President Trump has created quite a dust-up in recent weeks by attacking talks and sermons given by Pope Leo XIV during Holy Week and on his current Africa tour. Trump has often, and rather oddly, treated the pope like another political leaders (weak on crime?). Pope Leo, meanwhile, has generally refused to engage with the president’s challenges, pointing out that his messages were not directed at any individual and were prepared weeks before he gave them.

The bizarre image of Trump as a Christ-like figure, posted on his Truth Social page, only added to the confusion about just what exactly the president was trying say about Jesus, Christianity and the US war on Iran. Compounding this, of course, has been the posture of the current Secretary of War (sic), Pete Hegseth, who has regularly portrayed the current Middle East conflict as a sacred endeavor, and encouraged commanding officers to do the same.

I don’t want to pursue this subject per se, but rather ask a question in this context: What does it mean to say that I am a Christian? And I don’t mean this as a kind of challenge, as in what should I as a Christian do in this situation. I mean it more simply and literally. What am I saying when I take on the “label” of Christian?

Pope Leo and the president clearly have diametrically opposed views on war and peace, among other subjects, as do millions of others identifying as Christian. How can this be? This isn’t a disagreement over theological minutiae, ala how many angels can dance on a pin head. This question would seem to be pretty fundamental to the meaning of Christianity. Or is it?

Since the church’s early years, Christians have engaged in countless wars. Some were launched by the church, like the Crusades, and others were fought between Christians. The religious wars after the Reformation resulted in millions of deaths (mostly civilian). Britain, France, and Spain bashed away at each other for centuries. In the US Civil War, Christians fighting Christians killed hundreds of thousands. President Lincoln, not a church member and only nominally Christian, sadly noted the irony of both sides praying to the same God for victory and viewed the war as God’s punishment upon the whole nation.

The First World War is the most clearcut and horrendous example of this paradox. Except for the Turkish Empire, all the combatant nations self-identified as Christian (well, perhaps republican France is debatable). Grainy silent film footage shows clergy of multiple traditions blessing troops on all sides as they headed off to the front, and to a heretofore unimaginable slaughter.

During World War II religious identity was less important but by no means absent. For an example, watch the conclusion of William Wyler’s 1942 Mrs. Miniver (staring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon). After a devastating air aid, the English Anglican parish priest delivers a rousing pro-war sermon, which was hailed by Franklin Roosevelt and later used in propaganda leaflets dropped on occupied territories. After the sermon, the congregation stands in its bombed-out church and heartily sings “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Winston Churchill praised the film as “propaganda worth a hundred battleships” and even Joseph Goebbels said it was a masterpiece. The Oscar-winning film was a huge hit in both the US and the UK.

While religion and faith are hardly mentioned in Mrs. Miniver, the church ending is the film’s emotional “clincher.” The audience now knew they were engaged in a righteous and even holy conflict. And during the European phase of World War II (the Pacific was more complicated), that is likely how many people viewed it—on both sides! Germany regularly invoked religious themes in its propaganda, especially regarding its conflict with the “godless Communism” of the Soviet Union. German soldiers often wore belt buckles inscribed with Gott mit uns, “God with us.”

Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s embrace of Mrs. Miniver highlight Christianity’s dilemma, and that of most religions: political leaders love to recruit God for their cause. The American experiment with the “separation of church and state” often obscures the historical truth that religion and imperial or national power most often were hand-in-glove.

In ancient capitals, palace and temple were often side-by-side. In the 4^th century, the church was transformed when Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the empire’s new state religion. Roman legions painted crosses on their shields and conquered Germanic barbarians were forced into rivers at sword point to be baptized (surely a spiritually uplifting experience for all concerned). During the Middle Ages, Pope Urban II announced in 1095 that God wanted Jerusalem taken from the Muslims. For two centuries, thousands would fight—and die—in that ultimately unsuccessful endeavor.

Missing from consideration in these and countless other religion-inspired conflicts is the man Jesus of Nazareth. This is the one, the gospels tell us, who taught we should love our enemies, that peacemakers are children of God, and was hailed as the Prince of Peace. During his life, he ministered without regard to religion or nationality, he rejected any thought of using force or violence to further his cause, told his disciples to put away their swords when he was arrested, and went silently and without resistance to his execution.

How in the world do we go from the gospels’ Jesus to centuries of church-blessed, and sometimes inspired, violence and armed conflict? How did we get from Jesus’ call to pray for our enemies to this report in The New York Times.

He spoke of “overwhelming force” and the U.S. military’s unmatched ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on its “apocalyptic” Iranian foes. Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing in the Pentagon, issued a call to the American people … to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops. “Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The truth is that Secretary Hegseth has centuries of Christian history behind him. Conquering the world for Christ, by whatever means necessary, has been an often church-endorsed project. And the humble Jesus of Galilee has been largely erased for the sake of the risen and conquering Christ of Heaven, hailed as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Pope Leo knows that history and seems to be taking on the enormous challenge of pointing Christianity in a different direction. Another NYT story quotes from Leo’s Holy Week messages.

In a homily during a Mass on Thursday morning before Easter, the pope said that the Christian mission had often been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.” …

“We tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared,” the pope said in a homily during a Holy Thursday rite at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome. “God has given us an example — not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it.”

In late March the pope warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

For the millions accustomed to the church’s tradition of “domination”, Leo’s proposed course correction is not a welcome message. As on the Titanic, he’s turned the steering wheel of the ship of the church “hard over,” and we all know how well that turned out. Nonetheless, it will be hard to argue with someone trying to remind the church of the teaching of the man it claims as its founder.

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