The article discusses the influence of Christian nationalism on US foreign policy regarding Iran, the role of evangelical pastors in the Oval Office, and how digital platforms amplify end-times rhetoric that shapes public perception and policy.
As Most Acts Bail, Trump Floats Replacing Freedom 250 Shows With 'Number One Attraction Anywhere'—HimselfUS President Donald Trump bows his head in prayer alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and House and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025.
Less than a week after American bombs started to drop on Iran in late February, evangelical pastors famously gathered in the Oval Office toa war. It remains an emblematic moment, one of the more clarifying silhouettes of our political mood now sweeping through digital spaces.
That image and many more like it circulated instantly around the country and the world lifting the veil of a bigger story that's gone under-reported: Christian nationalism reshaping the moral language of US foreign policy and endangering pluralistThe consecration of a president by a covey of clergy in the heart of a secular and multicultural democracy illuminates a political culture in which narrow religious narratives are permitted to exert greater influence on how foreign conflicts are imagined and justified in the American public sphere. In our current context, Iran is cast not simply as a strategic adversary but as an apocalyptic antagonist that must be defeated because it is.
In other words, a major geopolitical event is refashioned into a scriptural caricature that prefigures war in the presumed theater ofis not an evangelical nation, despite the bloated conceits of mega-churches, maudlin politicians, and rock star preachers. It is a pluralistic one—home to millions of Catholics, mainline Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and nonbelievers.
When a specific strand of evangelical eschatology is invited to run the theological grammar of American foreign policy, it shapes howthinks about Iran, a Muslim country; and it also messages how Washington may think about the millions of American Muslims who share a religious tradition with the country being bombed and caricatured. The revival oflanguage among those at the apex of American political and military authority thickens the margins of already marginalized and vulnerable communities.
TheAn administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong. These observations are not a call to police theological conviction. But those steering American power toward a militant democracy owe the public transparency about how directly end-times rhetoric about the Muslim world is shaping the foreign policy of a government that still boasts about its pluralism.
It should also reckon with the domestic costs of theThis dynamic is precarious not merely because of the literalist theology itself but because of its digital velocity. Christian Zionist eschatology has interpreted Middle Eastern events through biblical end-times prophecy for decades; spread through pews, big tents, publishing houses, radio ministries, and cable television. What has changed is theof mediation.
Images that are dense with symbolism, such as those of evangelical pastors pressing their hands on a president whom they know ismade not of flesh and intellect but of unseen codes, engineered to decide which images and voices are amplified and which are left behind. Algorithmic power does not operate with corrections—no scholarly review or denominational pushback. Its only function is to maximize attention.
The meta-platform effect reinforces the frame that American power and divine providence are aligned, and that Iran and the larger Muslim world stand in opposition to both. Evangelical militancy circulating through algorithmic feeds that reaches tens of millions is structural in a precise sense: Digital scale generates not merely larger audiences but a self-righteous zealotry that feeds on an epistemic apparition—rationales for war and self-defense narratives that present themselves as a well-reasoned, evidence-based mandate.
An administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong and that the prayers of the pastors who laid hands on the president spectacularly failed—an extraordinary sacred cost with no secular equivalent. That cost is borne not only by strategists calculating political survival, but by every American citizen whose religious identity, ancestry, and moral convictions place them outside the religious consensus that currently holds the room and exposes their communities and institutions to the kinetic costs of pernicious public discourses.
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Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Born and raised in Chicago, Ibrahim N. Abusharif, PhD, is an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s campus in Doha, Qatar.
He specializes in global narrative construction, religious studies, and media effects. Less than a week after American bombs started to drop on Iran in late February, evangelical pastors famously gathered in the Oval Office toa war. It remains an emblematic moment, one of the more clarifying silhouettes of our political mood now sweeping through digital spaces.
That image and many more like it circulated instantly around the country and the world lifting the veil of a bigger story that's gone under-reported: Christian nationalism reshaping the moral language of US foreign policy and endangering pluralistThe consecration of a president by a covey of clergy in the heart of a secular and multicultural democracy illuminates a political culture in which narrow religious narratives are permitted to exert greater influence on how foreign conflicts are imagined and justified in the American public sphere. In our current context, Iran is cast not simply as a strategic adversary but as an apocalyptic antagonist that must be defeated because it is.
In other words, a major geopolitical event is refashioned into a scriptural caricature that prefigures war in the presumed theater ofis not an evangelical nation, despite the bloated conceits of mega-churches, maudlin politicians, and rock star preachers. It is a pluralistic one—home to millions of Catholics, mainline Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and nonbelievers.
When a specific strand of evangelical eschatology is invited to run the theological grammar of American foreign policy, it shapes howthinks about Iran, a Muslim country; and it also messages how Washington may think about the millions of American Muslims who share a religious tradition with the country being bombed and caricatured. The revival oflanguage among those at the apex of American political and military authority thickens the margins of already marginalized and vulnerable communities.
TheAn administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong. These observations are not a call to police theological conviction. But those steering American power toward a militant democracy owe the public transparency about how directly end-times rhetoric about the Muslim world is shaping the foreign policy of a government that still boasts about its pluralism.
It should also reckon with the domestic costs of theThis dynamic is precarious not merely because of the literalist theology itself but because of its digital velocity. Christian Zionist eschatology has interpreted Middle Eastern events through biblical end-times prophecy for decades; spread through pews, big tents, publishing houses, radio ministries, and cable television. What has changed is theof mediation.
Images that are dense with symbolism, such as those of evangelical pastors pressing their hands on a president whom they know ismade not of flesh and intellect but of unseen codes, engineered to decide which images and voices are amplified and which are left behind. Algorithmic power does not operate with corrections—no scholarly review or denominational pushback. Its only function is to maximize attention.
The meta-platform effect reinforces the frame that American power and divine providence are aligned, and that Iran and the larger Muslim world stand in opposition to both. Evangelical militancy circulating through algorithmic feeds that reaches tens of millions is structural in a precise sense: Digital scale generates not merely larger audiences but a self-righteous zealotry that feeds on an epistemic apparition—rationales for war and self-defense narratives that present themselves as a well-reasoned, evidence-based mandate.
An administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong and that the prayers of the pastors who laid hands on the president spectacularly failed—an extraordinary sacred cost with no secular equivalent. That cost is borne not only by strategists calculating political survival, but by every American citizen whose religious identity, ancestry, and moral convictions place them outside the religious consensus that currently holds the room and exposes their communities and institutions to the kinetic costs of pernicious public discourses.
Christian Nationalism Resurrected as Trump Promotes Prayer in Public Schools ›Born and raised in Chicago, Ibrahim N. Abusharif, PhD, is an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. He specializes in global narrative construction, religious studies, and media effects. Less than a week after American bombs started to drop on Iran in late February, evangelical pastors famously gathered in the Oval Office toa war.
It remains an emblematic moment, one of the more clarifying silhouettes of our political mood now sweeping through digital spaces. That image and many more like it circulated instantly around the country and the world lifting the veil of a bigger story that's gone under-reported: Christian nationalism reshaping the moral language of US foreign policy and endangering pluralistThe consecration of a president by a covey of clergy in the heart of a secular and multicultural democracy illuminates a political culture in which narrow religious narratives are permitted to exert greater influence on how foreign conflicts are imagined and justified in the American public sphere.
In our current context, Iran is cast not simply as a strategic adversary but as an apocalyptic antagonist that must be defeated because it is. In other words, a major geopolitical event is refashioned into a scriptural caricature that prefigures war in the presumed theater ofis not an evangelical nation, despite the bloated conceits of mega-churches, maudlin politicians, and rock star preachers. It is a pluralistic one—home to millions of Catholics, mainline Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and nonbelievers.
When a specific strand of evangelical eschatology is invited to run the theological grammar of American foreign policy, it shapes howthinks about Iran, a Muslim country; and it also messages how Washington may think about the millions of American Muslims who share a religious tradition with the country being bombed and caricatured. The revival oflanguage among those at the apex of American political and military authority thickens the margins of already marginalized and vulnerable communities.
TheAn administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong. These observations are not a call to police theological conviction. But those steering American power toward a militant democracy owe the public transparency about how directly end-times rhetoric about the Muslim world is shaping the foreign policy of a government that still boasts about its pluralism.
It should also reckon with the domestic costs of theThis dynamic is precarious not merely because of the literalist theology itself but because of its digital velocity. Christian Zionist eschatology has interpreted Middle Eastern events through biblical end-times prophecy for decades; spread through pews, big tents, publishing houses, radio ministries, and cable television. What has changed is theof mediation.
Images that are dense with symbolism, such as those of evangelical pastors pressing their hands on a president whom they know ismade not of flesh and intellect but of unseen codes, engineered to decide which images and voices are amplified and which are left behind. Algorithmic power does not operate with corrections—no scholarly review or denominational pushback. Its only function is to maximize attention.
The meta-platform effect reinforces the frame that American power and divine providence are aligned, and that Iran and the larger Muslim world stand in opposition to both. Evangelical militancy circulating through algorithmic feeds that reaches tens of millions is structural in a precise sense: Digital scale generates not merely larger audiences but a self-righteous zealotry that feeds on an epistemic apparition—rationales for war and self-defense narratives that present themselves as a well-reasoned, evidence-based mandate.
An administration that reaches any agreement or capitulation with Iran must contend with a powerful domestic constituency for whom any settlement carries the implicit suggestion that the prophetic script was wrong and that the prayers of the pastors who laid hands on the president spectacularly failed—an extraordinary sacred cost with no secular equivalent. That cost is borne not only by strategists calculating political survival, but by every American citizen whose religious identity, ancestry, and moral convictions place them outside the religious consensus that currently holds the room and exposes their communities and institutions to the kinetic costs of pernicious public discourses.
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