Even conservative Republicans warned against MAGA's new 'holy war'

A man holds a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) USA 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, U.S., March 28, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole

During the 1980s, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. said of President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy, "God is on our side." And one of the people who called out such rhetoric as dangerous was arch-conservative GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater, himself an ardent Reagan supporter. Goldwater was known for his hawkish views on foreign policy, but he had no use for far-right Christian fundamentalists who saw the Pentagon as a vehicle for "holy war."

Many years later, in 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others in the MAGA movement are promoting President Donald Trump's war against Iran as a fight for fundamentalist Christianity — which New York Times columnist Frank Bruni views as a dangerous trend.

Bruni, in his April 13 column, warns, "I guess a zealot, by nature, can't hide — too extreme are his convictions, too grand his designs, too consuming his arrogance. And so, over recent weeks, Pete Hegseth has fully revealed himself. He has made clear that every missile the United States fires, every bomb it drops, every Iranian it kills, is for Jesus. Praise be the Lord, who has given America the power to wipe out an entire civilization. That's what President Trump threatened to do — in an intermittently jaunty social media post, no less — and Hegseth gave no indication of unwillingness to execute that order."

Bruni continues, "He brandishes assertions about God’s will with the exaggerated brio of an electronics merchant pressing fliers on pedestrians passing by his new megastore: Have I got a holy war for you. Embrace the death. Exult over the destruction. What only looks like hell is a ticket to heaven."

The Times columnist stresses, however, that not all Christians share Hegseth's view that the Trump Administration is fighting a "holy war" in the Iran conflict.

"In this era of the extraordinary," Bruni observes, "Pope Leo XIV has taken the unusual step of publicly and specifically rebuking the Trump Administration's assertion of divine approval for the war against Iran…. In a social media post on Friday, (April 10), he wrote: 'God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.'"

Bruni continues, "That was hardly the Pope's first reprimand. During a mass just before Easter, he voiced his concern that the Christian mission had been 'distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.' And before that, he cautioned that Jesus 'does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.' The Pope's preoccupation obviously reflects all the talk of God, God, God from Hegseth and from Trump, whose piety is profound when that's convenient."

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