In its representation of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Monty Python’s The Life of Brian captures the difficulties some auditors may have had following the speech in the open air at the edge of a large crowd. One person doesn’t catch “Blessed are the peacemakers” and asks a neighbor what Jesus said. “I think it was ‘blessed are the cheesemakers,’” he replies. “What’s so special about cheesemakers?” she wonders. Here we move into commentary and exegesis: “Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”
There was often a method to the Pythons’ madness, and the target of their satire – the potential consequences of misquoting and misunderstanding, or just dumb ignorance, in the religious sphere – is today being demonstrated for us by Donald Trump and his disciples. This past week, Secretary of War (formerly Defense) Pete Hegseth led a prayer meeting at the Pentagon, one of a series designed to bless and advance the U.S. and Israeli invasion of Iran. He offered those gathered together a special prayer that he claimed was called “CSAR 2517.” The text, he thought, was meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17:
The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of comradery and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
The initials in the prayer’s name stand for “Combat Search and Rescue” and the number obviously derives from the chapter and verse in Ezekiel.
The problem, as has been pointed out across media outlets and the blogosphere as the story has gone viral, is that this is not Ezekiel but Pulp Fiction. In Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie, a hitman named Jules, played by Samuel L. Jackson, likes to recite a speech before he kills people:
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
Jules introduces this as (not just reflecting) Ezekiel 25:17, and after delivering it with great passion, he and his partner empty their weapons into the body of a terrified young man who has cheated their gangster boss.
Jules’s murder prayer is not exactly Ezekiel either, though the last couple of sentences do paraphrase verse 17: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.” This is the King James Version, of course, which provides suitably elevated language for a promise of vengeance. Even these sentences, though, are altered, adding in the brothers and shifting the focus at the end from “them” to “thee.” Whose brothers are these, and why is someone trying to poison them? And who is doing the threatening? Up until the final sentence, we assume it’s Jules, especially since he’s holding the gun, but then the last sentence retains the “Lord” of Ezekiel’s prophecy. In no sense I can think of is Jules’s name “the Lord.” But then God does not have brothers, even metaphorically (Israel is his children or his bride, but never brothers). In Ezekiel, furthermore, vengeance is being prophesied for the Philistines and Cherethims, enemies of Israel but not poisoners.
The earlier part of the speech is even more confusing. The Bible has lots to say about the righteous man, but not about his path. The idea of such a man following a path while beset from all sides seems to derive from Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd,” which is certainly the source of the second sentence, with its shepherd and dark valley. The psalmist famously sings, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.” Nothing about righteousness, though, a claim that would seem a bit bold for a sheep (the prevailing metaphor). Nothing about the selfish either (here or anywhere in the Bible), or the “tyranny of evil men,” though these words do sound biblical. To call for a blessing on the shepherd is odd, since the shepherd of the Psalm is the Lord, whose blessedness we could probably take for granted. The Lord is also surely (at least in this Psalm, if not in Ezekiel) full of “charity and good will,” but these are the least of his attributes. Since Jules hasn’t yet mentioned the Lord, he seems to have appropriated the Psalm verse to praise a human “shepherd,” who is his “brother’s keeper” and the “finder of lost children.” What lost children have to do with Jules or anything in Pulp Fiction is a mystery, and there are none in the Bible either. Jesus does offer a parable about a lost sheep, so maybe Jules is just on a pastoral riff. The bit about the brother’s keeper also makes no sense in context, and it comes with distinctly unrighteous connotations, since it originates in a murder story. God asks where is Cain’s brother Abel, and Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” This blessed man is his brother’s keeper, apparently, but since Jules is about to murder a man, (though admittedly not his brother, either literally or in a racial sense), the speech seems quite confused about righteousness and killing.
Tarantino surely had no interest in biblical accuracy or even logical coherence, just in giving Jules some grand, Bible-sounding language for the scene. He also didn’t write it himself, but lifted it from a 1973 Japanese B-movie, Kiba the Bodyguard, starring karate master Sonny Chiba, though it was only the American release that began with the (phony) quotation from “Ezekiel 25:17.” As at least one blogger has pointed out, though, it may be Jules, rather than Tarantino, who is borrowing from the martial arts movie. Or rather it could be both, in different senses, Tarantino taking the lines for his script, but perhaps imagining that it’s Jules who has adopted the speech from an action film he’s seen. But Pulp Fiction fans don’t care. It’s a slick (if gruesome) scene, and Jackson is at his ultracool best as Jules.
We should probably care, though, when the Secretary of War, apparently in full ignorance, adopts and paraphrases the speech for a Pentagon prayer meeting. The further alterations in “CSAR 2517” are striking. The righteous man has become the “downed aviator,” which is not a phrase used in the King James Bible. Whether the particular downed aviator in Iran is righteous seems an open question, since, though following orders, he has been downed while invading another country. Unless we equate Iranians with Philistines. But then the Americans would be Israel, which seems an easy translation, since Israel was along for the Iran invasion anyway. That the U.S. military would want to rescue its aviator seems reasonable, though he must have faced worse than the iniquities of the selfish. Are the Iranians selfish? I suppose they don’t want to share their oil. The tyranny of evil men works better for the brutal Iranian regime, though, to paraphrase Trump from another context, there are some tyrannous people on both sides in this war.
The Hegseth prayer makes a couple of other interesting substitutions. Charity and good will become “comradery and duty,” virtues appropriate for a military search and rescue mission, though not for a shepherd. Also changed is what the victims of vengeance will finally know: not that “My name is the Lord,” but “my call sign is Sandy One.” Here again a Bible concordance turns up nothing. Sandy One, I discover, is an identifier for search and rescue planes that has been used since the Vietnam War. But aren’t these planes engaged in a rescue operation, rather than vengeance? And even if they were bombing the selfish, do pilots normally broadcast their call signs before they drop the bombs? The key takeaway here is that the speaker in Hegseth’s “Ezekiel 25:17” is no longer in any sense God, despite the remaining traces of biblical language, but a U.S. soldier.
This analysis may seem longer than is warranted given the multiple layers of ignorance and indifference in the transmission of these biblical bits and pieces, but the details matter. First, the U.S. Secretary of War has passed off as a biblical prayer a slapdash pastiche from a movie about vicious immoral killers. This is an embarrassment, but it also has implications, of course unintentional, for the mission Hegseth is supposedly trying to promote, asking God’s blessing on Operation Epic Fury. Even apart from Pulp Fiction, though, Hegseth’s thoughtless appropriation of biblical verses (compounding those in Tarantino) should be scandalous to anyone who takes the Bible seriously. The Shepherd Psalm has been turned into a call of duty, and the image of God as the good shepherd replaced by a squadron of fighter jets. The idea of American planes as finders of lost children is especially grotesque, since the only children we’ve heard of in this war are the more than 100 killed by American bombs at Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School. And whose voice do we now hear calling down great vengeance and furious anger? Hegseth’s, surely, not God’s. Should we really hear the final sentence in a form closer to its original? “And you will know my name is Pete Hegseth when I lay vengeance upon thee.”
What’s even more disturbing about this incident is that it is part of a trend. The Trump government, with the president himself in the vanguard, has consistently used Christian language and symbols to promote its own righteousness as well as, of course, to appeal to its evangelical Christian base. Yet the ignorance of Team Trump is matched only by its arrogance. Pope Leo XIV, the first ever American Supreme Pontiff, condemned those who “manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred in darkness and filth.” If anyone wondered who the Pope had in mind, the aggressive American response showed that Trump was in no doubt. J.D. Vance has lectured the Pope on the theology of the just war and warned him to stop meddling in American foreign affairs and stick to matters of morality. I’ve often heard that if you want to find out about a religious faith or denomination, ask a convert (just as if you want a lesson in civics, ask a newly sworn-in citizen). Vance explodes that myth. He seems not to have grasped that Catholic lay people, especially those who have been Catholic for less than a decade, should not instruct the Pope on his duties. Or indeed on theology. Pope Leo, supported by U.S. Catholic bishops, all of whom have probably studied theology more deeply that Vance, has explained why the U.S./Israeli invasion of Iran does not qualify as a “just war.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Southern Baptist with a Bachelor’s in Business and a Law degree, then weighed in on the debate, offering advice to the Pope on Augustine’s just war theory. Pope Leo is an Augustinian friar who has a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and was for twelve years the worldwide head of the Order of St. Augustine. Who to believe?
The hubris and stupidity of Trump’s lackeys pales in comparison to their leader’s, however. In 2024, on the Tuesday before Easter, President Trump launched “The God Bless the USA Bible,” available for just $60 (a third again as much as an Oxford Study Bible). It’s available in several formats, including the Presidential, First Lady, and Vice-Presidential Editions. On the GodBlesstheUSA website, if you buy two Bibles you can get a free tote bag that sings Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” and for a small extra cost (actually the same as the Bible) you can add on a Donald J. Trump “Fight, Fight, Fight” Sculpture, based on his defiant stance after being shot in the earlobe. Nothing better expresses the Christian spirit, than Fight, Fight, Fight! Cheaper items include a fun Donald J. Trump plastic toy and Patriotic Pong, a beer pong set with “47” on the cups and the president’s face on the ping pong balls. Trump’s pitch for the new (actually just the old King James) Bible was geared to the liturgical season: “Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again,” he wrote on Truth Social. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.”
If some were offended by Donald Trump, Bible salesman, many more we appalled by the White House’s release of an AI-generated image of Trump as Pope. The image was posted a few days before the Conclave convened that elected Pope Leo XIV. It has not been taken down. Faced with a barrage of criticism at home and abroad, Trump explained that it was just a joke, though he would like to be Pope (joke!). Even this controversy now seems quaint, since on Sunday, April 12, the day of Orthodox Easter, Trump posted another AI image, this time of himself as Jesus, wearing white and red robes, hold his radiant, healing hands over a man on a sickbed. An American flag waves behind him. A nurse and a soldier look on, while other martyred military figures ascend to heaven, fighter planes like angels streaking across the sky beneath them.
Trump’s response to the feud with the Pope was to represent himself as Jesus Christ. Facing more criticism than ever, having now offended not only America’s 65 million Catholics but the rest of the Christian population as well, Trump explained that he wasn’t pictured as Jesus but as a doctor trying to heal people. Since during the pandemic Trump thought Covid might be cured with UV lights or disinfectant, it’s not a stretch that he might think doctors heal with glowing hands. But of course it’s Jesus. Another story circulating the web is that Trump’s White House handlers told him to say that the image had been doctored, but that he misheard or misunderstood. The bar is so low for this president, that little seems impossible. Whatever the origin of the “doctor” excuse, it was rendered even less plausible by Trump’s release on Wednesday of yet another AI image, this time with Jesus embracing the president in front of an American flag. Trump wrote above, “God might be playing his Trump card!” Hilarious.
The United States is one of the most religious nations on earth, yet Americans are ill informed about even their own religion, let alone any others. According to a 2010 Gallup poll, only just over half of Americans knew that the Golden Rule was not one of the Ten Commandments, and just under half could name the four Gospels. A meager 16% knew that salvation through faith alone is a Protestant rather than Catholic doctrine. I once had to point out to a student, a Catholic school graduate, that I didn’t think belief in transubstantiation was optional for Catholics. A number of evangelical pastors have recently reported shrinking congregations, as their parishioners discovered, to their irritation, that Jesus asked them to turn the other cheek. 48% of Americans, according to Pew, believe they will be reunited with pets in heaven, while 43% think they can become angels. People believe all sorts of strange things. Some Americans believed QAnon’s prediction that John F. Kennedy Jr. would return from the dead to the lead the Republican Party to glory.
What troubles me about the current religious posturing of Trump and his people is that it’s hard to figure out how much is due to sheer stupidity and how much to hypocritical pandering. Hegseth radiates muscle-bound imbecility, but he’s also an immoral opportunist, and as a former FOX news host he surely knows how to gratify the appetites of the base. Mike Johnson is clearly serious about his Christian faith, but he’s also a politician, utterly loyal to Trump. Moreover, Johnson’s brand of Christianity, apparently aligned with the movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, includes much that doesn’t seem Christian at all, not least a desire for religious dominion nationally and globally (render unto Caesar?). As for Trump himself, he seems so far gone mentally and psychologically, he may actually believe he’s Jesus (what does the J. stand for?). Or chosen by God. But he’s a pathological liar and has always adapted his principles to whatever might win him cash, votes, and adulation, absolutely unfazed by self-contradiction. Perhaps he thought the Pope was a safe target, miscalculating the loyalties of conservative American Catholics (Vance and Border Czar Tom Homan aside). But could even Trump have imagined the Jesus picture wouldn’t generate a tsunami of backlash? Has his megalomania so overwhelmed his political self-interest? Does he just not care what happens after 2028? Or has his cognitive decline reached a point where trying to interpret his motives is pointless?
After visiting America in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
I have already said enough to reveal Anglo-American civilization in its true light. It is the product (and this point of departure must always be kept in mind) of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere are often at odds. But in America, these two have been successfully blended, in a way, and marvelously combined. I mean the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty.
Even if this was true of Andrew Jackson’s America, it certainly isn’t true now. The spirit of liberty has been dissipated by the spirit of consumer capitalism, persisting only as a stubborn and irresponsible individualism. Americans are eager to trade their freedoms for the latest iPhone or AI gadget. The spirit of religion, at least in its dominant evangelical Christian strain, has inspired an increased suppression of religious liberty, and the combination of religion and politics is not marvelous but terrifying. De Tocqueville also wrote that in America “religion leads to enlightenment.” Democracy in America clearly needs a new edition. And if we act now, maybe we can also get a squeezable Jesus doll or an enlightenment beer pong.
