God is on [Insert Name of Aggressor Nation’s] Side

God is on [Insert Name of Aggressor Nation’s] Side

“Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed!... From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed. Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life.” 

Excerpt from an Easter email from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to approximately 100,000 USDA employees

“Using government resources to promote one religion contradicts what I learned about how America was founded on separation of church and state. Even though many of my coworkers were also celebrating Passover, the email didn’t address any other religious traditions.” 

One USDA employee mirroring the reactions of many others

The embrace of white Christian Nationalism as an official Trump policy objective began with the text of Project 2025, a zealous pursuit by senior White House advisor, ultra-rightwing Stephen Miller. “Donald Trump’s establishment of the newly-minted White House Faith Office and ‘anti-Christian bias’ task force isn’t merely another gesture to his evangelical base — it’s the methodical implementation of Project 2025’s radical blueprint for installing Christian Nationalist governance throughout the federal bureaucracy. The strategy, emerging with crystalline clarity, reveals how a sophisticated network of religious nationalists has positioned itself to transform executive power and infuse one particular version of religious dogma into American life.

“At the nexus of this transformation stands televangelist Paula White-Cain, newly appointed senior advisor to Trump’s Faith Office and current chair of the Center for American Values at the America First Policy Institute, a cousin to Project 2025 and a similar far-right, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman think tank with several other Trump appointees among its ranks.” Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, February 12, 2025. Indeed, White-Cain likened Donald Trump to Jesus Christ, drawing strong pushback from legitimate mainstream American pastors. Yet Iran’s theocracy, claiming victory against the “Great Satan” (the United States) in recent days, firmly announced that God is completely on their side of Trump’s War.

No one has been as religiously zealous as recovering alcoholic, WAR Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose messages to the troops is constantly repeating how a Christian God has anointed the US military as Crusader saviors of Christianity as our primary underlying value. Members of other faiths are not mentioned, often completely ignored, made to feel they are now fighting a religious war for someone else’s view of God. To Zealot Pete, the Constitution does not exist, and the Supreme Court decision, that he cannot unilaterally exclude members of the press from the Pentagon for refusing to agree to report only Pentagon official releases, can be subject to a workaround. Having touted our victory in Iran, assured the President of our complete victory, Hegseth is second only to DNI head, Tulsi Gabbard, as the next cabinet officer to be discharged.

As a complete repudiation of diplomatic protocol, it seems that the Ambassador to the US from the Vatican was summoned to the Pentagon to face criticism of Pope Leo XIVth, who has spoken out against the Trump administration on a number of occasions since he took on the role last year, including over the Iran war in recent weeks. “According to the report, also backed up by independent reporter Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters from Leo Substack, a closed-door meeting between Vatican and Pentagon officials took place in January.

“U.S. officials were reported to have lectured the Catholic Church representatives, with one official reaching for a 14th century weapon and invoking the Avignon Papacy—a period of time when the French monarchy used military force to bend the Bishop of Rome to its wishes… U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday [4/8] he would look into reports that senior Pentagon officials lectured the Vatican‘s ambassador, leading to the cancellation of a planned visit by Pope Leo XIV.” Newsweek, April 8th. Vance’s standing within the Catholic Church is on very thin ice, bordering on formal excommunication, given his support of Trump’s and Secretary of Defense/War, Pete Hegseth’s, constant references to “God’s” absolute support of Trump’s WAR against Iran.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth” has been replaced with “only the strong are blessed by God,” and the woke (“meek”) are disposable. Even as prices everywhere are soaring due to the failing WAR against Iran, inflation resuming, Trump proposes higher WAR taxes, cutting social services like Medicare, SNAP, Medicare and Social Security even further, and spending money (either from corrupt donors seeking Trump favors or directly from taxpayers) on his rising collection of Golden Calves, from his party-room extension on the White House to the proposed 250 foot golden arch (pictured above), on the Potomac as Trump’s paean to America’s 250th anniversary this coming July 4th.

This rise of Christian nationalism is everywhere red Republicans have been elected to high office. Texas, the poster-state for “Christianity is America’s only true faith” and damned the First Amendment, is at it again, as LZ Ganderson, writing for the April 10th Los Angeles Times, observes: “We had so much going on this week, with the new season of ‘Euphoria’ coming out and the president threatening to wipe out a 2,600-year-old civilization, that it’s easy to miss things like the latest attempt by conservatives to reshape the U.S. into a theocracy. Not satisfied with shoehorning Bible stories into its English curriculum and the push to display the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, the Texas Board of Education is now considering adding Bible verses to the required reading list for students.

“For one of the country’s largest providers of public education to consider requiring students to read Bible verses feels like a grenade being hurled at the wall separating church and state. However, when you factor in similar challenges from other red states such as Louisiana, which also wants to display the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, or Oklahoma, whose attempt to use public funds to create a religious online charter school was blocked by the Supreme Court last spring, it’s clear state officials in red states have launched a full-on coordinated attack. Which means the collection of warm and fuzzy scriptures being considered in Texas is likely just a Trojan horse to either bring in more extreme theology next or force another visit to this conservative Supreme Court. And recall, it was the court’s ruling on an antiabortion law out of Texas in 2021 that set the stage for overturning Roe vs. Wade the following year.

“Now, in a country in which more than 60% of people identify as Christian, there may be a temptation to view the Ten Commandments in public schools as innocuous. Most of the content is uncontroversial: Murdering and stealing are bad; lying and cheating are things one should not do. However, how does a state government reconcile displaying ‘you shall have no other gods before me’ in a democracy in which a third of citizens may have another god or no god at all?... And why place public school teachers, many of whom are not Christians themselves, in a position in which they may have to explain that religion’s doctrine?” Especially when the current administration seems to interpret the New Testament in a manner that seems to repudiate the most basic teachings of Christ himself. I think Thomas Jefferson and James Madison got it right when they clearly separated Church and state.

I’m Peter Dekom, and instead of reconfiguring the Bible as an instrumentality of a state that embraces violence as a routine solution, perhaps the MAGA (what’s left of it) “Ministry of Propaganda” needs to leave religion to God and bona fide worshippers, and not highly biased politicians!