daily Beast reported that he traveled in a slow-moving motorcade through Washington, D.C., near a location where he has proposed constructing a monument in his honor. The outing was followed by a visit to his golf club in Virginia.

On Monday morning, Trump hosted the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, where he delivered remarks about the war in Iran while standing alongside first lady Melania Trump and a person dressed as the Easter bunny. Speaking from a White House balcony, Trump addressed the ongoing conflict. PBS News coverage showed him making national security comments as the traditional holiday festivities unfolded below.

Of Iran, Trump said it is a tough enemy, but emphasized its forces have been weakened in the past month due to U.S. military intervention. “I can tell you right now they’re not too strong at all,” he said.