Faisal Rashid jumped out of bed at 3 a.m. to secure a spot for the Hajj. Noor‑e‑ain Shahid scrambled to rearrange her children’s care. Ahmed Sufyan worries his return flight will be grounded. American Muslims are breaking in new walking shoes, shifting logistics across continents, and negotiating the volatile, heartbreaking calculus of whether a war zone will close the airspace between them and their sacred duty. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh advised pilgrims to reconsider their plans. Meanwhile, American evangelicals cheered a joint U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran.
We who were inside the Evangelical apparatus for thirty years have to name what we served. We built the infrastructure where a theological reading of empire can stand beside a humanitarian catastrophe without anyone blinking. This is the Christian Nationalist framework in motion — the one that treats a military strike on a sovereign nation as an act of divine favor, while American Muslims are told by a State Department warning to reconsider their sacred obligation. The Hajj is a ritual explicitly designed to transcend the borders and political ruptures of the human city, bringing pilgrims into a state of ihram, a sacred uniformity that ignores the nationalist pretensions of our age. The pilgrims are practicing a radical patience: accepting the risk of flight disruptions and regional flare‑ups not out of casual disregard for safety, but out of a conviction that the obligations of faith — worship, humility, and the shedding of the ego — are not conditional on the stability of the geopolitical order. They are moving toward a site of renewal, toward what they describe as a “rebirth” that demands a “clean slate.”
Let me show you what the Bible actually says.
Isaiah 2:4 reads: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” The Christian Nationalist apparatus reads this verse in future tense. The prophecy is deferred to the millennium. Meanwhile, the church’s present duty is to provide geopolitical cover until then. Romans 13:4 — “the authority… does not bear the sword for no reason” — is deployed to justify participation in the violence. The Sermon on the Mount is shelved.
But the text does not wait for the millennium. The prophets do not separate worship from the politics of the sword. Micah 6:8 reads: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Plain English. Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. The captured operation’s reading of this text is that “justice” is a future eschatological concept, while the present is for gathering allies and striking enemies. The text’s reading is that walking humbly with God is an observable, present‑tense action that does not include cheering for bombs dropped on Iranian cities. The chasm is not a theological mystery. It is a choice.
We love this tradition. We sat in the pews. We read the bulletins. We learned to nod when the pastor cited Romans 13 to justify a war that had nothing to do with our security and everything to do with a dispensationalist timeline and the accumulation of military power. Walter Brueggemann writes about “royal consciousness” — the numbness about death that the Pharaoh‑system produces. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination. The Christian Nationalist apparatus has convinced its members that the empire’s violence is God’s victory, even when that violence lands on the doorstep of people who are merely trying to fulfill a holy duty. As Brian Zahnd put it, we are not Israel. We are most likely Babylon.
This is the historical pattern. The 1980 Dallas National Affairs Briefing fused the religious Right with the Republican Party. That same apparatus, which has repeatedly displaced the gospel for electoral gain, is now cheerleading a bombing campaign on Iran because it fits a theological fantasy about who God favors.
We have to be careful not to do what the captured operation does: read the text in a way that shields our own side and condemns the other. When the progressive coalition cheerleaded military interventions in the 1990s and 2000s, we called it out. When the religious Right cheerleads a war on Iran, the same hermeneutic discipline must apply. The prophets do not care about the cheerleader. They care about the sword and the plowshare.
Noor‑e‑ain Shahid framed her decision in religious terms: “If Allah has invited me, then Allah will take care of me.” Ahmed Sufyan said the pilgrimage “transcends politics and conflict” and that “the faith is what drives us.” Faisal Rashid said he leans on the idea that “God is the best of planners.” These are people doing their absolute best to worship while the evangelical machinery they were raised in cheers for the violence that endangers their families, a reality we documented last month as the war shadowed their travel plans. They are the ones scrambling at 3 a.m. for permits, rearranging childcare, hoping the flights stay open. They are operating under the weight of sacred duties, completely unlike the theological luxuries of an apparatus that treats holy text as raw material for geopolitical theater. They are the people in the room of the geopolitical order, trying to survive the consequences of our tradition’s capture.
Now, bless your heart, my fellow believers, but let me sit with you a minute. If your Christianity allows you to cheer for the slaughter of foreigners and the endangerment of American Muslims, it isn’t Christianity. It is the religion of this land. It is the captured‑brand operation.
The Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Jesus does not say “Blessed are the warmongers.” He does not say “Blessed are those who quote Romans 13 to justify an empire while the innocent scramble for survival.” He says peacemakers.
The pilgrimage is still happening. The permits are still being secured. The faith is still driving the travelers. It is a renewal. It is a clean slate. And we? We have a reckoning. The Bible says exactly what it says. The text has not changed. The operation has.