Trump team ties raids and wars to biblical verses

A Homeland Security video set to a dark pop cover and crowned with a Matthew passage depicting peacemaking and “sons of God” has ignited debate about how the Trump administration is using scripture to frame immigration enforcement and military force. The contr

As immigration enforcement actions were underway in Minnesota in January, the Department of Homeland Security released a video that, at first glance, looked less like a bureaucratic announcement than a movie trailer.

The footage moved in a sequence of tense contrasts. In green night-vision haze, a helicopter hovered overhead. Armed agents battered doors, while bodies shifted across the screen with choreographed urgency. The production reached for cultural familiarity as well. set to singer Lorde’s haunting cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”.

Then the Bible arrived on the screen. A quote from the Gospel of Matthew opened the religious frame with: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Moments later. after more imagery of military-style immigration enforcement actions. the rest of the passage materialized: “for they shall be called the sons of God.”.

For Dyron Daughrity. a minister in the evangelical Church of Christ and dean of religion and philosophy at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Calif. the connection was striking even if it felt familiar. “My first thought was, there is a gun called the Peacemaker,” Daughrity said. “It’s sort of this idea of peace through strength.”.

Daughrity said presidents have long leaned on scripture as rhetorical fuel. He pointed to Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George W. Bush among those who invoked the Bible to frame moments of national crisis or purpose. But what made the DHS video stand out to him—and to others—was how directly it tied specific biblical language to the state’s use of force. from immigration enforcement to military action.

A study released by Pew Research this month found a new shift in public attitudes toward that kind of religious influence. For the first time since Pew began asking the question. a majority of those surveyed say that the Bible should have a great deal or at least some influence on U.S. laws. Pew also found that 28% of respondents said that when the Bible and the will of the people conflict. the Bible should have more influence over laws.

Daughrity said he hears in the DHS video an old story about armies and religion—God invoked alongside violence rather than in spite of it. “It’s very common for armies. militaries just throughout history to invoke the name of God. to invoke the name of Jesus Christ. ” he said. “The pairing of biblical language with force, in that sense, belongs to a long and familiar tradition.”.

But Yale Divinity School professor Yii-Jan Lin sees something more calculated in the production choices. Lin is the author of the book Immigration and Apocalypse, and she described the video as an intentional provocation.

“DHS is causing surprise for a certain reason—to make a statement: that whatever Homeland Security is doing is to create peace, even if it looks violent,” Lin said.

Other scholars of Christianity argue that the framing comes with a moral cost—because the verse is being used outside the spirit of the passage that gives it meaning.

The Rev. John Dickson, who teaches at Wheaton College near Chicago, said the argument cannot be separated from the surrounding teaching. He pointed to the broader context of the Sermon on the Mount.

“The opening line of the whole Sermon on the Mount—the Beatitudes—is ‘blessed are the poor in spirit. ’” Dickson said. “It sets the whole thing against that discussion of how one takes the kingdom: through meekness. peacemaking. humility. love.” He said those words stand “in stark opposition” to the type of actions shown in the DHS video.

Obery Hendricks. an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who teaches religion at Columbia University. said the dissonance is both aesthetic and religious. “To use that song ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World. ’ what they’re saying is. ‘Yes. we are building an empire. ’” Hendricks said.

That fusion of scripture and statecraft—scholars say—extends beyond Homeland Security. Among the administration’s most religiously outspoken figures is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, an evangelical who has written a book titled American Crusade.

Hegseth has repeatedly framed political and military action in biblical terms, including during the war with Iran and in the days and weeks leading up to the military actions there. After the invasion of Venezuela, he quoted from Psalm 144 at a Pentagon prayer service held January 21.

“Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle,” Hegseth quoted.

In early February at the National Prayer Breakfast, Hegseth began with a reading from the Gospel of Mark: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it.”

Hegseth then offered an interpretation that cast the passage in martial terms. “The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his creator,” Hegseth said. “That warrior finds eternal life.”

Lin described what she views as a consequential shift. “To Lin, this is a consequential shift: from cross to sword,” she said.

“What Hegseth is cleverly doing is calling to arms—to be warriors, to pick up a sword in a type of glorious martyrdom,” Lin said. “But, she added, ‘he’s missing the power dynamic here, which is Jesus is not doing that for the cause of empire but actually against [it].’”

Dickson, reading the same biblical material, reached an opposite conclusion. He said it points toward opposing zealotry.

“This was the ultimate critique of a warrior theology,” he said. “It is saying Christianity moves forward through service and suffering, not through force.”

Not everyone sees the growing explicitness as a warning sign. Daughrity, the evangelical minister and professor, said the public visibility of faith in politics has changed. He described a shift from the relative restraint of previous decades to a more open embrace of religious identity.

“Where a politician probably wouldn’t have talked like that, let’s say 30 years ago, now they’re just openly embracing their religiosity,” Daughrity said. For him, that visibility comes with its own imperative. “To compete in this world, we have to defend our faith, and we have to be evangelistic.”

But Lin argued that the DHS and Hegseth approach depends on a specific way of treating scripture—as a tool to deploy rather than a text that challenges the reader. Hendricks drew the line even more sharply, contrasting two ways of doing Christianity.

“We’re talking about ideological Christianity versus Christianity of faith,” Hendricks said. “The ideological Christianity refracts everything in the Bible through the prism of the interests of one who’s interpreting it.”

He suggested a different alternative: “The alternative, he suggests, is more demanding. In what he describes as a Christianity of faith, scripture does not sanctify power—it interrogates it, challenging every political position rather than blessing any one agenda.”

Taken together. the DHS video’s “Blessed are the peacemakers” framing during Minnesota enforcement actions in January. the song choice from Lorde’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World. ” and Hegseth’s quoted Bible passages at the Pentagon prayer service held January 21 and at the National Prayer Breakfast in early February show the same pattern: scripture placed close to state action. not far from it.

The tension between these approaches is not brand new. But scholars say the stakes feel sharper now because religious language is showing up not only in speeches by administration officials. but also in highly produced videos scored and edited for maximum impact. That leaves one question urgent in public life: not whether the Bible belongs there. but what happens when it is used to sanctify power rather than to question it.

MISRYOUM Politics News DHS video Minnesota January Lorde Everybody Wants to Rule the World Gospel of Matthew Blessed are the peacemakers sons of God Pete Hegseth American Crusade Psalm 144 National Prayer Breakfast Gospel of Mark Pentagon prayer service Abraham Lincoln Franklin D. Roosevelt George W. Bush Pew Research study