That combative old hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers, is not much heard these days, though it was once a favourite with church congregations and school assemblies. Written in 1865 by Sabine Baring-Gould, an English clergyman and religious scholar, its belligerent refrain urges the faithful on to battle, victory and conquest: “Onward, Christian soldiers / Marching as to war / With the cross of Jesus / Going on before!” Its martial tone suited the Victorian zeitgeist but it made succeeding generations uneasy (though it was still sung in my primary school in the early 1960s). Nowadays, this sort of triumphalism gives religion a bad name.
Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, and a leading Christian soldier, would certainly disagree. He probably hums it on his way to work. At a recent Christian worship service in the Pentagon – an irregular event, given the constitution’s dislike of anything smacking of state religion – Hegseth, referencing Iran, prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. Hegseth’s creed is killing. He describes Iranians as “religious fanatics”. And he should know. His intolerant brand of evangelical Christian nationalism is extreme even by US standards – yet has Donald Trump’s backing. Trump was a Presbyterian until 2020, when he abruptly declared he wasn’t. God knows what he is now.
Exploitation of Christian belief for political and military ends is a long-established, shabby US practice. Yet there’s a darkly obnoxious underside. Implicit in the official demonisation and dehumanisation of the Iranian nation is fear and loathing of otherness, in this case Shia Muslims. In one of his first acts as president in 2017, Trump banned immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries, and has continued in that hateful vein.
For most practising Christians, the misappropriation, distortion and weaponisation of faith to justify death and destruction, sow divisions, excuse war crimes and bomb Iran “back to the stone ages” is deeply saddening. Christians – who celebrate Easter on Sunday – believe Jesus was crucified for the sake of all mankind, for the forgiveness of sins, not for vindictive vengeance, pride and domination. Pope Leo spoke for many beyond the Catholic church at a Palm Sunday mass in Rome in forcefully rejecting attempts by zealots such as Hegseth to conscript Christianity. “No one can use [Jesus] to justify war,” he said, quoting Isaiah. War-makers’ prayers would go unanswered. “Your hands are full of blood.”
Not all Christians oppose Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war of choice in Iran. Yet Leo’s outrage is shared in Britain by, among others, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, and is echoed across the Islamic world and by Jews around the world. It reflects a much bigger battle – over the way today’s authoritarian leaders ignore international law and encourage and exploit the disintegration of the post-1945 “global rules-based order”. The cost of this breakdown is usually counted in terms of geopolitical and economic disruption, fractured alliances and unilateral acts of impunity, such as the invasion of Ukraine and genocide in Gaza. But the brutalisation and demoralisation of the global order must be counted an ethical issue, too. Its collapse constitutes a fundamental, universal crisis of morality.
More than ever, perhaps, a conflicted world needs independent, apolitical voices willing, and sufficiently courageous, to speak truth to power, stand up to autocratic bullies, defend the weakest and most vulnerable, and call out injustice and state lawlessness. When temporal leadership fails, when trust and confidence in secular governments and politicians are lacking, when belief in democracy is fading and when people’s basic security, physical and financial, is threatened by forces beyond their control, who then will challenge tyranny? With growing desperation, nailed to a cross of their own making, broken societies cry out for spiritual rescue.
In this global struggle against chaos, all religions must play a role. Yet over Iran, its latest manifestation, the response has often seemed cautious and divided. In the UK, Sarah Mullally, installed last month as archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican communion, sidestepped the war in her first sermon. In contrast, Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Iranian-born bishop of Chelmsford, denounced it as illegal, as neither moral nor just.
The assassination by Israel of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who was also a senior clerical authority for Shia Muslims everywhere, was exceptionally provocative (and illegal). Yet regional reactions have divided along sectarian lines. In Syria, some Sunni Muslims celebrated his death. The war is popular among Jewish Israelis but a majority of Jewish Americans is opposed, with 77% saying Trump has no plan – according to a J Street poll. Similar divides exist over Ukraine, where religious organisations linked to the slavishly pro-Putin, pro-war Russian Orthodox church are banned by Kyiv.
Such schisms and splits are nothing new. Yet facing global geopolitical meltdown, Christian leaders of every stripe have a clearcut moral responsibility to unite in championing a more militant, voluble, specifically anti-war, pro-justice ecumenicalism. In truth, all faith leaders, not just Christians, could and should act together. Mosque worshippers in Tehran, Beirut and Gaza, synagogue members in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and north London, churchgoers from Canterbury to Cincinnati and their children – children like those incinerated by a Tomahawk missile in Minab – all share a common interest in upholding the basic human freedom to live, work and follow the god of their conscience without being blown up, terrorised, persecuted and cynically misled by reckless politicians.
Despite Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric, and sensational online talk about “end times” and Armageddon, this immensely damaging, unjustified and shaming war may be forcing Americans to reassess their moral relationship with the world. Is Trump solely to blame? wondered the US columnist Lydia Polgreen. Or is he “the fulfilment of what America has always been – a self-satisfied nation, granted license by its myths about providence and exceptionalism to do whatever it wants”. Trump’s presidency, she argued, “has revealed a much older malady: America’s unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one. Beyond Trump, it’s this disfiguring mentality we Americans must face.”
Pray that this Easter, Trump and his blasphemous subordinates may join in this welcome introspection – and halt their Iran crusade. And scrub that old Victorian hymn, too. Hardline US evangelical nationalists are the modern equivalent of what a memorable 1964 book by Diana Dewar, an expert on children’s religious education, called “backward Christian soldiers”. As ever, the religious right, like the right in general, is marching furiously in the wrong direction.
