Pro-Trump evangelicals are applauding his war in Iran, saying it will change history. But the nation’s Catholic leaders question its justification and morality while criticizing the administration’s “sickening” videos that blend footage of destruction and casualties in Iran with scenes from video games, movies and NFL games.
“I’ve not seen a conflict that the United States has been involved in that is more justified than this one,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a March 6 interview on CBN. “I completely support the president.”
Perkins said the war was “biblically supported,” met theological criteria for a just war, and illustrated “the distinction and the clarity between the two camps,” meaning Republicans and Democrats. FRC has also done fundraising with a “Prayer Pledge” supporting the war.
“Americans’ opinions, with all due respect, don’t really matter,” said an FRC article. “The why of the administration’s action should never be in question. Like it or not, voters chose him to use his own judgment when it came to confronting the bullies of this world. … This administration and its allies are changing the course of history.”
Sermons from pastors Greg Laurie and John Hagee “view the war through a lens of Revelation’s apocalyptic prophecy about the final day of judgment,” reported the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
Laurie preached about Magog attacking Israel (Ezekiel 38) and Hagee preached a March 1 “prophetic message” incorporating Trump’s chosen term for the war: “God’s Coming Operation Epic Fury.”
“Did you know that Iran’s radical leaders are guided by their anticipation of an Islamic messiah?” asked Gary Bauer from the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. “The fearmongering of another protracted Middle East land war by the media and many politicians is completely unjustified.”
Pro-Trump evangelicals dismiss Trump’s shifting rationales for the war and say Christians’ duties include supporting the president, praying for him and the military, and striving to discern the mysterious ways the war could fulfill God’s will.
Catholic Americans are hearing a far different story from their church leaders who say the war has short-circuited diplomacy and fails to meet the conditions of a just war, including the condition that war should be a last resort.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged the faithful to embrace the plea of Pope Leo XIV to use diplomacy to halt the violence before it becomes “an unbridgeable chasm.”
“The growing conflict risks spiraling into a wider regional war,” Coakley said in a March 1 statement. “As the Holy Father has warned, we are faced with the possibility of a tragedy of immense proportions. My brother bishops and I unite our voice with our Holy Father and make the heartfelt appeal to all parties involved for diplomacy to regain its proper role.”
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, wrote an editorial for the Washington Post calling the administration’s promotion of the war through short, flashy videos “sickening.” He claimed the videos are “turning war from a somber last resort into a high-definition commodity that trivializes human suffering and numbs the moral imagination.”
Cupich complained the White House “continues to post videos on its official X account that splice scenes from popular video games and action movies together with strike footage in Iran. In one video captioned ‘JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY,’ bombing footage is interspersed with clips from movies including Iron Man, Braveheart, Transformers and Gladiator. Another video captioned “UNDEFEATED” linked video game footage from Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort to bombing videos. All that’s missing is Maximus the gladiator crying out: ‘Are you not entertained?’”
“This is not a game, Cupich wrote. “The lives lost, the bodies maimed and the families displaced are tragedies and must be seen that way.”
He pled with Americans to “reclaim their conscience and their humanity” by “recognizing that on the receiving end of those missile and drone strikes are not video game characters or action movie villains but actual human beings — just like themselves.”
The Vatican’s secretary of state warned that the conflict, which Trump has called an “excursion,” could set “the whole world … ablaze.”
America’s three highest-ranking Catholic bishops criticized Trump in January for his threats to use military force to get his way in Greenland and Venezuela, saying the threats weakened America’s moral standing in the world.
“In 2026, the United States has entered into the most profound and searing debate about the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world since the end of the Cold War,” they wrote. “The events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland have raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace.”
Catholic leaders and thinkers also have condemned the Pentagon’s effort to utilize AI for greater lethality, according to a Washington Post report.
“In order for a violent act to be justified under the conditions of a just war … a particular judgment by a human must be made,” said a group of 14 Catholic moral theologians, ethicists and philosophers. Catholic tradition “has consistently emphasized that decisions affecting human life, freedom and dignity must remain the responsibility of human actors.”
The Pentagon cut ties with AI company Anthropic and labeled it a national security threat after the company said it would place limits on how its systems would be used. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the firm’s concerns were “the sanctimonious rhetoric of ‘effective altruism.’”
Anthropic is suing the Defense Department. Experts say it has a solid case, and the 14 Catholic scholars have filed legal briefs defending the company.
The Iran war led Tucker Carlson to complain that Trump’s war violates his “America First” policies.
Other MAGA faithful also have criticized Trump for violating his no-new-wars campaign promises.
“I’m just going to be brutally frank,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide. “That was not pitched in the 2024 campaign. It just wasn’t. We’re going to bleed support.”
Christianity Today’s Bonnie Kristian summarized America’s past wars to effect regime change in the Middle East: “American wars of regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya proved bloody, costly, and counterproductive, rife with unintended consequences for the security of the United States and the stability of the greater Middle East. And the broader record of recent U.S. military intervention in the region — in Yemen, Somalia and Syria — is hardly more encouraging. It’s no coincidence that our last three presidents all campaigned on ending this kind of war.”
