Hegseth’s Divine War |
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Detailing the survival and daring rescue of a downed U.S. Air Force colonel in Iran over the weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened it to the Christian story of Jesus Christ’s death, entombment in a cave, and resurrection.
“Shot down on a Friday—Good Friday. Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday. And rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good,” Hegseth said during a press conference on Monday.
Detailing the survival and daring rescue of a downed U.S. Air Force colonel in Iran over the weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened it to the Christian story of Jesus Christ’s death, entombment in a cave, and resurrection.
“Shot down on a Friday—Good Friday. Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday. And rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good,” Hegseth said during a press conference on Monday.
The biblical comparison may have seemed almost unavoidable, given that the event unfolded on Easter weekend—and indeed, Hegseth wasn’t the only one in the Trump administration to make it: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did so as well, calling it an “Easter miracle.”
But for Hegseth, imbuing the military operation with an overtly Christian narrative fits a broader pattern. In his time as U.S. defense chief, and especially during the Iran war, Hegseth has gone to great lengths to promote his far-right Christian views, using the full resources of the military’s large public affairs apparatus.
“What distinguishes Hegseth from prior defense secretaries is his willingness to use overt Christian language and to bring a very sectarian view of Christianity into the Pentagon and into his rhetoric,” said Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “I think it’s very clear that Pete Hegseth is a conservative Christian; he is a member of a church that was founded by Doug Wilson, who is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist.”
“Christian nationalists are of the mindset that America should be a Christian nation and that Christians should have dominion over all other parts of society,” added Deckman, whose organization just released a study on the demographics and policy views of Christian nationalists.
Hegseth has argued that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, though the Founding Fathers had complex views on religion, and historians have said that many were influenced by Deism—an 18th century school of religious thought that emphasized rationalism and reason over dogma. The founders also legally enshrined the separation of church and state via the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Some of Hegseth’s critics have argued that his efforts to inject his religious beliefs into the military are unconstitutional.
Hegseth’s disregard of the Defense Department’s carefully developed norm of not promoting an explicit religious view has been consistently opposed by defenders of the United States’ founding doctrine of freedom of religion.
But now, with the secretary’s high-profile extortions from the Pentagon podium for Americans to pray “on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ” for military victory against Muslim-majority Iran, concerns have mounted about the long-term implications that Hegseth’s espousal of a Christian nationalist agenda could have for U.S. national security and domestic politics.
Hegseth speaks to the media during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on April 21, 2025. Leah Millis/ReutersAndrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Hegseth’s history of promoting his far-right Christian views began long before his tenure as Pentagon chief. He has a penchant for invoking the Crusades—a devastating series of medieval wars that European Christians launched against Muslims to gain control over holy sites, among other motivations. He has........