Shortly before standing trial for contempt of Congress, Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist for President Trump, recorded an episode of his War Room podcast in which he vowed to vindicate himself and humiliate his critics. “Pray for our enemies, okay?” he said. “Because we’re going medieval on these people. We’re going to savage our enemies. So pray for them. Who needs prayers? Not MAGA, not War Room, and certainly not Stephen K. Bannon.”
While Bannon is known for many things, being overtly religious is not one of them. He was raised Catholic, but he’s not the kind of person one would expect to quote the Bible. Yet he did just that in this unscripted moment. Bannon made no reference to Jesus or the Gospels, but the phrase “pray for our enemies” combines the two halves of Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus had a tendency to speak in aphorisms and to reinforce themes in parallel but not identical statements. In the Gospels, “enemies” is a generic label for people who stand on the other side of an issue. “Persecutors,” on the other hand, are people who harass you, who go out of their way to cause you trouble. “Love your enemies” reflects the broad theme of compassion and care for people in an opposing group, while “pray for those who persecute you” is a practical outworking of the love command. Jesus is asking something very difficult of his disciples: love those people who are on the opposite side of the issues that matter to you, and pray for those individuals who are determined to do you harm.
