More unusual, especially in America, are clergy who explicitly support making war. In one case, five prominent Evangelicals, several of them clergy, issued a rare implied endorsement for war: In a a 2002 letter to President George W. Bush they declared that the president’s “stated policies” toward Iraq’s Saddam Hussein were justified by Christian Just War teaching. Signers included Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, prison ministry leader Charles Colson, and prominent Florida pastor James Kennedy. The letter did not lean on Romans 13 but cited seven stipulations associated with Just War theory, and it did not offer Jeffress’s sweeping carte blanche to “take out” evil.
Predictably, most critiques of Jeffress’s declaration have come from secular or liberal, pacifist Christian voices, implying that Jeffress represents orthodox and conservative Christianity. Johnnie Moore, another prominent Evangelical Trump supporter who is a layman has since Jeffress’s announcement tweeted his prayers for “peace, not war & — with trepidation — for our leaders to know for sure if the latter becomes required for the former.”
Jeffress’s bellicose North Korea pronouncement perhaps represents two tendencies in American Evangelicalism. One is an assumption that clergy have a vocation for routine political matters, including candidate endorsements and policy advice. Most of Christian tradition assumes otherwise, and most clergy act accordingly — with restraint. The other is a tendency make political decisions based on spiritual absolutes. If God is believed to have ordained a specific person for office, then opposition to that person is opposition to God, and good Christians must give full support for the duration, adorned with plenty of scripture quotations.
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