On Sunday, my church’s morning worship service opened with a call to worship by an elder and sung congregational praise. Then the pastor offered a prayer of invocation, making it clear who was being worshiped and why the congregation had assembled. At the end of this, the congregation recited what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer, though in fact ought to be called the Believer’s Prayer or, even better, the Congregation’s Prayer since it is addressed to “our” Father. It is not a prayer that Jesus could have prayed, since he never sinned and needed no forgiveness.
Any Christian or Christian church can and should pray this prayer; the gathered church is the ideal setting for it, since the church is “the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God.” So, should any Christian offer, speak, or post this prayer for any cause or in any way that seems good? We must say, in agreement with the Westminster Larger Catechism, no. It is required, says the catechism, that God’s Word “be holily and reverently used in thought, meditation, word, and writing,” and warns that “misapplying” the Word is a sin. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent social media post using this prayer arguably fails the basic tests of appropriate context, holy and reverent use, and application.1
An official Department of War video featured Hegseth reciting the prayer over footage of soldiers, weapons, ships, aircraft, missiles, and explosions. Naturally, the video closed with an image of the President, Vice President, and Hegseth—the martial became the political, a Christian prayer serving both ends.
Context matters in communication. Now, for a few seconds at the beginning of the video, we see Hegseth praying with soldiers gathered outdoors. We do not know if this was a worship service of and for believing soldiers or some other kind of event, and in the end, this does not matter. What matters is the confusion and irreverence of such a presentation.
In the video, a corporate Christian prayer is repurposed for departments of the Federal Government. In the service of those departments, no doubt, there are a number of Christians, whether a minority or a plurality, none can say. Most of the actions of the armed forces are good and noble, and Christians can serve the U.S. military in good conscience. But can a Christian apply to the military of a specific country a prayer of the Christian church without confounding church with state, and without confusing both believing and unbelieving citizens, whether they be patriotic, disaffected, or undecided?
Just as who Jesus is matters, so does it matter who and what the church is—both the “He” and the “we.” The mission of the church versus the mission of civil government (whose power certainly includes that of the sword) is also confused by the video. What is it that we see and hear in the video? What are we meant to take away? The ministry of the church of Christ, for whom the prayer is intended, is reconciliation between God and man (2 Cor 5:18) and to provide a place to grow and protect a worshiping people. It is a spiritual mission, transnational, peaceful, enforcing no law but Christ’s eternal one; the military’s mission is earthly, national, necessarily violent, acting at the will of a shifting and temporary ruler or government. To serve the President as Commander in Chief is not the same as bowing the knee to King Jesus. The church should make this clear; this video does not.
Kingdom confusion can be the only result of such a message conveyed via such a medium. A social media post is, first of all, a social media post. It must be short, visual, and at a level of sophistication and depth comparable to cave drawings, which were literally the first memes. And the very words of Christ deserve more reverence, more context, and more care than what amounts to a recruiting commercial. The gospel is simple, but understanding it, applying it, and living it out is the work of a lifetime. And the gospel is the story of good news about gracious historical events—the death and resurrection of the sinless, utterly unique God-Man—not the old story of wars and rumors of war, of might too often making right, and of violence and death that prove difficult to justify, ending up many times (in bitter hindsight) with regret, sorrow, and recriminations.
Words matter, but so do pictures. The Second Commandment ought to give Christians pause concerning the use of images, especially for spiritual purposes. Uncritical use of images is one of the chief failings of the modern church; cognitive dissonance—contradictory words or pictures, held or put together thoughtlessly—too often characterizes the ethos of the church. The messages we send about the very Word of God and Christ, of whom it speaks, matter eternally. We can hope that this ephemeral video will be forgotten by next week and that the confusion it engenders will be replaced with gospel clarity from Christians who know who they are and to whom they owe ultimate allegiance.
Note
©Brad Isbell. All Rights Reserved.
Editor’s Note: This article appeared originally on Brad Isbell’s Substack, Presbycast Pravda, and is republished here by permission.
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Brad Isbell
Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, board member of More In The PCA, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, editorial member of Presbyterian Polity, and treasurer of the Heidelberg Reformation Association.
More by Brad Isbell ›
re the Department of War: Offense does not equal aggression. In fact, the entire narrative of the Word of God tells of God-ordained offense, within the boundaries of righteous thought and action. Discomfort at the reality of war must be dealt with by warriors, and like pain, it probably serves as a deterrence to ill-considered aggression or revenge. However, in a fallen world, the reality of evil requires a just, measured, lawful assessment of response, and both offensive action and defensive action are appropriate responses, rightly discerned.
We need to be careful that we don’t use the excuse of a “fallen world” to justify behaving in fallen ways.
I don’t know what the difference would be between an “aggressive war” and an “offensive war.” Among the most prominent of God’s commands is “Thou shalt not kill.” Wars kill. If we are to remain true to our faith commitments we must engage in war only in defense of what is vital and only when all other options have been exhausted – and even then, in as moderate and pacific a way as possible. This is what the principles of just war call for.
The celebration and glorification of war, as we see in this video and in the rebranding of the DoD, is contrary to God’s law. The coupling of this glorification with the Lord’s prayer perverts the meaning of the prayer and of Christ’s message.
Historically, such glorification of militarism has been characteristic of the most oppressive societies. My prayer is that we do not allow ourselves to be enticed in this direction.
Richard,
Here is a brief account of Augustine’s just war theory.
https://heidelblog.net/2024/03/sub-christian-nationalism-part-18/
I will say that after rereading the definition provided below by Dr. Clark I agree with you Richard. Thanks for your helpful thoughts
Thank you, Ben, and thank you Scott for that helpful article on Augustine and just war.
I think what I find most disturbing about the video released by Hegseth is the way it seems almost deliberately designed to corrupt our understanding of the Lord’s prayer.
In the Lord’s prayer we pray to God, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
God’s kingdom is a kingdom of peace, of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, of loving even one’s enemy. This is what we are to devote ourselves to with all our “heart, soul, and mind.” Our sinful inclinations put us always in danger of forgetting this. The recitation of the Lord’s prayer should help us remember.
But if we corrupt our understanding of the divine kingdom for which we pray, what will remind us? As Jesus says, “If the salt loses its saltiness, who can resalt it?”
A grave danger of religion, when it becomes corrupt, is that we may be induced to render the devotion due only to God to ungodly pursuits and powers. Then we are no longer worshipping God but counterfeits of God, imposters of God.
This is what sent a chill down my spine in watching this video – not simply the way it encourages a wrongful view of war, but the way it is corrosive of our understanding of God.
Jesus said, “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” The rebranding of the Department of Defense to the Department of War seems a deliberate effort to change the posture of the American military from one of defense to one of aggression. This is diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ and to the ethical tradition of just war. This video, exploitating the Lord’s prayer in support of this effort, is among the most disturbing images I have seen. Just as the rebranding of the Department of Defense seems designed to undermine our understanding of the legitimate purpose of the military, so this coupling of military images with the Lord’s prayer seems designed to undermine our understanding of the message of Christ.
It was originally the department of war. During the Cold War, it was rebranded as the department of defense. It is l a semantic change.
Romans 13 says the magistrate does not bear the sword in vain.
It is not the function of the state to fulfill the beatitudes.
We live in a twofold kingdom.
War exists and will exist until Christ returns. It is the divinely ordained vocation of the state to prosecute just wars when necessary.
Arguably the government is fulfilling its function most effectively when it makes clear that any nation who commits aggression against the United States will be on the receiving end of violent and effective response.
Just wars are, by definition, defensive wars, so why change the name from the Department of Defense to the Department of War if the intent is not to abandon, or at best muddy, the principle of just war.
Clarity?
Since the first Obama administration, at least the mission of the DOD/DOW had arguably become rather less clear. It is the primary mission of the DOW to kill people and break things, to quote a famous and late talk show host.
If someone intends to attack the USA, it is perhaps a little clearer to describe unequivocally the primary function of that department.
If war, conducted justly, and to a righteous end, is morally defensible then why quibble about the name of the department?
Well, there’s the problem. The primary purpose of the military is not to “kill people and break things,” but to protect people and prevent vital things from being broken.
In a nation committed to justice, the military is for defensive, not aggressive, purposes. Of course, with power comes temptation, and as the most powerful nation in the world, we are tempted to employ our military in wrongful ways. But surely our call as Christians is to resist this temptation.
This video, and the rebranding of the DoD, seems deliberately designed to entice us to support a misuse of the military.
To use the Lord’s prayer for this purpose is especially disturbing. It perverts the meaning and intent of the prayer. In the Lord’s prayer, we pray that God’s kingdom will reign on earth “as it does in heaven.” God’s kingdom is a kingdom of peace not war. Those who celebrate war are of another kingdom.
I want to be patient here, but having seen the damage done to our military, up close, during the Obama era and the Biden era, if Secretary Hegseth praying for our military is our worst problem, we don’t have problems we need to worry about very much.
I’m sure I could make a list of things on which I would disagree with Hegseth.
My list would be a hundred times longer about way too many other people who have held leadership roles in the Pentagon.
I agree with you in the sense that our culture could use more leaders praying, but I also see the need for more discernment. I tend to take it easy on Mr. Hegseth because he appears to be a new Christian in a less than ideal church (CREC), plus he’s serving under an erratic president. But it’s exactly these reasons why we need to point out error. So, I’m going to support and share this article by Brad Isbell.
Reminds me of Patriarch Kirill blessing ballistic missiles.
It’s hardly “our worst problem”—no one said it was. Still, it’s an inappropriate use of the prayer from a confessional Christian perspective, however much it may tickle our political fancies.
Amen. I totally agree and thank you for pointing out the error.
I think you are exactly right. The Trump administration has jumped on the bandwagon of Christian nationalism to foster its political agenda with non confessional and undiscerning evangelicals. The confusion of Trump and his administration, as saviours of a kind of American, Christian utopia, is a strange and disturbing phenomenon. This is not the message of Christ, whose kingdom is not of this world.