When Empire Becomes Our Gospel
Recovering the way of Jesus in the face of idols
I am a pastor, professor, and historian of evangelism and missions, which gives me a window into the ways in which Christians live out our Christian faith. This question is particularly important to me as it relates to Palestine and to my Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers. A recent experience in a church underscored one reason: the tendency of Christians in the U.S. to allow empires and their devices, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be the foundation for how we view our brothers and sisters around the world.
Empire as the foundation for the U.S. Church?
A few months ago, after the U.S. bombed and killed over 160 schoolgirls in the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school, I sat in the pews of a church, and during the prayer request time, someone asked the congregation to pray for “what was happening with Iran.” Their request wasn’t detailed or specific, and so the pastor felt free to offer his own thoughts about the U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran.
He told the congregation that the U.S. and Israel’s campaign in Iran was “preemptive.” He explained that he drew this conclusion from his understanding of Just War theory.1 At its basic level, Just War Theory argues that preemptive violence is acceptable in some instances if it is going to prevent catastrophic harm or protect innocent life. For this pastor, the bombings were justified because they were “preemptive.” The killing of countless Iranians and the destruction of their civilian infrastructure were justified because they ensured some measure of safety and security for Israelis and for those in the U.S.2
Christian churches and leaders are often willing to remain silent, justify, or openly support violence against people outside their own nation. The pastor’s response mirrors a broader pattern in many U.S. churches, where the ongoing genocide in Gaza has been met not with prophetic lament or condemnation, but with silence, explicit support, or theological justifications that render such violence morally acceptable.
Why was this pastor’s first instinct not to question violence, not to lament it, but to justify it? Why? There are a number of reasons, and the justifications for bombing Iran are connected to the reasons that church leaders have remained silent, have justified, or have given their support for the genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza, but, certainly, this pastor’s lens for seeing people beyond the borders of the U.S. - especially Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians, who are so often collapsed into a single category - has been shaped more by governments, political leaders, and media narratives and not by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was clear he relied first on the claims made by the U.S. and Israeli governments that the resulting civilian deaths were justified because the violence was “preemptive.” He, like many U.S. Christians across the theological and political spectrum, embraces these narratives, concluding that the lives of Iranians, like the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, are expendable, as long as Israelis and people in the U.S. receive their fill of the promises of “safety” and “security.”
These are the stories empires have always told. Governments and powerful institutions persuade people that violence against “those people” is necessary or unfortunate but necessary. Necessary to protect whom? Americans? Israelis? The “innocent”?
Within empire’s narratives, there are always people deemed “innocent” and others whose lives are determined to be expendable, their killing and oppression justifiable because they live under oppressive governments or because they are dehumanized by being labeled as “terrorists,” or sympathetic to “terrorists,”3 even while they endure brutal terror. Entire populations are deemed “guilty,” and their suffering is mourned only insofar as it is considered unavoidable.4
Empires teach us how to see people we have never met. That lens stands in direct contradiction to the gospel: “For God so loved the world,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The Idols of the Church in the U.S.: U.S. Exceptionalism, Safety, and Security
God so loves the world. Not the U.S., not one nation more than others. Not only people of a particular race or religion. The whole world. As Christians, we must root the way that we view other human beings through the lens of Jesus - through the lens of the gospel. We cannot hand over our lens for how we view other human beings to news outlets, to governments - to empires.
The gospel should be what shapes our understanding of others, those whom God loves. If we are rooted there, we become less susceptible to the fear, propaganda, and narratives that so often prepare the violence we see to first take root in our hearts. When we abandon the gospel as our lens, we begin trusting the false gods of safety and security, believing our own safety should come at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of others.
If we want to follow the command to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” then we must also abandon our worship of the false gods of safety and security. These false gods repeatedly demand the suffering of others. They were invoked to justify the bombing of Iran, just as they have been invoked to justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Again and again, governments and media institutions tell us that violence is necessary to keep us safe. They teach us to believe that some people must be bombed, displaced, imprisoned, or killed so that others can feel secure.
This pattern was evident long before the genocide in Gaza. When Israeli forces killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Israeli officials initially claimed she had likely been killed by Palestinian gunfire during an exchange in the refugee camp. That explanation quickly became the dominant narrative. This response followed a familiar pattern: deny responsibility, offer an alternative explanation, cast doubt on witnesses, and later revise the account after public attention has shifted. Israeli authorities eventually acknowledged that Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire while maintaining that her death was unintentional.
We have seen the same playbook throughout the genocide in Gaza. When hospitals, schools, refugee camps, journalists, aid workers, and other civilian targets are attacked, the first response is often to claim that militants were present. That claim then becomes the focus of public debate.
The burden of proof is reversed. Palestinians, like Iranians, must prove their innocence, while the U.S. and Israeli militaries, carrying out the violence, are presumed to have had a legitimate reason. This is how dehumanization works. The violence begins before the bombs fall. It begins in your heart, in my heart, and in the hearts of people who have already been convinced that people in the U.S. and Israel are innocent and our brothers and sisters are guilty.
I do not raise this pastor to condemn him, but to ask a deeper question: Why did he begin with the empire’s lens rather than the gospel that teaches us to love our neighbors? Why did he not pray with all his heart that no one would be bombed? Why did he not pray for Iranian children, parents, teachers, workers, and neighbors as human beings beloved by God? Why did he reach first for a theory that could justify violence rather than for the gospel that commands us to love?
The Challenge and Power of the Gospel
“For God so loved the world,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And yet, for Christians in the United States, these often appear to be among the least practiced verses in Scripture.
Violence begins when precious human beings - our neighbors, our siblings, people whom God loves - are no longer seen as fully human. It begins in our hearts. It begins in our churches, our workplaces, our relationships, and our conversations. It begins when we accept the categories handed to us by empire: innocent and guilty, worthy and disposable.
So, I close with questions for you and for myself:
What shapes whether you believe they are worthy of life, dignity, safety, and freedom?
What shapes whether you see them as human beings whom God loves?
Is it CNN, CBS, NBC, Fox News, or NPR? Is it Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, or some other political leader?
It is not enough merely to stop the violence taking shape in our hearts. Loving our neighbors means demanding for the children of others what we want for our own, especially those living beneath bombs and those dehumanized by governments and media.
After all, empires never dehumanize people without a purpose. It dehumanizes them because their suffering benefits someone else. We must therefore decide whether empire or the gospel will shape the way we see other human beings.
May we stop the violence that begins in our hearts. May the gospel be our foundation - our lens for viewing our brothers and sisters around the world. May we love our neighbors as ourselves, for God so loves the whole world.
Cristal Silva-McCormick, MDiv, ThM, PhD
Just War Theory is a framework some people refer to determine w-en it is ethical to go to war and how to ethically conduct war. See, Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. 5th ed. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Munther Isaac, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2025), chap. 4, especially 132-152.
See, Daniel Bannoura, “Hamas and Violence: Ideology, Militarism, and the Quest for Liberation,” in Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza, ed. Bruce N. Fisk and J. Ross Wagner (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2025), especially 192-195.
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