{"id":58186,"date":"2026-03-16T14:02:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=58186"},"modified":"2026-03-16T14:02:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:02:49","slug":"war-prayer-in-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/16\/war-prayer-in-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"War Prayer in the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t aware that evangelical leaders came to the White House to pray over Trump until I saw <a href=\"https:\/\/mattbivens.substack.com\/p\/oval-office-prayer-sessions\" rel=\"\">this article<\/a> by Matt Bivens. Here\u2019s a short video clip shared by the White House:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9eE1REi0nLQ?si=ySNat0d5sC9ToWfT\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been in oval churches, built in that shape so that there are no corners where the devil can hide. But what if the devil is hiding in plain sight?<\/p>\n<p>These so-called christian evangelicals are a scary bunch. I recently wrote to a friend that being a Christian is fairly simple: love God, love thy neighbor, and remember that Christ is the Prince of Peace, the healer of the sick, the benefactor of the downtrodden.<\/p>\n<p>What we have instead is a heretical brand of \u201cchristianity\u201d with a Warrior-Christ where we\u2019re supposed to despise our neighbor if he\u2019s not a Zionist and\/or an evangelical who loves Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Consider here <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/letter-from-the-southwest\/the-new-faces-of-christian-nationalism\" rel=\"\">this article<\/a> at <em>The New Yorker<\/em> on christian nationalism, surely two words that when conjoined create a world-class oxymoron.<\/p>\n<p>America is supposedly \u201cone nation under God,\u201d but whose god, which god, and for what purpose?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, no prayer in the Oval Office would be complete without a plea for God to protect U.S. troops in the Iran War. Mark Twain\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/americanliterature.com\/author\/mark-twain\/short-story\/the-war-prayer\" rel=\"\">War Prayer<\/a>\u201d comes to mind here.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hope that the apocalypse some evangelicals appear to want isn\u2019t coming anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. I wasn\u2019t aware that evangelical leaders came to the White House to pray over Trump until I saw this article by Matt Bivens. Here\u2019s a short video clip shared by the White House: I\u2019ve been in oval churches, built in that shape so that there are no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-58186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58192,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58186\/revisions\/58192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58186"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=58186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}