Israel, Russia, Iran, United States … these wars that use God

Each spring, in May, Jerusalem experiences a fever. A troop of Israeli teenagers crosses the fortified door of Jaffa and descends the historic district, paved with millennial gold stones. The blue and white flags slam in the wind, the songs fuse, joyful and rage. “Long live Jerusalem!” Jerusalem is us! “Scandes the crowd, while along the walls, Palestinians shave the facades, heads down, worried looks.

Since its creation in 1998, the day of Jerusalem has become the showcase of the Israeli religious right. She commemorated the conquest of East Jerusalem, in 1967, during the Six-Day war. Long a simple parade, this manifestation has turned into a demonstration of force, culminating on the esplanade of the mosques, also the holy place of Islam. Five times already, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, a figure of the extreme religious right, an influential member of the government of Benyamin Netanyahu, went there as a challenge. Here, God is no longer only prayed in the secret of the temples: he appears and brandished himself as a political standard.

Jerusalem is no exception. In Moscow, the Patriarch Kirill blessed the missiles launched on Ukraine and praises war as a sacred defense of “Saint Russia” in the face of a Decadent West. In Tehran, Shiite power glorifies the generals killed and erects them as martyrs. Since Washington, in June 2025, Donald Trump has bombarded Iran and thanks “everyone, especially God”. Religion everywhere is mobilized. Never for decades, it had also emerged visibly, almost at the same time, in as many major conflicts.

Turning in 1979

Of course, faith has often accompanied war. We imagine that God deserted the front from the 19th century, replaced by colonial conquests, the shock of ideologies or territorial rivalries. But in 1914, the French, Belgian or German chaplains still bless the cannons and men, while the Ottoman caliph proclaims jihad against the allies.

In 1941, Stalin swapped his “comrades” for “my brothers and sisters” when he urged the Soviets to defend Moscow against the Nazis. “The religious never left us,” says Jean-François Colosimo, historian of religions, theologian and director general of the deer editions (1). In the 20th century, when atheistic ideologies dominated, the regimes were made of myths: homeland to defend, providential leaders, empires presented as the lights of civilization. “When God disappears, he leaves a void that is immediately filled with other forms of religiosity. Look at Robespierre who invented the supreme being in 1793 or, Lenine embalmed like a saint in her mausoleum, ”underlines Jean-François Colosimo. But today, has this sorrection of the sacred not changed its dimension? Formerly moral varnish or psychological support for soldiers, God becomes a political actor, used as a weapon.

This shattering return does not come from nowhere. “A turning point is played out in the late 1970s,” said François Mabille (2), researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), specialist in religion and pontifical diplomacy. The Iranian revolution replaces faith at the heart of Shiite power. In Afghanistan, jihad against the Soviet Union reveals the power of a religious discourse.

Then occurs on September 11, 2001. Aircraft strike New York in the name of Allah and Westerners are rediscovering that God can kill. Osama bin Laden asks them the question: “Who are you ready to die?” Opposite, globalization and progress are struggling to offer a greater cause than the extension of material comfort or individual rights. “Faced with this Islamism ready for sacrifice, what could be more powerful than the religious to rally, designate the enemy, justify violence?” “Explains Jean-François Colosimo, who specifies:” Once the utopias have been removed, we dig and we find the symbolism. And the strongest of symbols is the religion where politics will draw. »»

In the process, George W. Bush talks about “crusade” and invades Iraq. Since then, international law has cried. “Basically, what is the difference between Bush in 2003, Putin in Ukraine and Netanyahu against Iran? All brandish the idea of an existential threat which authorizes God to enter the battle, ”says François Mabille.

Defense of a civilization

Pope Francis mentioned a “world war by songs”. Each camp invokes his God, his sacred texts, his martyrs. Not always to conquer the world. But to defend a territory, an identity, a civilization. In Russia, the wedding of saber and goupillon is not new. In the USSR, the Orthodox Church undergoes the worst persecution of the history of Christianity. However, it survives thanks to its links with communist power. “As early as 1988, Gorbachev, feeling the USSR collapsed, had asked Moscow’s patriarchy to re-enchant the crowds by celebrating the millennium of the Baptism of Russia,” recalls Jean-François Colosimo. With Vladimir Putin, the link has consolidated: orthodoxy has once again become a pillar of the national story. Moscow dreams in “third Rome”, the last bulwark against Western liberalism and individualism. Opposite, Ukraine opposes its own faith. Since 2019, kyiv has equipped himself with an independent Orthodox church, a symbol of rupture. Volodymyr Zelensky also uses it to galvanize the resistance. In this part of Europe, God is enlisted on one side to conquer, on the other to free himself.

In Israel, since October 7, 2023, God has been invited in the polls and on military cards. The attack on Hamas has swept the illusions of coexistence and revived, in a part of Israeli society, the conviction that the struggle is sacred and that no concession is possible. Gaza is sacrificed, Iran erected as an absolute enemy. “Religious Zionism has always existed, but it was a long time wait,” explains political scientist Denis Charbit, professor of political science at the free university of Israel (3). Everything changed after the Six-Day war in 1967, when Israel conquered East Jerusalem and other biblical lands. The euphoria opens the way to a messianic Zionism convinced that the annexation of the West Bank, renown Judea-Samaria in reference to the Old Testament, is a divine mission.

In the 2000s, the failure of peace negotiations and the second intifada convinced that no compromise is possible with the Palestinians. The religious then invest politics. Today, they represent 12 to 15 % of the population, with their schools, their media, their rabbis, their deputies. A force that no one can ignore. “Benyamin Netanyahu plays the religious card by electoral calculation. But he must show white paw permanently, ”explains Denis Charbit.

Shaken marks

This religious Zionism was a powerful ally in the United States. From the 1980s, the Christian right, especially evangelical, made Israel a pivot of its convictions. “For these circles, Israel’s survival is essential for the return of the Messiah. Without him, no fulfillment of biblical prophecies, ”explains Blandine Chelini-Pont, professor of contemporary history and international relations at the University of Aix-Marseille (4).

With Donald Trump, this alliance takes an unprecedented turn: under his first mandate, Jerusalem is recognized as a capital in 2017. Iran was struck in 2025, and religious rhetoric invites itself to the top of American diplomacy. On Wednesday of the ashes, the US Secretary of State (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Marco Rubio features a cross on his front in public. “The religious is no longer just symbolic support of war. He becomes the very reason to conflict, ”insists Blandine Chelini-Pont.

Catholics, too, are taken in turmoil. From the beginning of the 20th century, the Church made peace a moral imperative. But the thunderous return of the religious to the battlefield shakes up his certainties. In Europe, many Catholics remain asins, disarmed before the emergence of a warrior god, whom he comes from the Kremlin, the Messianic Zionists or the Islamists.

“The West has lost its bearings in the face of the dialectic of war and peace,” observes Father Bernard Bourdin in the review Studies. Torn between moral pacifism and the temptation to demonize the enemy, many Christians sometimes struggle to find their way. In Rome, Pope Francis multiplied the calls for negotiations, including in Ukraine, which caused an outcry when he pressed kyiv to hoist the “white flag”. With more diplomacy, Leon XIV calls for conciliation. Words that struggle to resonate in the face of the crash of arms and the fear of aggression.

“Just war”

The American pope will also have to count with the radicalization of a fringe of his flock in the United States. Around JD Vance, vice-president, some “integralist” Catholics dream of a new Christian order ready for confrontation, against Islamism, but also against what they call “liberal decadence”. With them, faith is no longer just a spiritual refuge: it becomes a political program and, potentially, a reason for cultural war, even of war.

This is how we see, in the Christian world, debates reappear around the doctrine of “just war” . Neither absolute pacifism nor blind bellicism: the latter affirms that a war can be lawful if it is defensive, proportionate and waged for peace. But in a world where God serves as a alibi for bombs, this quest for balance is more undermined than ever.

1. Last work: West, global enemy n ° 1Ed. Albin Michel, 2024.
2. Last work: The Vatican – Papacy in front of a world in crisisEd. Eyrolles, 2025.
3. Last work: Israel, the impossible normal stateEd. Calmann-Levy, 2024.
4. Geopolitics of religionsEd. The Bleu Cavalier, new edition in Nov. 2025.