{"id":348134,"date":"2026-03-29T18:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T23:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/evangelicals-prayed-over-trump-for-the-war-the-pope-said-god-rejects-prayers-of-those-who-wage-war"},"modified":"2026-03-29T18:47:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T23:47:31","slug":"evangelicals-prayed-over-trump-for-the-war-the-pope-said-god-rejects-prayers-of-those-who-wage-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/evangelicals-prayed-over-trump-for-the-war-the-pope-said-god-rejects-prayers-of-those-who-wage-war","title":{"rendered":"Evangelicals Prayed Over Trump for the Battle. The Pope Stated God Rejects Prayers of These Who Wage Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>On March 5, a circle of evangelical leaders gathered around Donald Trump in the Oval Office, <a href=\"https:\/\/baptistnews.com\/article\/evangelical-leaders-return-to-oval-office-to-pray-over-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">laid hands on him<\/a>, and prayed for grace, protection, and wisdom as the Iran war continued. Pastor Tom Mullins asked God to protect Trump, protect U.S. troops, and help the country return to \u201cone nation under God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three weeks later, on Palm Sunday in St. Peter\u2019s Square, Pope Leo XIV quoted the prophet Isaiah: \u201cEven though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.\u201d Then he added his own line: God \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/pope-leo-says-god-rejects-prayers-leaders-who-wage-wars-2026-03-29\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war<\/a>, but rejects them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pastors pray over Trump in the Oval Office\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kcysQmPQvbs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One side laid hands on the president. The other quoted Isaiah about hands full of blood. They claim the same God. They are describing opposite things.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What the Oval Office Prayer Was, and Wasn\u2019t<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>To be fair, the March 5 scene was not, on its face, a bloodthirsty spectacle. Presidents have long welcomed clergy. Americans of many faiths pray for leaders and troops in wartime. Many conservatives will look at that moment and see something ordinary, even necessary: pastors asking God for wisdom in a dangerous hour. That is a serious point, not a cartoon.<\/p>\n<p>But Leo\u2019s Palm Sunday message matters precisely because he did not condemn prayer in general. He said Jesus \u201crejects war\u201d and does not listen to those who wage it. That is a moral boundary and not a stylistic disagreement. And the Oval Office prayer circle was not a private devotion. It was a public display of religious endorsement, staged during a military conflict, with cameras present. The pastors did not pray for peace. They prayed for protection and wisdom in the pursuit of war.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1368675\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1368675\" style=\"width: 1014px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Board of Peace\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1368675\" src=\"https:\/\/wealthofgeeks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Pope-Leo-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Board of Peace\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1368675\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pope Leo XIV addressed tens of thousands on Palm Sunday. Credit: DWS News\/YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>When Faith Starts Riding With State Power<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been hosting <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/pete-hegseth-pentagon-christian-worship-service-30db48b6ceb8af5e6172fb3ba2eafaa0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">monthly Christian worship services at the Pentagon<\/a>. AP reported that at the latest one, held during the Iran war, he prayed to have \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/chatgpt.com\/g\/g-p-69bdc6ba2cb48191920b9d1ade4f997e\/c\/69c687fc-a2a0-8332-80f2-e8496ddb0393\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">every round find its mark<\/a>\u201d and asked for \u201coverwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.\u201d AP also reported that Hegseth belongs to Doug Wilson\u2019s church network, that Wilson \u2014 a Christian nationalist who advocates for the United States to become a Christian theocracy \u2014 preached at the Pentagon in February, and that Hegseth is reshaping the military chaplain corps in ways critics say narrow the military\u2019s religious posture. At a recent press conference, he closed by quoting Psalm 144: \u201cBlessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1368677\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1368677\" style=\"width: 1014px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"chaplain\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1368677\" src=\"https:\/\/wealthofgeeks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Pete-Hegseth-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"chaplain\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1368677\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pete Hegseth. Credit: Eric Brann \/ U.S. Navy \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At that point, this stops looking like generic public religiosity and starts looking like faith riding shotgun with wartime state power. And on Palm Sunday, the Pope drew a line against exactly that.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Vatican\u2019s Answer Wasn\u2019t Symbolic<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The Vatican had already been saying no before Palm Sunday. In February, Reuters reported that the Holy See declined to participate in Trump\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/vatican-says-it-will-not-participate-trumps-board-peace-2026-02-18\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Board of Peace<\/a>,\u201d with Cardinal Pietro Parolin saying crisis situations should be handled by the United Nations, not a U.S.-led structure. That was not lofty words from a balcony. It was a refusal of the architecture of American wartime leadership.<\/p>\n<p>And Leo XIV is history\u2019s first American-born pope. This is not a European cleric scolding an American president from across an ocean \u2014 it is an American challenging the spiritual infrastructure that another set of Americans has built around a wartime presidency. And it comes during Holy Week. Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus&#8217; entry into Jerusalem as a king of peace, not a king of conquest. Leo described Jesus as someone who \u201cremains steadfast in meekness, while others are stirring up violence.\u201d Palm Sunday did not create that divide. It just exposed it in public.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1368685\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1368685\" style=\"width: 1014px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Eric Brann\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1368685\" src=\"https:\/\/wealthofgeeks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rubio_Vance-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Eric Brann\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1368685\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rubio and Vance at Pope Leo XIV\u2019s 2025 inauguration mass. The Trump orbit and the Vatican have intersected even as they now diverge on war. Credit: U.S. Department of State\/Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>The Real Split<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>One model of Christianity is operating in Trump\u2019s orbit as court religion: close to power, affirming power, praying over power. The other is trying to recover Christianity as a limit on power, especially when power starts speaking too confidently in the language of providence and righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>That question has haunted Christianity since Constantine. Neither side thinks it is betraying the faith. Both think they are defending it. But they are defending radically different ideas of what God is for in public life.<\/p>\n<p>One side laid hands on the president and asked God to protect the mission. The other stood in St. Peter\u2019s Square and quoted Isaiah about hands full of blood. Hegseth closed a press conference quoting Psalm 144 about hands trained for war. Leo described a God who rejects war entirely. Both answers were public. Both were deliberate. And both cannot be true at the same time. If those gestures can live under the same broad Christian banner, then the question is no longer whether they are reading the same Bible. It is whether American Christianity still knows the difference between ministering to power and baptizing it.<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/wealthofgeeks.com\/evangelicals-prayed-over-trump-for-the-war-the-pope-just-said-god-rejects-the-prayers-of-leaders-who-wage-war\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On March 5, a circle of evangelical leaders gathered around Donald Trump in the Oval Office, laid hands on him, and prayed for grace, protection, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4557],"tags":[10477,23413,25297,6108,155,2777,25298,25206,4348,609,2305],"class_list":["post-348134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-board-of-peace","tag-chaplain","tag-eric-brann","tag-jesus","tag-king","tag-leo","tag-non-secular-infrastructure","tag-palm-sunday","tag-pentagon","tag-president","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348136,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348134\/revisions\/348136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}