While the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, Bishop Derek Jones was with a group of over 300 Anglican military chaplains at a weeklong symposium and training in Bluffton, South Carolina.
Once the chaplains heard the news, “everyone was champing at the bit to get back to their unit,” Jones said. “They wanted to be with their people.”
The chaplains wanted to check in with and support soldiers in the aftermath of the attacks.
“My office is not in a chapel. My office is where the soldiers are,” said Major William H. Allen, a US Army chaplain based in Arlington, Virginia.
Allen works alongside service members and catches up with them during meetings and at meals. The day-to-day conversations turn into impromptu counseling sessions about marriage difficulties, financial uncertainty, and suicide.
When the military faces attacks and escalation, Allen keeps an eye out for anxiety among the troops. Sometimes he’ll approach the commander of the unit to suggest clearer communication about their mission.
“The beauty—the gift, frankly—of my job as a chaplain is that I’m dealing with people sometimes for whom the uncertainty actually draws them to God,” Allen said.
Chaplains can serve soldiers by being with them during difficult moments or pointing them to specific Bible passages—a staple is Psalm 91 (“under his wings you will find refuge”).
“It makes a difference,” Allen said. “We bring a peace, not because of our own personality or because of who we are but the power that we represent.”
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump also referenced a higher power, in an address where he deemed the strikes a “spectacular military success.”
“I just want to say,” he said in closing, “we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America.”
Come Sunday morning, churches on military bases offered prayers for those involved in the attack.
At the start of a chapel service at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, Navy chaplain Steven Stougard said, “I also pray with thanksgiving that our service members, who were in action over the weekend doing what they are trained and called to do, that you brought them back safely from their missions. And for those that remain on standby on duty and in the region over there in the Middle East, I just ask that you would protect them and watch over them, please.”
As a response, the choir then sang the hymn “Through it All”: “Through it all, through it all, I’ve learned to trust in Jesus. I’ve learned to trust in God. / Through it all, through it all, I’ve learned to depend upon his Word.”
Each day at noon, Jones prays for the chaplains under his purview as bishop of the armed forces and chaplains with the Anglican Church in North America. He lifts up each by name along with their specific concerns.
Jones has found that military chaplaincy is a tough battlefield, both spiritually and physically: Over 20 percent of his senior military chaplains have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.
As a retired combat fighter pilot, Jones knows firsthand what it’s like to be in the field and in the position of offering spiritual direction to service members.
“Don’t think for a minute that these are … folks trying to be spiritual gurus sitting inside some building that people can go to talk to,” Jones said. “Chaplains are out on the lines with the folks, they are in the commanders’ briefings or the ship captains’ briefing. … They are absolutely in the mix, and they suffer the same things.”
Some Americans have expressed support for the engagement with Iran, while others are concerned about the bombing and whether it risks drawing the US into a protracted conflict and outright war. Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the US “decided to destroy diplomacy” with the strikes.
Around the country, reactions from faith leaders ranged as well.
Josh Thompson pastors a church outside of Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Missouri, home to the B-2 stealth bombers that carried out the Iran mission.
“Our community gathered on Sunday with a strange mixture of pride, hope, and anxiety,” said Thompson, who leads Harvest Church. “Obviously pride because some who are dear to us were involved in various capacities. Hope because a successful mission can lead to longer lasting (though we know not ultimately lasting) peace. Anxiety because many know what this could lead to.”
For those who keep the military in their prayers at times of conflict, Thompson suggested praying for service members who experience guilt or find themselves jarred by the imbalance of their duties, that they would be strengthened and comforted by their faith.
“Imagine, you live in rural Missouri. Life is fairly quiet here. You do training exercises and live life. Your family lives on base with you. You say goodbye to your kids, and go fly 36 hours on a secret mission with extremely high stakes. Then you come home and are immediately back to ‘normal life,’” he said. “It is both comforting and a cause of anxiety to land a plane literally straight from the combat and have your family greet you there.”
Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and an evangelical faith leader who is a staunch Trump ally, voiced full support for the Iran strikes during his Sunday message.
Jeffress told CT he hadn’t heard any concern from parishioners that the conflict might escalate: “Our members have a sense that all of these events are under God’s control.”
Jeffress doesn’t view his role as a faith leader who’s close to Trump as coming with the responsibility to give him advice about further engagement. “It’s a safe assumption that the president of the United States has more information than I do,” he said. “I try not to speak until spoken to.”
He added that he prays for Trump’s wisdom in making the best decisions and said he thinks “that seems to be being answered every day.” He texted Trump after the strikes, telling him that Christians would be praying for him. But he keeps responses from the president confidential.
Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said most pastors don’t think of themselves as policy experts. He noted that evangelicals’ views of the end times vary widely, and not all would scramble their sermon plans to address what may be going on geopolitically.
Instead, the closest many may get to addressing the conflict may be through prayer: “Pray for the country, pray for our leaders, pray for peace in the Middle East, pray for Israel, pray for the people of Iran,” he said.
Darling, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, said that while he’s seeing more debate over Trump’s action and whether it was consistent with his campaign-trail promises to keep the US from entering more wars, from military friends and acquaintances he senses a “war weariness.”
“When you talk to the rank-and-file, what I think they’re nervous about is sending US troops, nation building, and all that stuff,” Darling said. But he’s also seen “a trust level” that the US government’s action would not escalate. “I sense a belief in peace through strength,” Darling added, “not a sentiment of, oh [Trump’s] tricking us.”
“We’re in dangerous times, we need to pray, and I think that’s where pastors are needed … trying to help their people think through this without fear, trust the Lord, and to pray.”
At Cascade Hills Church near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina—the country’s biggest Army installation—the prayer team leader lifted up military responders, asking God to “protect our soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors all around the world as they’re certainly under threat this morning as they’ve not been in quite a while, Lord.”
With reporting by Kate Shellnutt. This story has been updated with additional comments from pastors.
