Blessed Are the Pepper-Sprayers?
“I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it.”
That’s the funny but perverse doctrine expressed by the DC Comics vigilante known as “Peacemaker.” While John Cena deadpans the line in the 2021 superhero movie The Suicide Squad, others have borrowed the term “peacemaker” for more serious efforts to name actual deadly instruments.
Like the Colt Single Action Army handgun designed for the U.S. government in the 1870s that was nicknamed “Peacemaker.” And there’s the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile that was created to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Plans originally called for it be known as “Peacemaker,” but at the last minute it was renamed “Peacekeeper.” There was also a cannon christened “Peacemaker” put on the USS Princeton warship in 1843. A problem occurred, however, when the cannon’s production was rushed. During a pleasure cruise for President John Tyler, his cabinet, and other dignitaries in 1844, they decided to fire the Peacemaker for show, but it exploded. Among the six people killed were the secretary of state and the secretary of the navy.
Naming a gun, missile, or cannon “Peacemaker” shows a perverted sense of what peace actually is. Killing people might bring a temporary sense of peace to the one who used the weapon, but there’s blood crying from the ground, “‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
There’s a similar trend in the Trump administration to utilize the term “peacemaker” to describe military weapons and acts of aggression. And usually, they even explicitly tie the use of that term to Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” By doing so, they co-opt the words of Jesus to justify imperial violence. So this issue of A Public Witness explores the “peacemaker” rhetoric from the Trump administration and how this misrepresents what Jesus actually taught.
Bless this Mess?
Six days after a federal agent executed Renee Good (and 11 days before other agents executed Alex Pretti), the Department of Homeland Security posted a social media video featuring a Bible verse overlayed on images of their militarized agents. This wasn’t too surprising given DHS had released several such videos since last summer. This one was unique, however, as it was the first time DHS moved into the New Testament to kidnap a verse. And not just any New Testament verse but even some of those red letters of Jesus.
The video opens with the view from inside a cockpit before quickly switching to show a helicopter from the outside as the words “Blessed are the peacemakers” appear on screen. As the words disappear, militarized Coast Guard agents (often filmed with night-vision cameras) are seen dropping from the helicopter and then, with guns drawn, seizing control of a ship. The rest of the verse then comes on screen: “For they shall be called sons of God. -Matthew 5:9,” followed by more images of agents from Customs and Border Protection and other agencies within DHS. We see many walking around with guns, some blasting open doors to houses, several approaching vehicles and hauling people away in handcuffs, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem cheering them on.
While the violent scenes and Bible verse flash on the screen, the music the whole time is Lorde’s cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It’s a dark take on the song, which adds to the haunting, ominous feel of the video.
“Nothing ever lasts forever,” we hear just before the last part of the verse appears. “Everybody wants to rule the world. There’s a room where the light won’t find you, holding hands while the walls come tumbling down. When they do, I’ll be right behind you.”
Originally released in 1985 by the English pop rock band Tears for Fears, a bandmember explained it’s a warning “about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes.” Lorde recorded it for the soundtrack to the film adaptation of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second in the dystopian saga where the Capitol forces children from the districts to compete in fights to the death. And this authoritarian government maintains its control over the poverty-stricken masses with its militarized, abusive, and often corrupt police force known as the Peacekeepers.
Yet, that’s the song DHS unironically put in their video. They’re apparently no better at movie and music interpretation than they are at biblical hermeneutics!
Sadly, this misuse of Jesus’s Beatitude about peacemakers isn’t just being turned upside down by DHS. Attorney General Pam Bondi also invoked it as she justified the national guard deployment in Washington, D.C., last year by highlighting how many people had been arrested. She added, “Sending my heartfelt prayers and support to all law enforcement officers working to make DC safe again. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9.”
Another administration figure invoking the verse is Pete Hegseth. Instead of going by Secretary of Defense, he likes to call himself Secretary of War, which is even more obviously nonpeaceful. Yet, in August, he posted photos of himself with uniformed soldiers and the caption, “Blessed are the Peacemakers. May God bless our troops, and our President.”
The White House social media accounts also like to post “Blessed are the peacemakers” along with an image of Trump. They’ve done this several times over the past year, most recently last month after a report showing a decrease in murders in the United States. They also posted this multiple times as part of his unsuccessful campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize by trying to highlight wars he allegedly ended. FIFA didn’t mention if the Bible verse was part of why they gave Trump his participation peace prize.
Other MAGA accounts have pushed similar misreadings of the peaceful Beatitude. Like the Center for Baptist Leadership, a group led by a former Trump administration official trying to make the Southern Baptist Convention more Trump-supporting. The group has defended ICE, even publishing a prayer last month by a Minnesota pastor asking God to “break the teeth” of ICE’s opponents. Last week — two days after the execution of Pretti by federal agents — they posted an image of militarized federal agents standing amid a cloud of gas in front of what appears to be a United Methodist church that’s close to where Good was killed. On top of the image, CBL added an American flag and the words “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” As a caption, CBL wrote, “’Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’ Matthew 5:9. Keep praying for our federal law enforcement agents at both ICE and DHS as they heroically put themselves in harm’s way to help restore the rule of law and bring peace to America!”
War and Peace
The Trump administration’s conception of “peace” seems to be more about creating a state of power and control. Peace for them — like with the Capitol in The Hunger Games — is when their authority and power are not challenged. This definition cares not about how the people in the street feel or if they actually experience peace. It is with such a flawed definition of “peace” that they can suggest that peace can be created by killing people. But thinking one brings peace through war is like trying to build a strong marriage by having an affair.
Peace, as Jesus and biblical prophets spoke of it, is about more than just ending the fighting. As journalist Dorothy Thompson, one of the earliest voices of warning about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, put it: “Peace is not the mere absence of war. It is a positive condition of justice. It is the sister of charity and mercy. It is the offspring of honesty and truth. It is the triumph of principle.” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. later echoed this idea: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Their comments fit with the biblical concept of shalom, which is generally translated as “peace” in the Bible (like in Jeremiah 6:14 about those who say “peace, peace”). This is more than just the absence of conflict but about a state of being.
The co-opting of Jesus’s words by DHS and others in the administration adds to the list of their misuses of our sacred texts. But it also shows a serious problem that they look at the Bible and think they’re the holy ones, all while executing people in the streets, kidnapping kids, shooting clergy with pepper balls, tear-gassing children at their school, pepper-spraying peaceful protesters, offering racist taunts, and lying about their actions.
When The Life of Brian mocked people misinterpreting the Bible — “Blessed are the cheesemakers” — it was funny. But when DHS thinks the pepper-sprayers (and tear-gassers and shooters) are blessed, it’s no laughing matter. So with apologies to Jeremiah, his words seem, unfortunately, almost perfect for this moment:
“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peacemakers, peacemakers,’ they say, when they are no peacemakers. Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.”
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
