Viral video shows church staging fake execution during Vacation Bible School

The disturbing skit at a Kentucky Baptist church raises serious questions about violence, religious indoctrination, and what adults are teaching children

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In a bizarre, disturbing scene that’s gone viral on TikTok, a church appeared to stage a fake execution of a man—involving realistic-looking guns and military uniforms—during Vacation Bible School. As the man is being murdered, the children are cheering in unison, “Take him out! Blow him up!” The military men then take the body outside (and out of view), where it’s suggested by the pastor they’re going to “blow him up.”

The clip was first posted by the user 24sirewsnaeht (“The answer is 42” backwards). It’s not clear how that user obtained this footage or why it’s the only video currently on the channel. (The person did not respond to a request for comment.)

I don’t remember this scene in the Gospels.

This apparently took place at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky—the backdrop of the clip matches the backdrop seen in other images of the church. I attempted to reach the pastor, Dewayne Walker, but the church didn’t respond to an email or my multiple phone calls.

According to various commenters, the church was trying to show how “sin” needed to be destroyed, which is why all the kids and their parents seemed to go along with the cosplay and paintball guns. But still. What the hell is wrong with everyone involved in this potentially traumatizing charade? At a time when mass shootings are rampant, what’s the educational value of any of this—and, yes, they can be traumatized by being exposed to realistic scenes like this even if they’re “safe” in the scene.

And think about what the skit is attempting to teach even in the best case scenario: that sin needs to be destroyed. The problem with that mentality is that Baptist churches like this one routinely tell children that LGBTQ people are sinners. And doctors who perform abortions are sinners. And people who vote for Democrats are sinners. What’s the line between murdering Satan-In-Human-Form and committing real acts of violence against whoever your pastor tells you is evil? It’s not hard to see the thread connecting skits like this with all-too-real faith-based violence.

I knew Vacation Bible School could destroy the brains of children, but this method wasn’t on my list.

Even if this was a skit, no decent adult should have approved it in the name of Jesus. The fact that adults are scattered around the room just watching this happen, doing nothing about it, only adds to the criticism that this is a form of mass delusion. Those adults are just as responsible for normalizing this behavior as the pastor in charge. They had every opportunity to stand up and shout “This is inappropriate. This isn’t what I want my kids being taught.” Instead, they smiled and celebrated the execution. They modeled for their kids the idea that violence (even the spiritual kind) is perfectly fine as long as it’s justified in faith.

Just imagine if a drag queen reading a book at a library staged a scene like this to destroy an avatar of “bigotry,” while children in the room (and their parents!) cheered it all on. That would be condemned by the right as a form of hate speech and violence and radicalization. We’d never hear the end of it. So where is the outcry from right-wing Christians? The people who routinely blame violent video games and movies for actual mass shootings are nowhere to be found. Because when it’s violence in the name of Jesus, they’ll excuse it.

Religious indoctrination is bad enough, but throwing weapons and fake executions into the mix makes it so much more disturbing. So far, the church hasn’t publicly responded to the outcry. They’ve limited who can comment on their Facebook page.

By the way, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Just last year, a Pennsylvania pastor strapped an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to his chest and proceeded to aim it directly in the faces of his congregation while encouraging them to “overwhelm your enemy with a violent action of faith.”

So much for Jesus being the Prince of Peace.

I’ll update this story as more information comes to light.

UPDATE 1: Pastor Dewayne Walker has now responded to the backlash:

Walker says he’s “befuddled” by the criticism because it was just a “small part” of Vacation Bible School. He confirmed that the victim in the skit represented sin and evil and this was a scene of “spiritual warfare.”

“It’s a character called the Devil!”

He tried to explain that there was buildup missing from the clip in which the bad guy was doing bad things, but at no point does he acknowledge the actual criticism of how this scene—even in his version!—is disturbing and traumatizing.

Instead, he goes after a straw man, suggesting everyone’s mad because they thought he was encouraging Christians to kill other people, which they’re not.

He ends with this: “You may think we went over the top. 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?”

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