A cruel irony sits at the heart of Trump's holy war

When church and state overlap, brutality follows and justice bends with the whip. Blurred lines between religion and government produced the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Crusades, the Huguenot persecutions, and the brutality campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire, to list an easy few, all featuring sadism, torture, and bloodlust in the name of religion.

The centuries have proved that entangling religious dogma with state power always leads to brutal oppression. That’s why founders of our republic, who keenly understood the danger, wrote, as the very first Constitutional guarantee, that church and state would remain forever separated.

So when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. military commanders pressure U.S. troops to conform with their own Christian fundamentalist beliefs, they not only spit on the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold, they beckon history’s darkest years with a blind compulsion to repeat them.

Armageddon in Iran?

Religious extremism has taken Iran back to the seventh century, yet somehow, even as Trump tries to topple Iran’s brutal theocracy, his own Christian nationalists can’t see that their own agenda leads to the same place.

Hegseth, a far-right Christian zealot with extremist views and tattoos, is now running the DOD and spreading a dangerous message. Hegseth airs monthly prayer meetings on loudspeakers and televisions throughout the Pentagon. Attending his prayer meetings in person is “voluntary,” but apparently listening to them isn’t. Hegseth proselytizes evangelical Christianity throughout the upper ranks of the U.S. military, so it comes as no surprise that his commanders are now doing the same.

Right after the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran, several commanders in the U.S. military started framing the war as biblical, spreading the message throughout every branch. According to more than 200 complaints filed with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), first reported by Jonathan Larsen, U.S. combat-unit commanders urged officers in more than 50 separate military installations to tell U.S. troops that the war in Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” specifically citing the Book of Revelation on “Armageddon” and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

The commanders want U.S. troops to know that Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” While this may finally solve the mystery of why Trump took us to war with Iran in the first place, proselytizing — using the military to spread Christian nationalism — blatantly violates the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. It also propels the U.S. toward theocracy, just as we’re fighting a war in Iran against it.

Is it too much to expect such irony to announce itself?

A teachable moment for MAGA?

Life under theocratic rule has always been dark, and Iran is no exception. If Trump, Hegseth and his commanders took a moment to study their targets, they would know that Shia Islam law permeates Iran’s entire political system, and it won’t be easily undone.

In Iran, all laws and regulations conform with the official interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law). A body of clerics and jurists known as the Guardian Council reviews all proposed legislation for conformity with Islamic principles, subjecting all aspects of Iranian life to religious control, including the legislative process, judicial system, banking, education, commerce, the military, and politics whether local, regional or national.

Ayatollahs, mullahs, and clerics interpret the law. They do not tolerate differences in opinion. Under the Islamic Penal Code, adulterers can be publicly stoned to death. Women can be executed for showing their hair or too much skin, and any conduct that amounts to “corruption on earth,” including peaceful activism, is punishable by death.

Enforcement on the streets is carried out by roving bands of armed thugs called Morality Police or “Guidance Patrols,” radicals who enforce the rules, meet out punishment, and haul the accused away. Is a comparison with ICE, Trump’s own street militia, unfair?

Dissent viewed as heresy

Hegseth, Trump, and MAGA’s Christo-nationalists want to tear down the Constitutional wall between church and state because, like centuries of monarchs and bad actors before them, they think citing God’s “divine will” excuses their illegal conduct and adds legitimacy to their mission of oppression. Domestically, they have already begun to use extreme violence and the suppression of personal freedoms. If they are not stopped, torture and public executions will follow.

Trump is already seeking to outlaw political dissent, criticism, and opposition, just as Iranian extremists have done. He is also increasing Christian nationalist messaging throughout the White House, as Karoline Leavitt and Pam Bondi brandish crucifixes and Hegseth’s commanders claim God wants them to bloody Iranians.

It all looks like a sick dress rehearsal for when Trump claims the divine right to imprison (or worse) critics and political opponents at home.

Right after reports of American casualties in Iran started peppering headlines, Hegseth urged the media to stop “obsessing” over fallen U.S. soldiers, suggesting they focus instead on the “death and destruction” being wrought by U.S. air power. The ghoulish subtext: Troops dying in Iran is expected, and violence is entertainment. It’s all part of God and Trump’s plan.

For the rest of us, it’s also a real time illustration of why the First Amendment must be protected at all costs.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.