The Easter Heresy: America's Descent into Holy War
As Christians across America celebrate resurrection, the American military declares its goal is Armageddon
On Easter Sunday morning, while Christians across America filled the pews to celebrate the conquest over death, Donald Trump was ruminating on its delivery. He threatened, with the casual air of a man ordering a steak, to level Iranian power plants and bridges should the Strait of Hormuz remain obstructed. He punctuated these warnings—peppered with profanities regarding what he termed “Power Plant Day” and “Bridge Day”—with a sign-off that felt like a glitch in the American civil religion: “Praise be to Allah.” The tweet was so obscene that many news outlets redacted the language.
The backlash was immediate. Iranian officials, seizing on the rhetoric, characterized America as a “bloodthirsty empire in decline”—a phrase that stung precisely because it carried a heavy kernel of truth. The post itself bore all the classic hallmarks of Trumpian rhetoric: calculated menace, crude expletives, and bizarre religious appropriation. Yet somewhere in the middle of this geopolitical firestorm, a more quiet, domestic question emerged. Witnessing a President masquerading as a mock-caliph while threatening war crimes on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, where, exactly, were the Christians?
Trump Behaves How They Wish They Could
America’s evangelical leaders have spent the better part of a decade defending Trump’s character, explaining away his infidelities, his casual cruelties, and his documented mendacity. They have successfully wrapped his raw populist appeal--or, more directly, his utterly obscene behavior--in the protective garments of “divine purpose.” Trump’s infidelities and atrocities are simply part of “God’s plan.”
But this was different. The President used the holiest day in the Christian calendar to threaten actions that legal scholars have noted likely constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, all while posturing in the garb of a strange, synthetic prophet. By draping a threat of mass destruction in the garb of a false prophet, Trump does not merely offend liturgical sensibilities. He exposes the hollowed-out remains of a faith that has traded the Sermon on the Mount for an imperialist conquest of the Middle East. America, it seems, is now engaged in a Crusade.
Even Franklin Graham, a man who has acted as one of Trump’s most reliable spiritual shields, has felt compelled to voice complaint about the President’s public profanity. Trump’s profanity, however, extends well beyond vocabulary and into the realm of action. The presidency itself has become profane in a biblical sense: broken oaths, mistreatment of the vulnerable, and wholesale disregard for moral law. Trump has made a career of violating the Ten Commandments not as a series of lapses, but as a defining character trait.
For a significant portion of his base—as well as, it seems, the majority of Evangelical Christians—this is not a bug, it’s a feature. His reckless, obscene behavior isn’t a a disqualifier. They like it. As Rodney Kennedy commented last year, the evangelical base does not merely tolerate the President’s profanity, they find in it a vicarious strength. He does what they secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, wish they could do.
The Political Pursuit of Apocalypse
This transaction makes sense once one understands the underlying theology. Evangelicals support Trump through a framework that has nothing to do with character and everything to do with acceleration. Many Christians view Trump as a modern-day King Cyrus—the Persian monarch who, though a non-believer, was used by God to liberate the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity. In this view, Trump is not valued for his virtue but for his utility as an instrument of prophecy.
In this teleological shortcut, virtue is irrelevant. Only utility matters. Trump is not expected to be a saint. He is expected to be a wrecking ball. The goal is not the cultivation of a Christian society, but the acceleration of a prophetic timeline toward Armageddon.
No, this is not an April Fools joke. The evangelical base accepts the President’s obscenity because they believe he is shortening the time until the Second Coming. We are at war in Iran in order to foment the Apocalypse. As long as the judicial appointments continue, as long as the embassy remains in Jerusalem, and as long as the timeline toward the apocalypse continues to tighten, the dead bodies in the Middle East are seen by many Christians as an acceptable price for their “blessed hope.”
Readying the Populace for Holy War
The architecture of this “holy war” was meticulously mapped by Michael Rowley in his documentary “Praying for Armageddon.” Released just as the current cycle of Middle Eastern violence began in 2023, the film captures a movement that has successfully bypassed the State Department to install apocalyptic theology at the heart of American foreign policy. When Senator Lindsey Graham framed the ensuing regional conflict as a “religious war,” he wasn’t just using a metaphor. He was signaling to the base that he believes the trigger for the End Times is being pulled in real-time. When prophecies are preached with such intensity, they carry a dangerous potential to become self-fulfilling.
The theology driving this would be comic if it were not so dangerous. Christians United for Israel (CUFI) boasts a membership of over ten million, comfortably outnumbering the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and, for that matter, the entire Jewish adult population of the United States. CUFI’s founder, John Hagee, famously claimed years ago that “God sent Hitler” to drive the Jewish people back to the promised land. Similarly, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. openly propagated the myth of a Jewish Antichrist.
The movement frequently treats Jewish people not as individuals with genuine agency or self-determination, but as vehicles for the realization of Christian eschatology, props in a Christian melodrama. When the end times arrive, according to this grim theology, all non-believers—including the very Jewish people these evangelical Zionists claims to champion—are destined for conversion or destruction. Any pro-Zionist “alliance” has always been motivated by an intention to engage in the ultimate betrayal.
The Terrible Price
The war with Iran has already extracted a terrible price in blood. Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports that 3,531 people are dead since the conflict erupted in late February, including 1,607 civilians and at least 244 children. Thirteen American service members have also died. Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, observed that the President has “already killed thousands” and is on a path to “kill thousands more.” This was not merely partisan hyperbole as the White House would have us believe. This is a casualty report dressed as an urgent warning.
The legal implications are equally stark. As The Daily Beast and various international legal scholars have noted, the targeting of power plants and bridges—civilian infrastructure protected under the Geneva Conventions—constitutes a prima facie war crime. When such threats are issued by the Commander-in-Chief on a public platform, the thin line between “rhetoric” and “policy” evaporates. The tweet becomes a directive.
21st Century Imperialism and the End Times
The religious framing makes accountability a moving target. Reports from Al Jazeera suggest a terrifying shift in military culture, where some U.S. service members have been explicitly told that the war with Iran is a crusade to “induce the biblical end of times.” Military commanders claim Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran.”
Within the administration and abroad, the language of Crusade has become statecraft vernacular. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke of “prophetic Islamic delusions” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted Iranian leadership as “religious fanatic lunatics.” In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on the Amalek narrative—invoking the Torah’s command to utterly destroy an ancient enemy. When war is sanctified, compromise is not just a failure of diplomacy. It is heresy. Netanyahu’s coalition is not merely willing but enthusiastic to partner with American allies who themselves ultimately look forward to the destruction of the Jewish people at the hands of a vengeful God.
Groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have condemned such rhetoric, warning that transforming a geopolitical conflict into a holy war makes post-conflict peace-building nearly impossible. When war becomes holy war, “compromise” becomes heresy.
The 25th Amendment—America’s Emergency Brake
In response to the Easter tweet, Senator Murphy took the extraordinary step of announcing he would spend the holiday consulting constitutional lawyers regarding the 25th Amendment. Let that sink in--a sitting United States senator, reacting to a presidential tweet, has reached for the Constitution’s emergency brake. When, as Murphy described, the President’s behavior is “completely, utterly unhinged,” the emergency brake is the only tool left in the cabinet.
Section 4 of the 25th amendment allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Ratified in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was intended to address moments of presidential “unfitness.” Although once seen as a solution to medical incapacitation, it is increasingly being discussed for moments when the presidency itself is a danger. Former CNN correspondent John Harwood has argued that the provision was written for exactly this situation, when the presidency itself becomes the primary threat to the national interest.
Ultimately, invoking the 25th Amendment requires political will, and political will requires a moral clarity that currently seems beyond the reach of the GOP. Such moral clarity requires admitting that a man threatening war crimes on Easter Sunday is not a prophet, nor is he Cyrus, nor is he an instrument of divine will. He is a narcissist with unlimited power and zero impulse control, who appropriates the language of Christian faith for his own gain. To see the President clearly would require his supporters to abandon a decade of investment of both theological and political capital.
Stand Up, or Pile Up
The President threatens war crimes in the language of a prophet, and people who claim to follow a crucified savior offer either silence or applause. The Constitution offers a remedy for unfitness, but it cannot cure collective delusion. The real question is whether the people who wrap themselves in faith will have the moral courage to recognize what really stands in front of them and act, or whether they will simply applaud atrocities until the bodies pile high enough to see over their pews.