From Pews to Pew Pews, Some Churches Are Becoming a Training Ground for War

A children's bible program turned brutal

Tactical gear. Guns. Explosions. Vicious chanting. A viral video taken inside a church in Lexington, Kentucky was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Watch this video:

@jedidiah_padawan#bibleschool #christianity #insanity #conservative #indoctrination

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

It happened during Vacation Bible School at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. In the video, four men in tactical gear dragged another man up the aisle between pews. They pushed the man onto the steps at the front of the church, aimed their guns, and shot, in a mock execution. All the while the pastor, Dewayne Walker, led the children in a chant:

“Take him out, blow him up. Take him out, blow him up,” they shrieked as his body convulsed in front of them. Then the military men dragged the man outside, and the pastor counted down until there was a loud explosion, indicating the man had indeed been “blown up.”

What in the Hillbilly Hellegy is going on here?

In a Facebook post, Pastor Walker assured viewers the firearms were harmless air soft guns and the skit simply depicted the battle between good and evil.

“You may think we went over the top,” Walker said. “You may think it was a little bit extreme, and maybe you’re right, but don’t you believe that the devil is really using extreme measures in this generation.”

While Pastor Walker tried to make light of it, the reality is much darker and ruins the youthful innocence of what should be a lighthearted church activity.

Vacation Bible School a weeklong day camp that teaches kids about the Bible in a fun, engaging way. I grew up going to VBS. I’ve sent my kids to VBS. Churches host VBS in the summer and invite local kids from the neighborhood as an act of outreach and a way to connect with the community. VBS is a relief to parents who yearn to break up the ennui of long summer and give their kids something social to do.

I want to break here to point out that the bar is literally so low for these VBS programs. They generally cater to kids between the ages of 4 and 10, so the schedule is pretty basic. Lessons. Singing. Crafts. Snack. Running around. Jesus. Done. Usually, the last night of VBS, the church invites the parents for a presentation, so the kids can show off what they learned about the Bible.

Pastor Walker said the skit was just part of the church’s usual programming. He said he’s been leading these types of skits during VBS for more than 30 years. The man in black represented the devil and the military men were “Commandos for Christ” who used “gospel guns” to eliminate the enemy.

But who do Walker’s congregants consider an enemy?

Walker leads an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) congregation. The IFB are difficult to pin down because they are known for being independent and running their churches without a network of peer congregations. IFB can loosely be defined as conservative Baptist churches that broke off from organized Baptists because of what they considered growing liberalism within Protestantism. They believe:

• The Bible is the inerrant, literal Word of God.

• Salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

• Evangelism and missionary work are central responsibilities.

• Jesus will physically return to Earth.

Members of the IFB are highly restrictive and insular and are known for having large families with limited roles for women. The Duggar family is the closest mainstream approximation I can come up with, although technically the Duggars belong to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Large families. Modest clothes. Male leadership. Female submission. Homeschooling emphasis. Traditional gender expression. Corporal discipline. Those are the hallmarks of IFB and IBLP lifestyles.

So what enemy is Mt. Olivet Baptist Church teaching children to blow up?

The answer is pretty much everyone else. In the IFB, sinful behavior includes women who lead, LGBTQIA+ folks, people who believe in reproductive healthcare, Christians who read any translation of the Bible other than the King James Version, parents who don’t spank their kids, Christians who worship with instrumental music, men who reject rigid stereotypes., etc, etc, etc.

The skit desensitizes.

When my kids were VBS-age, I didn’t let them watch movies or play games that featured violence. No Call of Duty for my crew. I was cautious about Nerf guns with rules about not aiming at people or animals. As a Christian, I believed it was my duty to protect my kids’ innocence for as long as I could manage, and as a mother I knew that whatever media I allowed them to be exposed to would be in their brains forever.

Christianity features a spectrum of views on violence, ranging from pacifism, or the belief that violence is not the answer to any question, to justified defense, which is the belief that force is necessary to defend the oppressed and protect life. Regardless of where Christians fall on the spectrum, they are supposed to follow the teachings of Jesus, who literally said, “Put away your sword, for those who live by the sword will die by it.” (Matthew 26:52)

Jesus also said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” which tells us that peace should be the goal of any conflict, including made up ones in VBS skits.

Instead, Mt. Olivet normalized brutality and indoctrinated kids into believing violence is the answer to whatever they find sinful. They are primed to ingest a lifetime of sermons to figure out what sin — and therefore “enemy” — means, but this skit already answers the question about what to do with enemies even before that word was defined.

Some of this isn’t new. Christians have always used military metaphors to describe a cosmic spiritual battle between good and evil that takes place here on earth. As kids, we used to sing a song called The Lord’s Army.

“I may never ride in the infantry/ride in the calvary/shoot the artillery/I may never fly o’er the enemy/but I’m in the Lord’s army”.

When we sang, “shoot the artillery,” we got our finger pistols out and shot imaginary bullets around the room. At the end of the song, we would scream “Yes, sir!” and make a saluting motion with our hands.

The Bible is an oft-used tool to justify violence. In the 1980s, a militant extremist group founded in Uganda called The Lord’s Resistance Army became infamous for widespread atrocities across Central Africa, including the abduction of tens of thousands of children for use as soldiers. Based on a twisted interpretation of the Ten Commandments, LRA wanted to establish a theocratic government in Uganda, though it was too unorganized to complete that goal. Instead, the group is remembered for mass violence, murder and rape, with more than 100,000 lives lost and 100,000 young boys abducted from their homes and trained to be militant killers.

Those boys were innocent and loved before they were kidnapped, tortured, and indoctrinated.

And while that hasn’t happened in the United States, I would like to remind everyone that we have our own sordid history to reckon with. The Bible was used to justify war, slavery, Native American genocide, manifest destiny, Jim Crow laws, the oppression of women.

Perhaps if I knew what I know now, I wouldn’t have sung The Lord’s Army.

It leads to dehumanization.

In Brene Brown’s article “Dehumanization Always Starts with Language”, Brown points out that dehumanization doesn’t begin with a physical act of violence, but with imagery.

Dehumanizing often starts with creating an enemy image. As we take sides, lose trust, and get angrier and angrier, we not only solidify an idea of our enemy, but also start to lose our ability to listen, communicate, and practice even a modicum of empathy.

Once we see people on “the other side” of a conflict as morally inferior and even dangerous, the conflict starts being framed as good versus evil.

As Brown points out, dehumanization is the engine behind some of history's darkest atrocities. It has paved the way for violence, slavery, torture, human trafficking, war crimes, and genocide. Before people can be abused, imprisoned, or killed without consequence, they must first be stripped of their humanity in the minds of others.

To that end, Mt. Olivet’s skit began the work of dehumanization. It numbed the children who witnessed it to graphic violence. It lowered their moral defenses, making the act of riddling someone’s body with bullets seem righteous. It indoctrinated them into the unimaginable. It makes their salvation dependent on violently vanquishing an unnamed enemy.

It promotes gun idolatry.

As I was watching the video, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the kids in the audience are elementary school age. The same age my kids were when they became aware of school shooters.

Like most public school kids, every year my kids do active shooter drills, preparing them for the worst-case-scenario of a gun-wielding intruder. Kids in America live with this possibility every day. Summer should be a break from the traumatic reminder of America’s gun violence epidemic. Instead, the VBS attendees had to endure an even more up-close view.

Kathi Crowe, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, called the video “unbelievably disturbing.”

“Vacation Bible School and our churches should be safe spaces for children. Subjecting kids to a full-scale simulated tactical raid and firing squad is just an appalling abuse of that space, and a major breach of trust that can’t go unaddressed.”

In his book Gunfight, Ryan Busse coined the term “couch commandos” to describe someone who is fascinated by military-style weapons, consumes media that glorifies armed conflict, prepares for societal collapse, and buys firearms because of an obsession with warfare.

Busse, a former firearms executive, saw his colleagues in the gun industry shift from deriding these couch commandos to courting them. Gun sales skyrocketed after the September 11 attacks, when Barack Obama was elected, and after every major school shooting, which became more and more frequent. It turns out scared couch commandos are good for business.

Busse described couch commandos as (mostly) men who were radicalized by a steady diet of violent video games and extremist politics. They had no interest in learning the skill of hunting or sportsmanship, nor were they interested in safety. They only wanted a gun to live out their Call of Duty fantasies. They thirsted for the opportunity to obliterate enemies.

A couch commando’s weapon of choice is a military-style black rifle like an AR-15. Similar in style to the air soft gun the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church “Commandos for Christ” were carrying. Given their penchant for acting out firing squad scenes, perhaps Pastor Walker should have called them “Couch Commandos for Christ.”

But if I’m going to attach my name to Christ’s, I’d rather be known for compassion than commando cosplay. Instead of glorifying the divisiveness of extremism, war, weapons, and violence, churches could simply teach children about the love and acceptance of Jesus. After all, Jesus is the one who said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

As people of faith, we are called to honor the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. It’s not really more complicated than that.

---