Daniel Wolfram
According to Hegseth, God is on the side of the US military.
There are two main pillars in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s military doctrine.
One is the disdain for “wokeness” and political correctness.
The second pillar is being used for bloodlust and a religious crusade that frames military action less as statecraft and more as a holy war under the former Fox News host.
How Hegseth got his crusade by waging war against Iran
Hegseth does not hide that his idea of dominance by the United States of America is through a religious crusade.
After all, he has written a book titled “American Crusade” and has several tattoos of that iconography. Some of them have deep ties to nationalism and are also sometimes associated with white supremacy.
When a CBS reporter asked him back in March if the Iran war was a religious one, after Hegseth kept repeating that God was protecting American troops, he replied: “I mean, obviously, we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon,” before adding that his soldiers need “a connection with their almighty God in these moments.”
Imposing more religion at the Pentagon
The religious crusade that Hegseth is implementing at the Pentagon is not hard to spot. He announced that he would open the Office of Religious Affairs to give American soldiers the religious support they crave and the chaplains a direct line to Hegseth without any oversight.
Taking a page out of the MAGA book, Hegseth also began a “Make the American Chaplain Corps Great Again” campaign. Instead of catering to all religions under the US military banner, Hegseth has pushed for a more Christian “God” way of fighting.
He has also begun broadcasting a monthly prayer session at the Pentagon. Hegseth seems to be aligned with the Christian conservative thinking that the country is supposed to be a Christian theocracy.
A reformed Evangelical
It is important to note that Hegseth’s pivot to being a deeply religious man started back in 2018. It came on the heels of a rape accusation in 2017 from a woman, for which he ultimately paid a $50,000 settlement.
Hegseth has also been accused of sexist behavior, intoxication on the job, and financial mismanagement everywhere he has been in a position of leadership.
But when he and his now-wife, with whom he had an affair with during his first marriage at his Fox News job, joined an evangelical church in New Jersey, “faith became real,” as he told Nashville Christian Family, a local Christian publication.
The US vs. everybody
From there, the pivot to Christian nationalism began to accelerate. The family moved to Nashville to join the Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
The CREC is a known archconservative Christian group deeply rooted in the belief that everything happens because of God’s will and that it is the believer’s duty to build God’s Kingdom before Jesus returns.
Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies, told The Guardian that the CREC “doesn’t believe in social equality among people. They think that God created the world and that some people are destined to have authority and to rule over other people, and other people are destined to be followers.”
That authority is Hegseth’s alone, and he is using it for his religious crusade – even if it means accidentally bombing a school in Iran that ultimately killed 123 schoolchildren.
As he writes in his book: “So-called tolerance smells like surrender to Islamists, because it is. Jesus did tell us to turn the other cheek, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t advising a Secretary of Defense at the time.”
