'Commandos for Christ': Kentucky pastor defends Bible School’s mock firing squad

Commandos for Christ, and the Politics of Teaching Children to Cheer ViolenceA Church Lesson in DominanceA Kentucky pastor, Dewayne Walker, defended a Vacation Bible School skit in which children were encouraged to chant “take him out, blow him up” while adults in soldier costumes performed a mock execution of a devil character with air-soft rifles. Walker later tried to flatten the backlash into “misinformation,” but the image is the point: an institution with authority over children staged ritualized violence, then asked to be treated as misunderstood.Who Held the PowerThe actual power here did not sit with the children, the devil costume, or the people watching the clip after the fact. It sat with the pastor, the church leadership, and the adults who designed the lesson, set the tone, and decided what counts as acceptable religious instruction. Children do not invent these scripts. They are placed inside them.That matters because the scene is not just theatrical. It is socialization. When adults in authority tell children to chant about blowing up an enemy and then celebrate the result, they are teaching more than theology. They are teaching allegiance, obedience, and the emotional pleasure of sanctioned aggression.The Alibi of MisinformationWalker’s defense is familiar. He claimed the clip was “nothing more than a small part” of Vacation Bible School, insisted the church has spent 32 years using characters for good and evil, and framed the controversy as a misunderstanding fueled by “what this generation has become.” That is not a rebuttal. It is a diversion.The criticism is not that the church used symbols of good and evil. The criticism is that it turned a children’s religious program into a celebration of simulated killing, then acted shocked that people noticed. Calling that “misinformation” is a classic power move: deny the meaning of the act, attack the audience’s reaction, and hide the decision behind a fog of spiritual language.Children as Political AudienceThe most revealing detail is not the devil costume. It is the cheering. Children were encouraged to perform certainty, hostility, and triumph on cue. The church did not merely talk about evil; it staged enemy destruction as a group activity. That is how institutions teach emotional reflex before they teach doctrine.Walker also wrapped the display in references to addiction ministry and suffering, claiming the church helps broken people and that the devil is the cause of misery. Maybe that is sincere. But sincerity does not cancel the function of the spectacle. A church can preach compassion while still teaching children to celebrate annihilation. In fact, that contradiction is part of the machinery.The Christian Right’s Useful BlurThe source itself points to the larger structure: the Christian Right’s growing influence in American politics, its increasing control over denominations like evangelical Protestants, and its support for Donald Trump. That context matters because this kind of staging is never just local pageantry. It trains a political culture that is comfortable with domination, contempt for enemies, and theatrical righteousness.What makes this especially corrosive is the blur between moral language and coercive imagery. The church calls it spiritual warfare. The audience sees a firing squad. The institution calls the backlash confusion. The children learn that violence can be righteous when the right authority blesses it.The Real LessonThis story is not about one embarrassing church clip. It is about how institutions with moral authority normalize aggression, then retreat into victimhood when exposed. The adults set the script, the children absorbed it, and the pastor tried to turn accountability into persecution.That is the larger pattern: power produces harm, wraps it in sanctimony, and then claims it is under attack when the public notices the damage. Get full access to Systemic Error at paulstsmith.substack.com/subscribe