Make no mistake: the self-proclaimed defenders of America’s liberal democracy at The Bulwark love war. But the one thing that may possibly outweigh Bill Kristol and company’s love of war may be their hatred for Donald Trump.

So, it should be no surprise The Bulwark provided space for John Fea to not criticize the Iran War but instead take shots at MAGA evangelicals for how they’re supporting Trump’s war. See, they’re not supporting the war properly.

These sycophantic “celebrity pastors” are just blindly cheerleading the war out of bloodlust and devotion to Trump. (Fea really wants you to understand these are merely “celebrity” pastors as he repeated this barb multiple times.) They’re not even attempting to make a principled case for this war as proper evangelicals have labored to do throughout the twenty-first century.

Fea disparages Mark Driscoll’s appeal to God’s vengeance, Samuel Rodriguez’s celebration of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death, Greg Laurie’s appeal to end times prophecy, and Franklin Graham’s parroting of Trump’s rationale for the war. And he was particularly scornful of the “Reformed evangelical Christian” and Christian nationalist, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, according to Fea, “appears to take great pleasure in killing.” For Fea, “What links these simultaneously resentful and celebratory responses is their almost complete lack of appeal to principle to justify Trump’s war.”

Even though “Bush’s invasion turned out badly,” as Fea admits, evangelicals made a good faith effort to provide proper moral cover for the U.S. war in Iraq:

“In 2003, evangelical leaders at least tried to bring religious and theological principles to bear in their public thinking and arguing about Bush’s war. Many of them tried to ground Bush’s policy of regime change using the centuries-old moral framework of just war theory.”

For instance, Richard Land and Chuck Colson “argued that the righteous use of the ‘sword’ was a duty of legitimate government that was given to it by God.” And unlike, Pete Hegseth, Colson admonished, “Christians should never talk about war with bravado—only with reluctance, weeping, and with prayer and fasting.”

Fea is very impressed with former managing editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, whose talk “of ‘tragic courage’ that required the United States to risk its ‘moral purity’ to root out evil while maintaining a sense of ‘humility,’ ‘patience,’ and ‘sadness’ regarding the evil buried in one’s own heart, but also ‘serenity’ owing to God’s grace amid the uncertainty.” Colson supported preemptive strikes “out of love of neighbor.” And George W. Bush’s speechwriter and Wheaton College grad Michael Gerson “provided the theological heft for this strain of evangelical thinking about the use of American power abroad—what we might call ‘compassionate internationalism.’”

Ah, the good ol’ days when evangelicals knew how to hit all the right notes!

Iraq “turned out badly,” as Fea puts it, but the evangelicals who made the moral case for the war were “driven by conviction,” and that’s what really matters. Fea gives a glimpse of what he deems the proper role of evangelical leaders to be when it comes to war and peace:

“The evangelical leaders and celebrity pastors who support Donald Trump do not appear to have a strong interest in building a moral world order through international coalitions and a foreign policy rooted in what the Christian tradition teaches about war, peace, and human dignity, as their forebears who supported Bush did.”

Building a moral world order. Foreign policy rooted in the teachings of the Christian tradition. Maintaining a sense of humility, patience, and sadness. Reluctantly rooting out evil with weeping, prayer, and fasting. Fighting for something worthy enough to require the United States to risk its moral purity. This is how evangelical leaders are supposed to talk about our wars. This is how you carry out the responsibility of morally justifying support for war. These MAGA evangelicals didn’t even try, unlike the “Bush-era evangelicals [who] recognized the importance of attempting to impose ethical reason’s restraints on militaristic passion.”

Fea rightly criticizes the almost non-existent critique from MAGA evangelicals over the U.S. strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab. He rightly cites the imperative for evangelicals and other religious leaders to at least attempt to “impose ethical reason’s restraints on militaristic passion.” But Fea doesn’t nearly go far enough with his critique. And he draws the wrong lesson from the Bush-era evangelicals. Those evangelicals are a cautionary tale, not an exemplary one.

How many times does Lucy have to pull the football away before Charlie Brown gets a clue? How many times do we have to be lied into wars before we understand we’re being lied to this time too? How many times must we listen to the high-minded rhetoric about our intentions for a preferable future only to watch things end up worse than it was before?

Look at our regime change wars.

We were told we were ousting Saddam Hussein to free the people and establish a wonderful new democratic government in Iraq. And now this week Iraq’s National Security Council has just authorized an Iranian-backed coalition of armed Shi’ite militias to fight back in response to attacks from the U.S. and Israel. Iraq is not even an ally today. And the over one million Christians who enjoyed a measure of protection under Saddam’s rule are now down to 150,000-300,000 as they’ve been forced to flee persecution in the wake of the blessings of regime change.

We we told we were deposing Gaddafi in Libya for humanitarian concerns on behalf of the citizens. And now Libya is an out-of-control hub of mass migration from Africa into Europe. “According to the EU-funded Infomigrants website, the IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) program in Libya identified 939,638 migrants living within Libya as of the end of 2025, the largest figure on record,” reports Breitbart. The minority Christians of Libya also enjoyed a measure of protection in Libya as Gaddafi kept Islamic extremists from brutalizing the church. Many of the Christians of Libya have been forced to flee. Those who remain are subject to kidnapping, torture, and murder in the wake of the blessings of regime change. And don’t forget about Libya’s new reality of open slave markets.

We were told we were expelling Bashar al-Assad from Syria to punish him for his human rights violations and promote a path to democracy. And now Syria is led by a rehabilitated jihadist. Like Hussein and Gaddafi, Assad provided a measure of freedom to Christians in Syria. They were allowed to worship and were protected from outright violence from jihadists (like the country’s new leader). Now the future is uncertain as many Christians live in fear while remaining hopeful for what might come next.

And what of the 800,000 to one million Christians currently living in Iran? Will regime change magically be the humanitarian blessing of democracy this time around? The reality is, almost no one speaks of the Christians of Iran. And the reality is, Lucy is going to pull the football away yet again.

What of the over two million Christians living in Lebanon who make up about 30% of the population? The apostle Paul personally ministered to the believers in Phoenicia (Acts 21:2-4) which highlights the ancient Christian roots of Lebanon. Just last week Israel’s Defense Minister announced plans for Israeli troops to occupy large parts of southern Lebanon comprising approximately 10% of the nation. Should evangelical leaders also be crafting well-reasoned moral arguments for an invasion of Lebanon?

Whether evangelicals cheer on the war in Iran in a calloused manner which lacks moral reasoning or with high-minded moral philosophy like the Bush-era evangelicals, reality remains the same: the war in Iran cannot be justified morally. If it can, no one has made this case. And how could they? Even our elected leaders cannot consistently articulate why the United States must go to war with Iran.

Fea concludes we’re worse off because today’s evangelical leaders are failing in “their responsibility to justify their support for a war of choice.” In contrast, the model evangelicals of the Bush-era did the right thing and “recognized the importance of attempting to impose ethical reason’s restraints on militaristic passion.” But did they really? Evangelicals weren’t able to apply morally and ethically reasoned restraints on W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump.

And even if the MAGA evangelicals of today employed the high-minded rhetoric of the Bush-ites, would we really be better off? The Trump administration is lying about the war continually. As Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) relayed this week,

The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee. This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of…

— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) March 25, 2026

We would actually be worse off for putting moral lip stick on the regime change pig. Reluctantly making the case for rooting out evil with weeping, prayer, and fasting while maintaining a posture of humility, patience, and sadness wouldn’t be helpful. It would be manipulative and deceptive. It would be theater.

It is time to grow up and face the reality of regime change wars. They do not work. They make things worse. We are lied to about them every time. When a MAGA evangelical like Hegseth says “winning is domination,” he’s being more honest about war than the Wormtongue Bush-era evangelicals. If Fea and The Bulwark wanted an “appeal to principle,” they’d be making the case against Israel’s war with Iran.