'Commandos for Christ': Kentucky pastor defends Bible School’s mock firing squad

A Kentucky pastor posted a video on Monday defending teaching a group of children to be “Commandos for Christ” by participating in a firing squad.

The young children and adults at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington sat in the pews while individuals dressed as soldiers marched down the center aisle of the church so they could face a character representing the devil on the church’s altar. The children were then encouraged to chant “take him out, blow him up” while the soldiers pretended to open fire with air-soft rifles on the devil. The devil character then pretended to be dead while the mock soldiers dragged him out of the room. Afterward the pastor, Dewayne Walker, began counting up until an explosion was heard at the eight second mark. The children loudly cheered.

“I want to address this firestorm concerning the clip that's been sent, I guess, everywhere,” Walker said in a video later uploaded to Facebook and circulated by media outlets like TMZ. “I'm quite frankly befuddled. The misinformation out there is sad, and I guess it's a part of what this generation has become.”

He added, “Concerning the clip that has been shared, it was nothing more than a small part of our vacation Bible school. For 32 years — vacation Bible school — we have characters every year that represent good and right and God, and we have characters that represent evil and wrong and that which should be avoided. Every year, through skits and songs and games and just a lot of fun, we make church a fun place, a happy place — a place where we hate sin but we love the sinner, a place where we exalt Jesus and we hate the devil.”

Walker continued, “I think you'd be in agreement that we shouldn't love the devil. I think we're all in agreement that there's such a thing as spiritual warfare — a battle going on behind the scenes that we can't see with physical eyes. We here have a very serious addiction ministry, have for years, reaching those that have been broken by drugs, alcohol, some horrible addiction that's taken from them everything that's good. And we welcome them to come, and we give them the truth that Jesus loves them, that the devil does hate them, that they can be forgiven, can get a new life, can start over.”

The pastor concluded by saying that he views Satan as the cause of miseries and hopes to alleviate the suffering of those afflicted by his influence.

“Every year for 32 years we've had this evil-against-good theme in our vacation Bible school,” Walker said. “The last several years we've had the Commandos for Christ, which has the gospel gun. It's the answer for the devil — the gospel and the word of God. It's the answer. The clip you saw was simply killing the devil. And I'll be honest with you, if I could kill the devil every day and raise him up and kill him again, I'd do it. He's the one we hate.”

The alarm at the violence displayed by the Christian church could perhaps be explained by the Christian Right’s growing influence in American politics, as well as its increasing control over denominations like evangelical Protestants. They are also well-known for supporting President Donald Trump.