Belief

A journalist with The Catholic Herald has confirmed that the Pentagon attacked Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church. What appears to be in dispute, however, is which U.S. Pentagon official made the threat.

Niwa Limbu, an accredited Vatican correspondent, wrote on X that two sources said it was not Elbridge Colby who threatened the Vatican in a closed-door meeting this week. The DOD's undersecretary of defense for policy had been accused by The Free Press of being the source of a "bitter lecture."

"The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side," he was accused of saying.

But Limbu said that details about Colby are now in dispute.

In a post on X, Limbu said that Cardinal Christophe Pierre suggested over the phone that there was a media blackout over the topic. His Eminence commented, "I would prefer not to speak."

Holy See Press Office aide Matteo Bruni also declined to comment on the Pentagon meeting.

Writer and humorist Emily Zanotti, who is Catholic, argued that it isn't unusual for the Vatican to screw up PR.

She also had a few comments on getting down to the truth on Vatican issues.

"A few things can be true here: 1) It doesn’t quite make sense why the PENTAGON summoned a Vatican ambassador; 2) Bringing up Avignon is straight up insane, if it happened, which seems likely, and that’s aggressive towards Catholics," she wrote.

She also pointed out that she doesn't believe Christopher Hale is a reliable source. She wondered if "the Vatican probably just went 'WTF' and moved on, and until an actually reliable source, like @PillarCatholic confirms any Vatican response, you simply shouldn’t believe any suggestions."

Vice President JD Vance told reporters he wants to get the situation sorted out.

“I would actually like to talk to Cardinal Christophe Pierre and, frankly, to our people, to figure out what actually happened,” he said. “I think it’s always a bad idea to offer an opinion on stories that are unconfirmed and uncorroborated, so I’m not going to do that.”

There is a larger conversation in the Catholic community because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's brand of Christian nationalism, and the broader evangelical-focused "MAGA" movement, has made Catholics feel unwelcome. The DOD was criticized last week for having a "Protestant-only" Good Friday service. Typically, there isn't a mass on Good Friday. What was odd to some, however, is that the email sent to all staffers singled out Catholics when it didn't need to.

"There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel,” the email read last week.

Anti-Catholicism dates back generations. President John F. Kennedy's candidacy was in question as voters wondered whether he was loyal to the U.S. or the Vatican.

Hegseth's pastor, Doug Wilson, has a history of anti-Catholicism that is well documented. As Right Wing Watch reported in March, Wilson explained in his ideal Christian nation, “public displays of idolatry” would be banned, including Catholic parades. Wilson is one of many in the Trump administration with some anti-Catholic sentiment and antisemitic beliefs, an MS NOW column explained.

Amid the escalating attacks against Pope Leo XIV by the Trump administration, a Jesuit priest hit back, claiming that the conflict was not the result of the religious leader being "woke," but rather American conservatives "veering deeper into heresy."

President Donald Trump and his allies have been in a feud of sorts with the American Pope since he ascended to the role last spring and began espousing views counter to the MAGA agenda, including respect and dignity for immigrants, as well as opposition to armed conflicts. The feud reached a new high this week after Christopher Hale, a chronicler for Pope Leo XIV, revealed that the Trump administration has effectively threatened to declare war on the Vatican over the pontiff's stances.

"In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture," Hale explained.

Colby is purported to have told the ambassador, "America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side."

The ongoing tension between the administration and the Pope has sparked widespread debate, with Trump loyalists claiming the Catholic leader has abandoned the church's ideals in favor of the MAGA movement's much-hated "woke" ideologies, while critics have argued that Leo and his predecessor Pope Francis have merely been correctly embodying the church's teachings about compassion.

Those arguments were embodied on Wednesday evening in a post to X by Jeremy Zipple, a documentary filmmaker and associate pastor for the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Belize. Zipple responded to a post from another user, also arguing against the "woke" characterization of Pope Leo XIV.

"The Pope is not 'woke,'" user Scott Barber wrote. "What you’re witnessing is a millennia of Catholic social teaching developed over countless encyclicals and the lifework of a vast cloud of witnesses to the love of Christ towards the whole world."

"The Pope is not 'woke' so much as US evangelicalism has been veering deeper into heresy for quite some time now & dragging too many Catholics along with it," Zipple added in his own post. "And the Church is finally saying enough is enough."

President Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters see that their most powerful leader is “falling apart” and now must believe he is “persecuted like Jesus,” according to an expert on religious studies.

"They need to make sure that, lest their followers hear an anti-war message from another MAGA figure, that their allegiance remains to Trump, who God sent to save Christian America, and who demands your adoration no matter what,” journalist and Christian right expert Sarah Posner wrote for Talking Points Memo on Monday. Posner was describing the Trump administration’s unexpected and unprovoked war against Iran, one that many Trump supporters would otherwise oppose given their usual stance against foreign interventionism. To square that circle, though, they argue that Trump is in power through divine will.

"As Trump flounders in the prosecution of his war on Iran, his evangelical loyalists are feverishly closing ranks, including during a Holy Week marked by Trump’s and Hegseth’s Christianity-infused bloodlust, which prompted papal rebukes,” Posner wrote. “But Trump’s evangelicals are facing multi-front challenges to what they would like to portray as their dominance in the MAGA coalition, and their claim to represent the ‘true’ American Christianity. That is why they are intensifying their messaging that Trump is divine, that he is persecuted like Jesus was, that his war is destroying Iran and protecting Israel from Iranian savagery, all while igniting a Christian revival in America.”

Posner added, “They need to make sure that, lest their followers hear an anti-war message from another MAGA figure, that their allegiance remains to Trump, who God sent to save Christian America, and who demands your adoration no matter what."

At the same time, despite their desperate attempts to shore up Trump’s reputation, "the problem for them is that Trump, their anointed one, is falling apart,” Posner wrote. She later observed that “their pursuit of Christian supremacy through Trump now depends on their followers continuing to accept their reality-defying portrayals of the president at war."

This is not Posner’s first takedown of Trump and the Christian nationalists that keep him in power. Last month she told The New Republican that their religiosity fuels their acceptance of war crimes.

"Christian reconstructionism holds that biblical law is superior to civil law and that the Bible — biblical law — should govern every aspect of life: your personal life for sure, but also political life, military life,” Posner said. “So to Hegseth, this biblical law — the interpretation of which would be contested by different scholars or adherents to the Bible — but his version of biblical law is superior to the Pentagon's own internal military law, American civil law, and also, importantly, when we're talking about Hegseth and the prosecution of this unjust, illegal war, that it is superior to international law and the rules of engagement in war and military conflicts.”

Posner has also argued that the Trump/Hegseth version of Christianity can be inherently violent.

"Hegseth is expressing an extreme version of Christian supremacy, where America, a Christian nation, is entitled, and in fact probably, in his mind, required by God, to smite America's enemies — or to smite the enemies of Christianity, even,” Posner explained. “When we talk about Christian nationalism, this is exactly what we're talking about. But the important thing to remember with Hegseth, in contrast to other versions of Christian nationalism that we see more commonly in the Republican Party, is that his is a very extreme version of Christian supremacy where we Christians are entitled to go out and take dominion over the world, to vanquish enemies, and to do so violently — and even when they do so violently, with the express mandate from God."

Perhaps as a symbol of their opposition to secularism, Trump announced in March that he is ripping out White House fixtures installed by President Thomas Jefferson, who famously insisted on a strict separation between church and state. While serving as president from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson famously wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists that “believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

President Donald Trump is forcing “religious nuttery” on the rest of the United States through the military, according to an ex-adviser to a different Republican president.

“I want this religious extremism, I want this religious nuttery, I want this religious nationalism, I want this evil buried under a concrete f—— sarcophagus,” Steve Schmidt, a podcaster who was once a top adviser to President George W. Bush, said on Sunday. “Do not disappoint the president. Tell me how you do that. How do we get this out?”

Ken Harbaugh, a former United States Navy pilot and Democratic congressional candidate, told Schmidt that Hegseth’s attitude demoralizes more than a quarter of US troops.

“I think one of the things that Hegseth clearly does not understand is how demoralizing his Christian nationalism is — how the military, while they used to laugh at him, are now appalled when he gives these speeches about ‘the lamentations of our enemies’ and ‘God will not hear their prayers,’” Harbaugh told Schmidt. “I don't know how someone has not briefed him that fully 30 percent of the American military identifies as non-Christian. And of the remaining 70 percent, I don't think most of them are hearing speeches about ‘Bashing your enemies’ heads against the wall’ and thinking, ‘Let's go kill some bad guys.’ They see the problem in that.”

After adding that even most military chaplains understand that Christianity should not be preached by people in charge, even as they also agree it is perfectly okay to pray in uniform.

“The job of the chaplaincy — the job of even a committed leader in the military, someone committed to their faith — is the mission first, and you have to find a way to subordinate your personal feelings to that mission,” Harbaugh told Schmidt. “And when you don't, you get what you see in Pete Hegseth, which is someone who puts his own... He's exorcising his own personal demons using the most powerful military force in the world. And I think that is especially dangerous.”

Hegseth has also been criticized by veterans for abusing his office to settle political scores.

"The very first sentence of Secretary Pete Hegseth's cover memo…. is retrospective and retributive, rather than prospective and mission-oriented," wrote retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling for The Bulwark in January regarding an explicit partisan document attributed to Hegseth. "Strategy documents…. are not vehicles for settling political scores; they are meant to speak to a professional force tasked with executing national objectives under extreme risk."

Hegesth is not the only Christian nationalist in a position of power in America’s military-industrial complex. Trump’s billionaire ally and military technology supplier, Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel, insists that he is an expert on the Antichrist and his version of Christianity is literal truth.

“Thiel’s evangelism is another example of how the right has strategically co-opted Christian religious teachings to provide support for their autocratic tendencies, as well as their fears about technology being limited through ‘woke’ beliefs,” Anthea Butler, chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, explained in a Tuesday editorial for MSNOW.

U.S. President Donald Trump is defending his war with Iran as a campaign against terrorism and extremism, repeatedly saying that the regime in Tehran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But critics of Trump's Iran policy, including retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling — former commander of U.S. Army Europe — believe that he is only adding to the instability in that part of the world.

Another critic is Virginia-based counterterrorism expert Erfan Fard.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on April 3, Fard argues that Trump's war could leave Iran with a militarized regime that is even more dangerous and fanatical than the current Shiite fundamentalist government.

"In public, the Shiite mullahs dominate Iran, but operational authority has, over time, concentrated within the security apparatus — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the intelligence services and the security networks," Fard explains. "War has only accelerated this shift. Under external pressure, the regime has thus moved not toward reform or negotiation, but toward militarization. The decapitation of senior commanders and the targeting of main hubs has weakened the system, but it has also created an opening for radical elites to move up."

The U.S. has a long history of pushing regime change in Iran. In the early 1950s, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, a socialist, was overthrown with the help of the CIA.

After that, the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled the country for many years before his overthrow in 1979. Pahlavi led a dictatorship, yet he favored a modernist view of Islam and had close relations with the United States and other western democracies. The Pahlavi government, in 1979, was replaced by a severe theocracy based on Shiite Islam and led by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Trump's war, Fard emphasizes, won't be the end of strict Islamist rule in Iran — and could make it even worse.

"Paradoxically, U.S. and Israeli air power may succeed in degrading the regime's forces and nuclear infrastructure while failing to reduce — even increasing — Tehran's leverage," Fard writes. "The result will be a weaker but more radical and authoritarian state sitting astride the Strait of Hormuz. This could prove even more dangerous to regional stability and the global economy than the system it is replacing."

MS NOW host Joe Scarborough started off Friday's show by discussing the Thursday firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, noting that she is another example of people who still didn't last in President Donald Trump's world of demands.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said that stand-in Todd Blanche should understand the Justice Department, given that he cut his teeth in the Southern District of New York. Swapping Bondi with Blanche is only shuffling the chairs it won't get Trump to his desired demands.

"Well, yeah, and Jeanine Pirro thinks that she may, you know, she's pitching herself," said Scarborough. "I mean, you look at what's happened with her and, you know, she's running rightfully into the same brick walls Pam Bondi did legally when she tried to go after six U.S. Senators for stating the law."

Trump has an enemies list that reporters have said he wants action on, but the problem is that there is no evidence to secure an indictment against the list of people. That's why Bondi was fired. which includes Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calf.), New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. Two of those three were indicted, but the indictments were dismissed. Pirro hasn't been able to secure an indictment in several cases, including those at the local level, where individuals insulted federal agents on the ground in Washington, D.C.

Scarborough recalled when she tried to go after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Pirro failed there too.

Powell is "somebody who's doing his best day in and day out to keep this country and its economy moving forward despite a lot of erratic decisions that are being made out of the White House, that are making the feds challenge all the more greater."

"But, you know, Rev. Al [Sharpton], it seems that — here's the cover of the Times," he said, holding up the front page of the Friday headlines, announcing Trump's firing of Bondi.

"It seems that Pam Bondi learned the same lesson that [Gen.] James Mattis learned, that Gen. John Kelly learned, that Gary Cohn learned, and that Bill Barr learned. You go down the list of all the people who have been fired from the Trump administration in the first and second terms, and there's no amount of kissing up to him. There's no amount of biting your tongue. There's no amount of putting up with it because of your fears that the next person is going to be worse. That will ultimately save you from firing and humiliation," Scarborough said.

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MS NOW host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough ripped into President Donald Trump's spiritual advisor over her recent comments comparing his life to the struggles of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Paula White-Cain is a television evangelist known for her various faith advisory roles across Trump's political career, dating back to his 2016 presidential campaign. She currently serves as a senior advisor for the White House Faith Office, which did not exist until Trump created it in the first month of his second term.

White-Cain gave an address at the White House on Wednesday during an event commemorating Easter, where, alongside Trump, she compared his recent troubles to the life of Christ, raising the eyebrows of more than a few observers in the process.

"Jesus taught us so many lessons through his death, burial and resurrection," White-Cain said. "He showed us great leadership. Great transformation requires great sacrifice. And Mr President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our lord and savior showed us, but it didn't end there for him and it didn't end there for you. God always had a plan."

One of those stunned observers was Scarborough, who, during a Friday broadcast of his MS NOW show, Morning Joe, tore apart White-Cain for comparing Trump to Jesus, something he called "grotesque" and "unchristlike," and saying that he would "pray" for anyone else who might think similarly, not just about Trump, but for any politician.

"Let me just say, as someone who grew up in the church [since] probably the week I came home from the hospital, that may have been one of the most grotesque, unchristlike things I've ever heard in my life," Scarborough said. "To compare any politician to Jesus Christ. It's just grotesque."

He continued: "She's a heretic. It certainly sounds like a heretic there... Again it shows us what a bizarre age we are in. That is, there are no words. And for evangelicals out there still pretending that this is normal, that would pretend that that is normal,
just know I will be praying for you tonight."

Scarborough then welcomed a panel of guests for a segment on religion, including author and political commentator John Fugelsang, whom he pressed for a reaction to White-Cain's comments.

"You know, watching that, I'm reminded that the only way you can support both Donald Trump and Jesus is if you've never read either one of their books," Fugelsang said. "Because, friends, the only things Donald Trump has in common with Jesus are that they both spent a lot of time with prostitutes, and they both use ghostwriters."

In the late 19th Century, women gained the right to vote in some states and municipalities. But it wasn't until the U.S. Constitution's 19th Amendment was adopted in 1920 that voting became a national right for U.S. women — millions of whom voted for the first time in the 1920 presidential election, which found Republican Warren G. Harding defeating Democratic nominee James M. Cox by roughly 26 percent (Cox's running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, went on to enjoy a landslide presidential victory in 1932).

The 19th Amendment has been considered settled law for more than a century. But during Donald Trump's second presidency, more and more evangelical Christian nationalists are seriously calling for the 19th Amendment to be abolished — including Pastor Doug Wilson, a close ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In an article published on April 2, New York Times reporter Vivian Yee takes a look at Christian fundamentalists who believe women should lose the right to vote. This proposal, according to Yee, is now "gaining adherents beyond the fringe" — and they believe that The 19th Amendment "drove America into national decline."

"Instead, they support 'household voting': one household, one vote — the husband's," Yee explains. "While many Americans would see this as an unthinkable regression to a time when women were treated as second-class Americans, proponents of the concept believe deeply that this arrangement is what God envisioned in a marriage. If, a decade ago, the idea was just another extreme provocation, today it is gaining adherents beyond the fringe."

Yee adds, "Male influencers and podcasters in the ultra-conservative corner of the internet known as the Manosphere often push to 'repeal the 19th,' and far-right young women have also backed the idea…. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a clip, last summer, of pastors in his ultra-conservative denomination, which holds that America is a Christian nation whose laws should reflect Christian tenets, arguing that women should be barred from voting."

Beth Allison Barr, a history professor at Baylor University, has changed the way she discusses fundamentalist proposals to repeal the 19th Amendment.

Barr told the New York Times, "I used to teach this as, 'This is this fringe thing that's out there.' Now, I teach it as, 'This is no longer fringe.'"

Yee notes that while "repealing the 19th Amendment would require approval by three-quarters of the states," other MAGA proposals — including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (the SAVE or SAVE America Act) — wouldn't make it illegal for women to vote but would make it more difficult.

"Some obstacles to women voting could come sooner," Yee observes. "President Trump and Republican allies are pushing legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, a restriction that opponents say could disenfranchise the many women whose married names do not match those on their birth certificates or other documents."

President Donald Trump and his advisers forget that America was not founded as a Christian nation, a former aide to a different Republican president warned on Tuesday.

“The separation of church and state is foundational to American civilization,” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, said on his Substack. “In fact, on the list of the greatest American inventions, the two at the top — competing for gold and silver — are the peaceful transition of power and the separation of church and state. These are brilliant ideas, the greatest in all of history.”

Yet according to Schmidt, Trump is violating this separation in dangerous and deliberate ways. Specifically, he called out Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for explicitly citing “our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” when justifying America’s recent invasion of Iran.

“Do you see all the Stars of David in the Normandy cemetery?” Schmidt said. “World War II was not a Christian mission. The United States Army is not a Christian organization. In America, we have a right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech — and all of it is under threat from Donald Trump and his administration.”

Ultimately, Schmidt refused to classify America’s war in Iran as being motivated by any form of respectable Christianity.

“This is not religion,” Schmidt said. “This is a scam. This is a con.”

Schmidt is not alone in critiquing the Trumpist version of Christianity. Religious studies scholar Sarah Posner recently spoke with The Daily Beast's Greg Sargent about Pope Leo XIV, the American-born Pope who denounced warmongering interpretations of Christianity in a speech delivered shortly after Hegseth's breakfast prayer.

"Hegseth is expressing an extreme version of Christian supremacy, where America, a Christian nation, is entitled, and in fact probably, in his mind, required by God, to smite America's enemies — or to smite the enemies of Christianity, even, Posner said. "When we talk about Christian nationalism, this is exactly what we're talking about. But the important thing to remember with Hegseth, in contrast to other versions of Christian nationalism that we see more commonly in the Republican Party, is that his is a very extreme version of Christian supremacy where we Christians are entitled to go out and take dominion over the world, to vanquish enemies, and to do so violently — and even when they do so violently, with the express mandate from God."

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2024 about historian Federico Finchelstein comparing Trump’s far right “rhetorical violence” to that of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler, Leavitt replied that “it's been less 72 hours since the second assassination attempt on President Trump's life and the media is already back to comparing President Trump to Hitler. It's disgusting. This is why Americans have zero trust in the liberal mainstream media."

As Schmidt pointed out, America was founded as an explicitly secular country. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” while President Thomas Jefferson — who also co-authored the Declaration of Independence — wrote in 1802 that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God” and as such “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions” because the American people “declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost, AKA Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church — has been outspoken in his criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's war against Iran. In contrast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a far-right Christian nationalist, is characterizing Trump's military operation as a Christian holy war.

During an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast" posted on March 31, religious studies scholar Sarah Posner examined the contrasting views of Pope Leo and the Trump Administration. And she stressed that Hegseth's Christian nationalism is a radically different view of Christianity than the one Pope Leo embraces.

Posner told host Greg Sargent, "Hegseth is expressing an extreme version of Christian supremacy, where America, a Christian nation, is entitled, and in fact probably, in his mind, required by God, to smite America's enemies — or to smite the enemies of Christianity, even. When we talk about Christian nationalism, this is exactly what we're talking about. But the important thing to remember with Hegseth, in contrast to other versions of Christian nationalism that we see more commonly in the Republican Party, is that his is a very extreme version of Christian supremacy where we Christians are entitled to go out and take dominion over the world, to vanquish enemies, and to do so violently — and even when they do so violently, with the express mandate from God."

Sargent noted that Hegseth's Iran war prayer "was dramatically undercut by the Pope."

According to Posner and Sargent, Hegseth's views are consistent with a severe version of evangelical fundamentalist Christianity known as "Christian reconstructionism."

Posner told Sargent, "Christian reconstructionism holds that biblical law is superior to civil law and that the Bible — biblical law — should govern every aspect of life: your personal life for sure, but also political life, military life. So to Hegseth, this biblical law — the interpretation of which would be contested by different scholars or adherents to the Bible — but his version of biblical law is superior to the Pentagon's own internal military law, American civil law, and also, importantly, when we're talking about Hegseth and the prosecution of this unjust, illegal war, that it is superior to international law and the rules of engagement in war and military conflicts.

On March 25, the James Dobson Family Institute published an article by far-right evangelical Christian fundamentalist Gary Bauer — president of American Values and former president of the Family Research Council — headlined "The Left Wants to Hijack Jesus! Don't Let Them." Bauer argued that "the secular left" is "trying to recast Christ as a 'woke' socialist who favors open borders and aborting innocent children."

Christian liberals, however, are not a new phenomenon. Over the years, liberal church figures have ranged from the Rev. Al Sharpton and the late Rev. Jesse Jackson to Sister Mary Scullion (a Catholic nun known for her activism in Philadelphia). Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) is a Baptist minister.

In an op-ed published by Religion News Service (RNS) in late March, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush points to Bauer's article as an example of how "panicked" the Religious Right is feeling because of James Talarico (a Presbyterian seminarian and the Democratic nominee in Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race) and other Democrats who aren't shy about discussing their faith.

"Christian nationalists are sounding a bit panicked these days," Raushenbush argues. "I can't say I am surprised. On Saturday (March 28), 8 million Americans of diverse faiths and beliefs joined together in streets and squares around the world for No Kings protests. The next day, the Christian holy day of Palm Sunday, thousands more came out again. All of these people were rejecting the rising autocracy of our current moment, and many of them were Christians. No wonder, then, that the late James Dobson's Family Institute recently published an article blaring an alarm: 'The Left Wants to Hijack Jesus! Don't Let Them.'"

Christian nationalists in general, Raushenbush observes, are feeling threatened by Talarico and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

"Pete Hegseth's pastor, Brooks Potteiger, was so incensed by Talarico's faith and politics that he went so far as to wish for his death," Raushenbush writes. "Others have tried to paint Talarico and Beshear's faith convictions as deviant, completely out of step with Christian thought. In reality, they aren't. According to the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, the majority of Christians actually support LGBTQ+ equality and abortion rights."

Raushenbush continues, "Meanwhile PRRI's most recent survey shows that only a third of Americans sympathize with Christian nationalism, and two-thirds of Americans are skeptical or outright reject the ideas and goals of Christian Nationalists. The majority of Christian nationalists are white evangelical Protestants, a group that, Robert P. Jones, president of PRRI, says is shrinking."

Raushenbush describes Christian nationalists' "preferred framing of American politics as secular left vs. Christian" as "false" and ignorant of history.

Within Christianity, talk of Armageddon is especially prominent among far-right evangelical fundamentalists — many of whom are obsessed with the New Testament's Book of Revelation. Mainline Protestants and Catholics also read the Book of Revelation, but not in the obsessive way that evangelical fundamentalists and white Christian nationalists do. And they don't have the evangelical fixation on Armadgeddon and the End Times.

But in an op-ed published by The Hill on March 25, researcher John Mac Ghlionn observes that fear of Doomsday is growing among Americans who aren't necessarily End Times evangelicals.

This fear, he notes, is highlighted in a new report by the American Psychological Association (APA).

"America used to reserve Doomsday talk for the guys who stored beans in their backyard and argued about the Book of Revelation on AM radio," Ghlionn explains. "Now, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, one-third of the country quietly suspects that the end will arrive before they get the chance to draw down their 401(k) plans. Historically, apocalyptic thinking had a specific address…. The end of the world was a conviction reserved for a certain kind of Christian, who awaited it with a feeling somewhere between dread and satisfaction."

Ghlionn adds, "These were the kind of people for whom catastrophe would finally settle an argument they had been having for decades. Everyone else just changed the channel and went back to refinancing their mortgages."

But now, according to the researcher, that "separation is gone."

"When the U.S. and Israel chose to attack Iran and kill that country's supreme leader, the phrase 'World War III' began trending on the phones of mechanics in Des Moines and software engineers in Austin," Ghlionn writes. "The researchers found that more than 100 million Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. This not some vague anxiety, but a concrete belief that colors how these people think about climate change, nuclear war, economic collapse, and artificial intelligence. That is your neighbor, your barista, your Uber driver, and the manager at work who just updated the remote‑work policy."

In 2026, according to Ghlionn, the "Doomsday crowd" includes not only fundamentalist evangelicals, but also, ranges from "climate activists convinced we have blown past every tipping point" to "AI researchers gaming out scenarios where the machine stops taking instructions."

"Americans have always flirted with the end of the world," Ghlionn notes. "But now, for the first time, the preppers, the prophets, the climate modelers, the AI-worriers and the geopolitical realists can all point to different dashboards flashing red at the same time."

On Sunday night, March 22, CNN aired reporter Pamela Brown's documentary "The Rise of Christian Nationalism." And one of the far-right Christian nationalists Brown examined was Pastor Doug Wilson, who preaches at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

For most of his life, Wilson — now in his early seventies — was a marginal figure within Christianity. And his views are extreme even by religious right standards. Wilson, a proponent of "Christian reconstructionism" and "dominionist theology," believes that women should never have been given the right to vote, that wives should be totally submissive to their husbands, and that the federal government should be a Christian fundamentalist theocracy based on strict biblical law.

But in recent years, Wilson has become increasingly prominent in the GOP and the MAGA movement. And he is a close ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Criticism of Wilson is coming not only from politicians and activists — it is also coming from Christian ministers.

In a late March article published by Religion News Service (RNS), reporter Tracy Simmons stresses that some of Wilson's foes are residents of Moscow, Idaho — including the Rev. Hannah Brown, pastor at The United Church of Moscow.

Brown told RNS, "It's a very specific, very conservative, very fundamentalist version of what Christianity is. As somebody who leads a church and calls myself a Christian, that's not the Christianity that I believe."

Another Moscow resident who finds Wilson's views disturbing is 90-year-old Joanne Muneta, chair of the Latah County Human Rights Task Force.

Muneta told RNS that after watching Brown's CNN documentary, she felt "so sad."

Muneta argued, "When I think of all the teachers who devote their careers to bringing up children who think for themselves, who have confidence, who are kind — they want to erase that…. All the effort and pride from the '20s to the '50s to get women’s suffrage, and they're just going to say, 'Oh no, we didn’t mean that.'"

President Donald Trump’s billionaire ally and military technology supplier, Palantir CEO Peter Thiel, says he is an expert on the Antichrist — but actual experts disagree.

“Thiel’s evangelism is another example of how the right has strategically co-opted Christian religious teachings to provide support for their autocratic tendencies, as well as their fears about technology being limited through ‘woke’ beliefs,” Anthea Butler, chair of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies, wrote in a Tuesday editorial for MSNOW.

Earlier in the piece, Butler broke down the components of Thiel’s religious philosophy, identifying them as a “mishmash of his political and personal beliefs about technology, civilization, race and democracy. And his views on the antichrist range from the disturbing to the nonsensical.”

Thiel, a businessman in the military-industrial complex, “believes the antichrist will push the world toward peace using the fear of war” and “use peace to slow down or even stop technological advances,” including the AI technology in which Thiel has invested billions.

“He’s said it’s possible that climate change activist Greta Thunberg and other critics could be ‘legionnaires of the Antichrist,’” a notable position given AI’s disproportionate impact on climate change.

“It’s a belief structure built on fear — and Thiel’s fear appears to be that western civilization will be crushed by a myriad of people and forces that don’t adhere to his interpretation of technocratic Christian beliefs,” Butler explained. Other top Catholic scholars agree with her, including Italian theologian Father Paolo Benanti, who denounced Thiel’s beliefs as “a sustained act of heresy,” and the Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro, who said Thiel misunderstands what the Antichrist actually is.

“The Antichrist, rather than a theological figure, is a concrete, identifiable historical possibility,” Spadaro said. “This is the point at which the Gospel is transformed into an instrument of geopolitical analysis.”

Butler also pointed out that Thiel’s potential belief that humanity should cease to exist are equally troubling and “should give us all pause.”

“The next time Thiel embarks on his lecture tour to tout his teachings about the Antichrist, remember that his lectures are the musings of a man who wants technology to overtake the emotional connections that humans have,” Butler wrote. “The New York Times’ Ross Douthat asked Thiel in a June 2025 interview, ‘I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?’ After a long hesitation, Thiel replied, ‘There’s so many questions implicit in this,’ before eventually offering a ‘Yes.’”

In addition to supplying the Pentagon, Thiel was also connected to Israel through the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who helped Palantir expand into the Middle East.

Ultimately Epstein’s theology seems to be motivated less by a consistent core belief system than a hodgepodge of ideas united mainly by their convenience to Thiel’s various business and political interests.

"Peter Thiel's Armageddon speaking tour has — like the world — not ended yet," Wired reporter Laura Bullard explained in September. "For a full two years now, the billionaire has been on the circuit, spreading his biblically inflected ideas about doomsday through a set of variably and sometimes visibly perplexed interviewers…. Depending on who you are, you may find it hilarious, fascinating, insufferable, or horrifying that one of the world's most powerful men is obsessing over a figure from sermons and horror movies. But the ideas and influences behind these talks are key to understanding how Thiel sees his own massive role in the world — in politics, technology, and the fate of the species."

Last week, another one of the Duggar family brothers was arrested after questions over inappropriate actions with a minor, but now his wife has been taken into custody too on a completely unrelated matter. It's leading to a lot of questions about what is wrong with the famous right-wing religious family.

It was reported Sunday that Arkansas police have arrested Kendra Duggar, whose husband, Joseph Duggar, was arrested last week. Something he allegedly did years ago to a minor who was just 9 at the time is coming to light now that the minor has turned 14. Kendra Duggar is being accused of of endangering the welfare of a minor and second-degree false imprisonment.

Out Magazine columnist Josh Ackley alleged that the men appear to be following a "pattern that is, by now, painfully familiar. A child. A trusted adult in a private setting. A disclosure that comes years later, when the cost of speaking has already been paid in silence."

Ackley wondered if the "deeply patriarchal form of conservative Christianity" is part of the problem, as it isn't unique to such religious sects. The harm there can unfold "quietly, where disclosure is complicated, and where the response is often shaped less by the child's needs than by the need to preserve the system around them," wrote Ackley.

The allegations against the family that began in 2015 came after Josh Duggar, Joseph's elder brother, was found to have molested five children, four of whom were his sisters.

Amy Duggar King, who is known for being the more outspoken cousin of the reality TV family, took to social media over the weekend to express her shock but said she was"not surprised."

“In light of the recent allegations involving my cousin, Joseph Duggar, I am sickened, heartbroken and deeply angry,” King said in a Friday statement to People. “My first thoughts are with the victim, a child who deserved to be safe, protected and surrounded by people she could trust. The courage it took for her to come forward, especially after years of carrying something so heavy, cannot be overstated. That bravery deserves to be honored above all else.”

That was before Kendra Duggar was arrested, days after her husband. After that arrest, she said simply that she's deeply worried about the children and making sure that they are all safe.

Influencer "ClassyRedneckLady," retired voice actress Alison Viktorin, said on Instagram that it tells her that the police have their eyes on the Duggar family.

"This makes me think there's dark stuff happening in their compound and the police are paying attention," she said. The allegations come from the sister of Kendra Duggar, and the police found the children's doors were locked from the outside.

She said that people should keep an eye on such families, calling them an example of "satan families."

In his column, Ackley describes it much like the way that the Catholic priest molestation scandals played out.

"And what people knew, even when they did not say it out loud, was how those situations were often handled. When a parent discovered what was happening, the instinct was not always to go to the police. It was to go to the church. The response would take place internally, through counseling, through spiritual intervention, through processes framed as protecting the family, but which also had the effect of keeping everything contained. The harm did not disappear. It was managed in a way that shielded the system, and often the person responsible, from outside scrutiny," he said.

Novelist and columnist Mark James Miller wrote, "More right-wing family values hypocrisy. Arkansas police arrest Kendra Duggar on child abuse charges."

Publicist ‪Tommy Lightfoot Garrett‬ commented, "I keep telling you about these Biblebillies."

Surveillance video from inside the jail shows the officer processing Joseph Duggar and asking whether he'd been there before. He explained that his brother had.

In the true crime podcast "Without A Crystal Ball," Katie Joy explained that often police go into the home after the arrest as part of their ongoing investigation into the person and search for additional information. What likely happened in this case, she said, is that they did that here, and that's when they found the locks on the outer part of the doors. Then it becomes more than simply a "Joseph problem" because parents have a duty to protect their children.