Civil Religion

A recent string of revelations about abuses by the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps presents an opportunity to rein in the military’s presence and power in public schools.

A federal commission tasked with approving designs for coinage has approved a 24-karat gold coin featuring President Donald Trump, flouting precedent regarding commemorating living presidents and possibly violating federal law.

The coin, formally meant to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States, shows Trump standing behind a desk, firmly pushing his two fists on top of it while giving a stern look in the direction of the coin holder.

The unanimous vote from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts occurred on Thursday. The commission is composed entirely of people appointed by the president, following his firing of its former members last fall.

“This is how we should order our lives together,” he said. “And frankly, yes, we are going to impose it upon you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but this is good and right and just if it lines up with God’s standards, and I am going to enforce my morality on you in as much as our morality is God’s morality.”

“You should always check yourselves,” he continued. “Do I believe what God believes? Am I defending what God says is good?”

“And if it is, then you should have the courage to say, ‘This is how we’re going to run our town, this is how we’re going to run our county, this is how we’re going to run our state, and this is how we should run the United States of America by legislating the morality that we can find in the Bible.'”

The Christian Zionist movement has long pushed for regime change in Iran. With allies in Donald Trump’s inner circle and its ideas seeping into the US military, it has played a key role in building support for the current war.

Today, however, it seems Christian Zionism’s influence has risen to a new level in government.

Since the strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group, reported over 200 complaints about commanders telling troops across branches of the U.S. armed forces that the current war with Iran was part of a divine plan, invoking biblical ideas about the “end times.”

“Anytime Israel or the U.S. is involved in the Middle East, we get this stuff about Christian nationalists who’ve taken over our government, and certainly our U.S. military,” Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, the foundation’s president, told The Guardian.

A further sign of Christian Zionism moving into government was the 2025 appointment of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Among the most influential and prominent Christian Zionists, Huckabee, a Baptist minister, for years led “Holy Land tours” to Israel.

“I believe it is a special place because God made it special,” Huckabee told conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September 2025. “I believe the Scripture, Genesis 12: Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. I want to be on the blessing side, not the curse side.”

In conclusion, Pete Hegseth represents a new model of American leadership that does not hide its ideological agenda, putting US relations with the Islamic world to a real test. As the military and political war continues, the question remains about the extent of the impact of this 'crusading' vision on regional stability and the future of international alliances.

THE UNITED STATES is waging a religious war. This is, at least, how dozens of fanatical U.S. military commanders understand President Donald Trump’s illegal assault on Iran: a messianic battle to bring about Jesus Christ’s return.

“President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” one military commander told his combat unit, which could be deployed to fight in Iran “at any moment,” according to a complaint reportedly filed by one of the unit’s officers to a military watchdog group.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation says it has been “inundated” with more than 200 calls across dozens of military installations, including 110 complaints filed between Saturday morning and Monday evening, from service members reporting their commanders have invoked similar extremist rhetoric of Christian Zionist messianism when justifying the unprovoked war on Iran.

Florida public schools will force students to take a Heritage Foundation-backed class on the “evils of communism.”

Carr closed out his statement by asking those networks down to patriotically clown on Independence Day to swear their fealty and commitment to the above requests by joining his Pledge America Campaign. Carr said he looks forward to broadcasters “taking the Pledge and fulfilling their public interest mandate” before noting that this is all completely voluntary, of course.

Time will tell what amazing displays of jingoism await us this summer. But it America’s birthday is anything like that lit parade they had last year to the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary—brought to you by Coinbase—we’re all in for an unforgettable experience.

For roughly half a century, a certain strain of American evangelical theology has taught millions of believers to read conflicts like Trump’s war with Iran not simply as geopolitics in action but as prophecy unfolding in real time. I was one of them.

You look at Trump and it's like, I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you are. You are demonic. You are a demonic force. And what's really freaky is now he's always talking about going to heaven, “I'm not going to heaven.” Yeah, I think you might be right about that because you are a demonic force. You are a liar. You are diabolical. You are a traitor.

(this post is not an endorsement of any of these people)

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By attempting to frame the conflict as a holy war, leaders are using theological beliefs to “justify action, mobilise political opinion, and leverage support”, Jolyon Mitchell, a professor at Durham University in the UK, told Al Jazeera.

“Many on both sides of this conflict believe that they have God on their side. God is enlisted in this conflict, as with many others, to support acts of violence. The demonisation and dehumanisation of the enemy, the ‘other’, will inevitably make building peace after the conflict even harder,” Mitchell said.

“There are several overlapping reasons, and they operate at different levels: domestic mobilisation, civilisational framing, and strategic narrative construction,” Ibrahim Abusharif, an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

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Abusharif said that the war on Iran is about power and politics, but using religious rhetoric energises supporters and “moralises” the conflict.

“The war itself is not theological. It is geopolitical. But the language surrounding it increasingly draws on sacred imagery and civilisational narratives. That rhetoric can mobilise supporters and frame the conflict in morally absolute terms,” Abusharif said.

“Yet it also carries risks: once a war is cast in sacred language, political compromise becomes harder, expectations become higher, and the global perception of the conflict can shift in ways that complicate diplomacy.”

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

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The book 'The Religious Dimension in American Policy Towards the Arab-Zionist Conflict' by researcher and diplomat Youssef Al-Hassan, raises fundamental questions about the nature of American desperation in defending the Zionist entity. The author believes that traditional explanations, which limit this support to strategic interests or the pressures of the Israeli lobby, remain inadequate for understanding the doctrinal depth that drives the ruling elites in Washington.

The book's central hypothesis revolves around the role of the contemporary Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States as a fundamental pillar of the Zionist project. Al-Hassan explains that this movement does not see Israel merely as a political ally, but considers its existence to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecies related to the Second Coming of Christ, making its defense a form of worship.

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Fundamental questions are escalating regarding the double standards governing international politics, especially when it comes to projecting religious beliefs onto official positions. This contradiction is clearly highlighted when comparing the Western model's acceptance of its officials' religiosity with the condemnation of any religious authority in Islamic contexts.

The appointment of Mike Huckabee to a high diplomatic post was not merely a fleeting administrative measure; rather, it revealed the depth of his evangelical background and its direct impact on his decisions. Nevertheless, this background was treated as part of a legitimate personal identity within an institutional system that claims separation of religion and state.

The great paradox lies in the fact that Western religiosity is often marketed as an individual conviction governed by modern constitutional controls, while Islamic orientation is classified as a reactionary project that threatens civility. This classification is not based on objective values but reflects power balances that grant one party the right to define what is civilized.

No serious international calls emerged demanding Ambassador Huckabee leave his 'Evangelical-Talmudic' beliefs at the threshold of his position, even though his stances further complicate the region's turmoil. Instead, he is allowed to pour oil on the burning fire under the guise of biased official diplomacy.

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When pressed on whether biblical geography implied sovereignty beyond Israel’s current borders, Huckabee responded: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

That sentence is not incidental. It encapsulates a worldview. Beneath his selective invocation of international law lies Christian Zionism: the belief that Israel’s legitimacy rests not on negotiated sovereignty or contemporary legal norms, but on biblical covenant.

Some interpretations envision borders extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing territory in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, countries that together are home to hundreds of millions of people.

This is no longer fringe theology. It increasingly intersects with political power.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today urged broadcasters to join a “Pledge America Campaign” that Carr established to support President Trump’s “Salute to America 250” project.

Carr said in a press release: “I am inviting broadcasters to pledge to air programming in their local markets in support of this historic national, non-partisan celebration.” The press release said Carr is asking broadcasters to “air patriotic, pro-America programming in support of America’s 250th birthday.”

Carr gave what he called examples of content that broadcasters can run if they take the pledge. His examples include “starting each broadcast day with the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ or Pledge of Allegiance”; airing “PSAs, short segments, or full specials specifically promoting civic education, inspiring local stories, and American history”; running “segments during regular news programming that highlight local sites that are significant to American and regional history, such as National Park Service sites”; airing “music by America’s greatest composers, such as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin”; and providing daily “Today in American History” announcements highlighting significant events from US history.

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Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State and a bulwark of the Trump administration, gave a “disquieting” imperialist speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday to deflect from the Epstein files fallout.

Markets are not natural, spontaneous or free. They are legal, institutional and political creations of the state. Without law, money, regulation, wages, accounting standards and trust, markets collapse into monopoly, coercion and extraction.

In this New Year’s Day video/transcript, I explain why the neoliberal myth of “free markets” is not just wrong, but actively destructive — and why rebuilding the state, rethinking capital and restoring democratic accountability must define our economic direction for 2026.