Belief

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.

Now in his early seventies, Pastor Douglas Wilson is hardly a newcomer to the Religious Right. Wilson, the pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, has been preaching a severe version of evangelical Protestant fundamentalism since the late 1970s. But during the 1980s and 1990s, he was a marginal figure in the evangelical world. Wilson, in those days, wasn't nearly as well-known as prominent Religious Right figures like the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Focus on the Family's James Dobson, or the Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) Rev. Pat Robertson.

In recent years, however, Wilson has achieved much greater prominence on the Religious Right, enjoying a close relationship with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Wilson is an unrelenting proponent of Christian nationalism as well as dominionist theology, which believes that the United States should be a total theocracy governed by strict Biblical law. Critics of that ideology argue dominionists would govern the U.S. in much the same way that the Sunni Taliban governs Afghanistan and Shiite Islamists govern Iran, albeit with fundamentalist evangelical Christianity rather than a Sunni or Shiite version of Shariah law.

Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies scholar and author of the book "Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction," is known for her expertise on extreme ideologies like Christian reconstructionism and dominionist theology. And in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 18, she examines Wilson's growing prominence in the GOP and the MAGA movement and the ways he would like to see the U.S. governed.

"In the college town of Moscow, Idaho," Ingersoll explains, "a once-obscure pastor-theologian has spent decades building his church into an empire. Today, he leads not only that church, but a denomination to which more than 150 churches around the world belong — plus a private school and an association of over 400 Christian schools, a college, a seminary, and a publishing house. In his writing and speaking over the decades, he has sought to revise our understanding of the reality of chattel slavery in the American South; articulated a vision of innate, virtuous hierarchy that includes an extreme form of male headship; and advocated the wholesale conversion of the United States of America to a theocracy that would apply Old Testament law across the land. Democracy, he once said, is 'foolishness.' And in his view, God is not just a God of love, but a God who actively participates with his people in war."

The religious scholar adds, "Last month, that pastor, Douglas Wilson, stepped up to a lectern at the Pentagon to address a monthly gathering of military leaders. He had come at the personal invitation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth."

Ingersoll emphasizes that although Wilson is way outside the mainstream of Protestant Christianity, he is now well-connected in the GOP, the MAGA movement and the Trump Administration. The scholar describes Hegseth as "Wilson's most powerful and well-known follower in Donald Trump's America."

"Proponents of America as a Christian nation are often somewhat hazy about what the end state of a 'Christian nation' would look like specifically," Ingersoll observes, "but Wilson and his followers have carefully laid out a detailed vision. For them, a Christian nation would be governed directly by biblical law — and in every area of its common life and culture, it would be shaped by a comprehensive 'biblical world and life view'…. If you accept that the Bible is true, Wilson believes that the rest of his political-theological paradigm must follow."

Ingersoll adds, "A Christian nation, in his account, is a nation in which there is no area of life and culture where the Bible is not the ultimate authority. Wilson and other Christian nationalists draw on a framework known as 'sphere sovereignty' to interpret and apply the Bible to every area of modern life."

President Donald Trump and his supporters are engaging in “more overt” defiance of laws prohibiting nonprofits like churches from explicit partisan activity — and this is because, one journalist alleges, MAGA is run by Christian nationalists.

“People not attuned to the evangelical world may have missed the growing prominence of hyper-politicized churches such as Mercy Culture, which have become a key wing of the MAGA coalition,” wrote The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe. “Compared with the religious right of previous generations, this cohort of pastors, influencers, and self-described prophets offers up a version of worship that’s at once more mystical, with an emphasis on supernatural powers, and more militaristic, with heightened political rhetoric.”

Monroe added, “Many adopt a Christian-nationalist framework, arguing that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed as such.” They do this in spite of the Johnson Amendment, which outlaws precisely this type of overtly political activity from churches and other religious institutions that wish to claim nonprofit status.

“Houses of worship aligned with both political parties have long flirted with defying the rule, but, after Trump was first elected, that defiance became more overt,” Monroe wrote, highlighting the Texas nondenominational evangelical megachurch Mercy Culture as one example. “Mercy Culture’s pastors hung a candidate’s banner behind the pulpit, endorsed politicians during Sunday services, said that people who vote for Democrats weren’t truly Christian, and described Kamala Harris as a demonic Jezebel taking the form of a snake encircling the White House.”

Monroe is not alone among journalists to notice the literally militant tone of the Christians in the White House under Trump. The Hill's Jos Joseph, a Marine Corps veteran who now writes about the military, reported that some of the brass in the military are explaining the war in Iran in bluntly religious terms.

"There is messaging that this war with Iran is somehow a religious war tied to the Book of Revelations, the second coming of Jesus, and the end of the world," Joseph wrote. "One of the stories was of a military commander who told his non-commissioned officers that Trump was 'anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.' It would be easy to write this off as a single military commander off his rocker, who shouldn't be in command of a U.S. military unit. But the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said they received more than 200 complaints in a couple of days from service members being told in separate instances that their military mission was key to fulfilling Christian prophecy."

He added, "Add the fact that Israel is also at war with Iran, along with several high-ranking Trump officials being ardent Christian nationalists or devout evangelicals, and you have to ask yourself: What is the reason for this war?.... This is a cause of concern, because as the war evolves, there is a good chance that the objectives will change in a way suited to Christian nationalists' beliefs."

At a Pentagon recent press briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closed his remarks with a reading from the Bible’s Book of Psalms, ending with “Amen.”

That was not the first time Hegseth has used prominent Christian declarations in public, and it’s apparently bleeding over to others in the military. Some members of Congress are now calling for a Department of Defense investigation into military officers allegedly invoking the Bible in pursuit of the Iran war.

What is clear is that Hegseth and others are putting an evangelical Christian nationalist spin on a range of things, from Charlie Kirk's murder to the military and Iran. That is fraught with implications during a war with a nation where the main religion is Islam.

Hegseth has been hosting monthly worship services, overlaying Scripture on images of fighter jets and missile systems, and telling assembled troops the country needed to be “on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

That, says the Religion News Service (RNS) “raises the uncomfortable question” of what the language of Christianity means for the DoG while at war.

Diving into that question, the RNS repeated an interview that aired last year on the podcast “Complexified” between host Amanda Henderson and RNS reporter Jack Jenkins.

Jenkins said that historically, religious expression in the U.S. military is not uncommon. “We’ve had many a military leader reference God or Christianity at some point in some sort of vague ways that are often kind of considered part of what’s referred to as the civil religion of the United States — kind of these more vague appeals,” Jenkins said. The Pentagon, Jenkins notes, has chaplains, hosts Mass five times a week, and houses a chapel that regularly holds worship services for a myriad of different faith traditions.

But Hegseth’s approach seems to center his form of Christianity, Jenkins said.

Hegseth spoke at the Charlie Kirk memorial and once again seemed to center his own version of Christianity rather than the more traditional vague invocations, Jenkins said.

“He again made this overt appeal to Americans to also embrace the specific kind of Christianity that he was modeling,” Jenkins said. Now, he’s not saying, like, ‘Join my denomination.’ But it’s very clearly coming from an evangelical Christian space.”

Another way that is being demonstrated is in military recruitment videos. Many of the promotional videos for the U.S. military overlay imagery of weapons of war and service members with a Bible verse.

That raises the question of whether they’re intentionally trying to recruit people “with the idea that the U.S. military is also something that can be held in concert with one specifically evangelical Christian faith,” Jenkins said.

Whether there has been pushback on this overt religion trend is unclear, Jenkins said. But given its ongoing presence in the public proclamations, an order to halt is unlikely.

In recent months, the GOP has thrown everything it can at James Talarico, the Texas senatorial candidate who just won the Democratic primary and Republicans worry is a strong contender for the election in November. On Tuesday, the X account for Senate Republicans tried to turn his words back on him, but it didn’t go quite the way whoever handles the profile expected.

Along with a video of Talarico speaking before a Texas church congregation, the tweet quoted him saying, “Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. Christ is the senior deprived of their Social Security benefits. Christ is the protestor kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain clothes officers.” At the head of the quote, the poster included a red flashing light emoji, signifying that there was something alarming about his words.

However, Talarico—a Presbyterian seminarian and former school teacher—retweeted the post along with a simple response: “I approve this message.”

This isn’t the first or most visible time Republicans have had their attempts to stymie Talarico’s campaign backfire.

In February, after CBS lawyers prevented Stephen Colbert from televising a segment with the Texas Democrat due to pressure from Trump’s FCC chief Brendan Carr, the interview was posted to YouTube where it garnered more than 9 million views, with many commenters noting they only watched because of the controversy. Within 24 hours of the video going live, Talarico’s campaign raked in over $2.5 million in donations—its highest single fundraising day yet.

“I think Donald Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico’s campaign asserted in a statement. “This is the party that ran against cancel culture. Now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, and what we read. This is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top. A threat to one of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.”

Now with the primary behind him and the general election approaching fast, it seems increasingly apparent that these GOP attacks are failing.

“I just wish these Republicans weren’t so stupid,” said Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, speaking about Talarico’s campaign. “The very person they were trying to defeat, the very person whose message scared them, is the very person who they helped win this race. It just keeps happening over and over.”

Many far-right Christian nationalists are saying that President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran is about much more than attacking the Iranian government — they view it as a war for fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. Some are even calling it a "holy war," which is the same type of rhetoric that radical Islamist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) use in defense of their Islamist agenda.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on March 11, Jos Joseph — a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who now writes about the military — takes offense at the claim that Trump's Iran operation is a "religious war."

"There is messaging that this war with Iran is somehow a religious war tied to the Book of Revelations, the second coming of Jesus, and the end of the world," Joseph explains. "One of the stories was of a military commander who told his non-commissioned officers that Trump was 'anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.' It would be easy to write this off as a single military commander off his rocker, who shouldn't be in command of a U.S. military unit. But the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said they received more than 200 complaints in a couple of days from service members being told in separate instances that their military mission was key to fulfilling Christian prophecy."

Joseph adds, "Add the fact that Israel is also at war with Iran, along with several high-ranking Trump officials being ardent Christian nationalists or devout evangelicals, and you have to ask yourself: What is the reason for this war?.... This is a cause of concern, because as the war evolves, there is a good chance that the objectives will change in a way suited to Christian nationalists' beliefs."

The claim that Trump's military operation in Iran is a "holy war" is by no means universally held within Christianity. In fact, many Mainline Protestants and Catholics find that claim deeply offensive.

Christian nationalists, however, continue to double down on their argument.

"Thousands, if not millions, of evangelical Christians hold the view that the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East will somehow trigger Christ's return," Joseph observes. "And it is their right to believe such things. But there is a major issue when Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, (Mike) Huckabee, and company start using those beliefs to justify waging, continuing or expanding an already unpopular war."

Pop star Rihanna was allegedly attacked at her home on Sunday by a rifle-wielding Christian influencer who had previously threatened her online.

“Rihanna's alleged shooter is a Christian influencer who made a twisted threat against the singer days before her rifle attack,” Radar Online reported. Ivanna Ortiz, who was previously arrested in Florida for domestic violence, careless driving and violating pretrial release conditions, first threatened Rihanna on Facebook on Feb. 23rd.

Ortiz, who is facing an attempted murder charge, wrote: "@badgalriri Are you there?” She then continued, "Cause I was waiting for your AIDS 5-head self to say something to me directly instead of sneaking around like you talking to me where I'm not at." On previous occasions, Ortiz blasted Rihanna as a "turn hiding b — —."

On Sunday, Ortiz allegedly pulled up outside Rihanna’s Beverly Hills mansion on Sunday in a white Tesla, pulled out a rifle and fired roughly 10 shots in the direction of Rihanna’s residence. Although Rihanna was home at the time, according to reports she “didn’t know too much” about the shooting as it transpired.

Ortiz, a former pageant contestant who won Miss Teen Illinois Latina Princess in 2006, runs a program on YouTube called "Praying Woman's Journal.”

Rihanna has previously experienced tragedy in her personal life from domestic abusers. In the late 2000s, Rihanna had a well-publicized break up with her physically abusive then-boyfriend, fellow pop star Chris Brown, who repeatedly beat, punched, choked and bit her. It took Rihanna multiple attempts to permanently leave Brown.

Rihanna has also not hesitated to make her views known on the Christian right. In 2018, she issued a cease-and-desist to President Donald Trump for using her song “Don’t Stop The Music” without her permission at a campaign event. In 2011, meanwhile, Rihanna abruptly cancelled at a South Florida fundraiser where she was scheduled to perform for Trump at the height of his spreading racist conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama. Despite claiming to have been sick, Rihanna took the stage at halftime of the NBA All-Star Game 24 hours after she cancelled on Trump.

“I thought that (Rihanna bailing) was insulting to everyone,” Trump told the Palm Beach Post at the time. "But for Rihanna to go to the (NBA) All-Star game and perform after she told us she was sick, that is just a lack of respect."