What's God got to do with it?

Everything for the evangelical, Pentecostal segment of Donald Trump's base which is cheering his extra-Constitutional attack on what he hopes is Iran's nuclear capacity. (Thirty-six hours after, experts aren't so sure he's done the damage he hoped to, but what does expertise matter, anyway, when you are a boy ordering a big bang?)

 

Polling before the strike on Iran showed only 16 percent of us wanted this. This is not like GW Bush's invasion of Iraq which enjoyed majority support for a hot minute in 2003. Now that Trump's done it, YouGov still finds 46 percent opposed, 35 percent in favor of the strikes. And just wait until it all becomes more complicated ...

Diana Butler Bass brings historical perspective to evangelical Christian enthusiasm for the Trump's bombs: 

To his evangelical base, Trump is fulfilling end times prophecies before their eyes. Moving the embassy [to Jerusalem in 2018] was but the first step in reorienting US policy toward prophecy. What is happening right now — with the US joining with Israel in this bombing — is nothing less than God's work, and they believe that they are the recipients of the long-awaited promise of Jesus' return.

... the MAGA "Jesus" and their particular prophecy tradition only dates to the mid-1800s. It was a completely invented theology about 200 years ago.

Yet that theological innovation has been one of the most wildly successful heresies in the history of Christianity in terms of spread and influence — mostly via Pentecostalism, the largest and most sustained global religious movement of the last century.

Modern Pentecostalism began among the poor and dispossessed and was originally influenced by progressive politics. Movements change, however. And partisans often wind up far from where they started.

In the last four decades, Pentecostals fully embraced both prophecy theologies (previously these theologies had been the purview of rather staid evangelicals and fundamentalists — most of whom eschewed Pentecostalism) and nationalist politics. ...

... Trump’s evangelical and Pentecostal supporters — the core of MAGA — are cheering. ... Bombing Iran secures Trump’s status as God’s man, the one sent to fulfill the prophetic promises that lead to the return of Jesus. While the rest of us are trying to discern signs of fascism, many American are discerning the "signs of the times."

We think Hitler. They think Jesus. We think of the innocent suffering. They think of the final judgment. We pray for peace. They believe that the Prince of Peace is returning with a sword. ...

For a deeper dive into this crackpot theology, I recommend Jemar Tisby: Bombs for the Apocalypse? Ted Cruz, Trump, and Evangelical End Times Theology -- How Dispensationalism Drives American Foreign Policy and Military Aggression. This is an accessible easy read, if delving into lunacy can be easy.