MAGA pastor defends prayers for total destruction of Iran; Gospel says, ‘No!’
President Donald J. Trump gestures with a fist pump as he walks across the tarmac. Photo: White House via https://www.rawpixel.com/image/4050369, CC0.
Pastor Mark Glesne, an influential executive at MAGA-pushing The Daily Wire said, “I think militarily, praying for overwhelming violence, as Pete recently has done, is appropriate because that’s how wars are won. That’s how conflicts are victorious.
The Trump-ally continued, “And I think biblically, what the secretary is expressing is the uncomfortable reality of Romans 13, which is, while Christians are called not to personal revenge, the state and governing authorities have been ordained by God and set up, as it says in Romans 13:3, to be a quote ‘terror to bad conduct.’ And so I think you can support it both from a military leadership perspective, of this prayer, and this use of a personal faith.”
The words spoken by Glesne are a chilling betrayal of the Prince of Peace. To hear a minister of the Gospel call for “overwhelming violence” is not just a lapse in judgment. It is a theological crisis. It is a perversion of the very faith that claims to follow a Savior who died rather than kill.
When we weaponize the Bible to justify bloodlust, we are no longer practicing Christianity. We are practicing a cult of power that uses the name of God to bless the tools of death. This is an abhorrent distortion of everything Jesus stood for.
To use Romans 13 as a shield for state sponsored terror is a tired and dangerous tactic. It ignores the core of why Christ came to us. Jesus did not come to give a thumbs up to the machinery of war. He came to be the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, moving us forever away from the cycle of "an eye for an eye."
Yes, the Old Testament contains stories of war, but the Gospel is the final word. That word is peace. Jesus told us that those who live by the sword will die by it. He did not say to pray for the sword to be sharper or the violence to be more overwhelming.
This theological malpractice is especially sickening given the current state of the world. Today, many people are sitting in great anxiety at home and abroad. There is a heavy cloud of fear hanging over every home after the president threatened total annihilation and the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran. Families are wondering if they have a future. They are staring at screens in terror as leaders play with fire.
In this moment of global panic, a pastor should be a voice of calm and a witness to Christ’s mercy. Instead, Glesne offers a prayer for more fire. He fuels the very anxiety that is crushing the spirits of millions.
The Mandatum of Christ is clear. We are commanded to love one another as he loved us. That love is not a suggestion for our private lives that we can discard when it comes to politics or the military. It is a total requirement.
There is no asterisk in the Great Commandment that says "unless you are trying to win a conflict." When a pastor stands before a congregation and baptizes violence as a biblical virtue, he is spitting on the Mandatum. He is choosing the empire over the Kingdom of God.
Glesne also claimed that the military is a faith based community. That does not give anyone a license to pray for destruction. True faith should lead us toward mercy, not toward a desire for terror.
We are called to be peacemakers. We are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We are never, under any circumstances, called to pray for their violent end.
To suggest otherwise is a lie that mocks the cross. If our faith leads us to crave "overwhelming violence," then we are not following Jesus. We are following a god of our own making, one that looks a lot more like Caesar than Christ.
To pray for annihilation while the world trembles is not faith. It is a rejection of the Sacredness of life.
