It was 23 years ago that Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered one of the most profound and misunderstood sermons in U.S. history. In “Confusing God and Government,” delivered on Palm Sunday in 2003, Wright tells the story of race and war throughout U.S. history, arguing that the country had failed Black and Indigenous populations. Toward the sermon’s climactic end, Rev. Wright stated, “No, no, no. Not ‘God Bless America;’ God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen[s] as less than human. God Damn America, as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme!” This moment would cause controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Barack Obama, who attended Wright’s church, was accused of anti-Americanism.
But Wright was right. If the United States, as a nation, has a soul, it is currently hellbound.
If the United States, as a nation, has a soul, it is currently hellbound.
At the March 10 Pentagon press briefing regarding the U.S. attack on Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth invoked Psalm 144 in his closing remarks: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” Then, at the March 25 Pentagon prayer service, Hegseth again used psalmic language, praying for God to “Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence,” asking that “every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” and for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Hegseth is part of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, an anti-democratic, reactionary faith community associated with pastor Doug Wilson that hopes to impose Christian theocracy on the U.S. This movement claims that Christians are in a battle for the future of Western civilization. Hegseth views violence for this theocracy as necessary, even good, writing in his 2020 book, American Crusade, that Westerners should “thank a crusader.”
President Donald Trump’s administration is full of those who are sure that God blesses America. These people believe that God is on America’s side—their side—and that divine purpose blesses every bomb that is dropped and every blockade that is established against other nations. Their frictionless invocations of God and power, like Hegseth’s, belie the horrifying reality of American imperial violence. In 1967, during the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr. said that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and the same holds true today.
And while not wholly dependent on Christofascist control of our government, U.S. imperial violence has certainly become more pronounced and heedless in its execution. All of this has been gnawing at me and made me realize that I will likely be resisting this death-dealing movement for the rest of my life. There is no simple or singular solution to bring about its end, as what sustains it is older than the U.S. itself. This recognition has brought grief but, more so, anger—an anger that can be summed up perfectly by the prophetic words of Wright: “God damn America.”
Christians are not meant to live free of anger. There is much right now to be angry about: the bipartisan bloodlust that drives the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon; the Christian Right’s libidinal love of violence; the fascism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the death-making of the U.S. empire itself. All of this injustice is done in my name, with my tax dollars, supposedly for my benefit and safety. All of it continues, regardless of voting, donating, marching, emailing, arguing, or organizing. Our political system is a machine for producing suffering and immiseration, and even as this system becomes increasingly unpopular, it seems immune to pressure.
Even as anger is a daily part of my emotional landscape, I do not believe that God abandons us to our anger. Hegseth’s use of the psalms to justify imperial violence is not the only way to use the psalms. The imprecatory psalms, also known as the “cursing psalms,” are prayers and songs that invoke God’s judgment against individuals or nations. These prayers can and should be invoked against the U.S. empire.
Mixed with rage and lament, the imprecatory psalms include prayers like Psalm 69, when the psalmist asks for their enemies to be blinded (v. 23) and for God to pour out wrath upon their enemies (v. 24). In Psalm 109, a psalm attributed to David, he prays that his enemies’ “days be few” and for another to “seize his position” (v. 8) and for “the creditor [to] seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil” (v. 11). And the most infamous is Psalm 137, when the psalmist prays for Babylonian infants to be dashed against the rocks (v. 9). These prayers name enemies, rail against them, and cry out to God for justice and even revenge.
READ MORE: Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective
The history of Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Psalter varies significantly. C.S. Lewis called the imprecatory psalms vulgar, diabolical, and contemptible; Old Testament scholar Hans-Joachim Kraus commented that Christians should take up the imprecatory psalms “with reservations and critical deliberation.” But today, Christofascist pastors use them to call for the spiritual “crucifixion” of Democratic politicians.
Others have interpreted them as liturgies where rage is given over to God. Biblical scholar Trevor Laurence identifies this as the “relinquishment reading” of these psalms, as “They leave everything in God’s hands, even feelings of hatred and aggression.” Here, the imprecatory language functions to exorcise anger while resourcing us with words suitable for the horror of the moment. This interpretive tradition sees these psalms as an aid for nonviolence amid injustice, expelling our desires for revenge. According to the late Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, they are cathartic liturgies where “vengeance is transferred from the heart of the speaker to the heart of God.”
Ultimately, the point of the imprecatory psalms is not to save us from our anger, but to cultivate a rightly ordered rage. Anger is not synonymous with despair. It is not hopelessness, it is not cynicism. Anger can distort you, but it can also direct you, providing purpose and clarity for your next action. “We have guided missiles and misguided men,” said King in 1963. But the point of the imprecatory psalms is not to make us misguided missiles of anger, but to continually form us into a people capable of seeking justice.
Anger rightly directed helps us fight against cynicism and despair. Anger is part of hope’s infrastructure, as it sustains the hope that justice is possible and that imperial violence can be brought to an end. As feminist philosopher Macalester Bell says, in situations of injustice, “appropriate anger is a mode of hating or being against evil.” These liturgies of rage can make anger sustainable, clear-eyed, and strategic.
As my tax dollars sustain the infrastructure of the military, I can pray that a “creditor seize all” of the military’s assets (Psalm 109:11). For the politicians who love war, I can pray that another “may seize his position” (Psalm 109:8). As a citizen of the U.S. empire, I can pray that this empire be dashed against the rocks, not because I wish for death, but because I hope that the American empire has no future (Psalm 137:9). America is Egypt, Babylon, and Rome; it is anti-shalom, anti-Christ, anti-life. Indeed, I hope that God does damn America. The full range of the emotional vocabulary of the Psalms—especially its prophetic rage—helps shape our political imagination, our sense of how to be, and what to struggle for and against.
Praying these psalms of rage is also a way of not only praying against all that sows evil and suffering, but also of engaging in soul care for yourself, reclaiming your integrity as your nation engages in actions of evil. It is a way to prepare you to take responsibility for resisting the horrors of your own people. Prayer is not enough, because while God might hear my prayers, the powerful do not. Christofascists like Hegseth worship a god of death, and we are called to undo the death-dealing holy sites of their false god. The words of the imprecatory psalms make demands on those of us who pray them for the sake of life: We must take material actions to gut military budgets, defuse bombs, decommission bases, decrease the number of military personnel, and undo sanctions.
There is now a singular, inescapable political calling for Christians in the U.S.: defeating fascism at home and undoing the American empire abroad. When we pray these psalms against the U.S. empire, our rage is suffused with hope. At the other end of this hopeful struggle is a future where aircraft carriers become housing, where Reaper drones become playgrounds, where concentration camps are nothing but storage facilities, and where rifles are beaten into plowshares. This future depends on God’s holy judgment of the U.S. We pray with Rev. Jeremiah Wright that God damns America because others’ lives depend upon it, and so do our souls.
Adam Joyce has written for Christian Century, ABC Religion & Ethics, as well as other publications. His forthcoming book, No More Pharaohs: Christianity, Racial Capitalism, and Socialism will be published with Cascade Books.
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