Defense Secretary Hegseth tests Constitution in Pentagon worship services

Under his leadership, the Department of Defense — which, like Hegseth, has rebranded as the Department of War, a secondary name — has also shared at least three faith-themed videos. Like the Lord's Prayer clip, two of the videos featured a montage of images of the U.S. military. But instead of a voiceover, the clips slowly overlaid the footage with two Bible verses from the Bible's 18th Psalm and the Book of Joshua. One of the videos was captioned: "We Are One Nation Under God."

(The Defense Department is not the only Trump admin department to be putting out religious tweets: The Department of Homeland Security has its own recruiting videos that mix Bible verses and warlike images.)

Asked by Religion News Service earlier this year about the videos, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said the clips were meant to celebrate what she described as the "Christian heritage from our great nation," adding that Hegseth, as "a proud Christian," is "among those who embrace it."

Laser said it's inappropriate for a government official to express a preference for any single religion while acting in their formal capacity. Hegseth, she argued, goes further by inviting his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, a Reformed evangelical Christian who leads Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee, to lead the service.

The secretary, Laser said, is "implicitly coercing his staff or his direct reports" to "follow a religion that's not their own."

Hegseth, who bears tattoos of the Crusaders' Latin phrase "Deus Vult" ("God wills it') and "kafir" (an Arabic word often translated as "infidel"), belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a small denomination with a short and controversial history. Its co-founder, Doug Wilson, is a rising star on the right who advocates for a society in which non-Christians and even liberal Christians are barred from holding office. His writings have also been criticized as denigrating LGBTQ+ people and downplaying the atrocities of slavery, and he recently alleged "millions" of Muslim immigrants lack any "commitment to, or mechanism of, assimilation" into U.S. society.

In August, the secretary reposted a CNN interview with Wilson on his personal X account, which carries a Secretary of War badge. (The segment featured one of Wilson's co-pastors saying he opposed women voting, causing the Defense Department to have to clarify that Hegseth supports women's right to vote.) When Wilson established a new branch of his own church in Washington this summer, Hegseth was on hand at the inaugural service and has continued to attend.

In an email interview, Wilson called Hegseth's efforts, using biblical language for governing authorities, "a magistrate favoring faith over unbelief," but not "implicitly coercive." Wilson recounted a personal anecdote from boot camp when an officer told soldiers to bow their heads and pray, then added, "and you atheists need to study your shoe shine." A Navy veteran, Wilson said of Hegseth's religious appeals: "If I were still in the service, I would welcome it."

According to a 2019 congressional report, about 70% of active duty service members consider themselves Christian, with about 20% identifying as Catholic, 18% Protestant and the rest claiming no specific denominational affiliation. About 24% listed no religious affiliation, slightly more than 2% said they were atheists or agnostics, 1.3% identified as Mormon and slightly less than 2% ascribed to Judaism, Islam and other religious traditions, according to the report.

Micah Schwartzman, a University of Virginia Law School professor who specializes in the religious exercise guarantees in the U.S. Constitution, said in an email interview that it is "disturbing that the military is being led under a banner of Christian nationalism." A military leader organizing worship services outside the context of military chaplaincies, he added, "should raise concerns about religious coercion."

"The Establishment Clause was meant to protect against this kind of pressure to demonstrate religious conformity," he wrote.

Other religious services are already available to Pentagon staffers, most of them organized by the Army chaplains assigned to the building. The chaplains hold regular services in the building's chapel, and, according to a publicly available guide to the building, the chaplain's office offers "opportunities for worship, pastoral care and counseling, faith-based Family Life Chaplain programs and support groups, small group religious studies, and ceremony support."

A spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services told RNS that Mass has long been celebrated at the Pentagon five times a week.

Only the first of Hegseth's Pentagon services, which are touted as monthly events, was livestreamed, and only one further service, led by evangelical pastor and former football player Jack Brewer, has been publicly announced.

Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, did not answer questions about how many services have been convened or who led them but sent a statement saying that the services were voluntary. The statement described them as "an opportunity for Believers to appeal to Heaven on behalf of our great nation and its warfighters."

Marie Griffith, a religion professor and former director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, said the language of the statement is noteworthy — particularly its capitalizing of the words believers and heaven. While the statement may be mimicking President Donald Trump's proclivity for errant capitalization, she said, it could also be taken as a clear preference for Christianity.

"Believers is now a proper noun — and it means Christian believers, essentially," Griffith said, referring to the statement. "It is this way of really highlighting that kind of Christian sense of what we're doing here in these worship services."In correspondence, the Pentagon press secretary has repeatedly insisted Hegseth's religious moves are in keeping with a long American tradition established by George Washington, who she says "prayed for our cause at Valley Forge," a story Hegseth also referred to in his speech at the inaugural Pentagon worship service.But characterizing the United States as formed by a particular Christian heritage, critics say, is itself a hallmark of many proponents of Christian nationalism — especially since historians doubt the specific story of Washington praying at Valley Forge often forwarded by those who advocate for a Christian U.S.

Thomas A. Tweed, a professor of American studies and history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the American Academy of Religion, said in an email that the prayer story was a "fabrication" by Mason Locke Weems, an early biographer of George Washington.

Similarly, Lindsay M. Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, said in an email that the account was further popularized by a painting of Washington praying in the woods. "There is no evidence that the specific event depicted in that painting ever occurred," said Chervinsky, who noted that Weems "regularly fabricated facts to spin a good story."

Some of Hegseth's critics admitted the current Supreme Court hasn't been receptive to the kind of Establishment Clause concerns raised by the defense secretary's detractors. In an email, Elizabeth Platt, head of the Law, Rights & Religion Project at Union Seminary in New York, linked Hegseth to Christian nationalism but said the current conservative-leaning slate of justices are unlikely to side with those who find Hegseth's faith activity unconstitutional.

"I think the reality is we're not going to litigate our way out of the administration's commitment to Christian Nationalism and violent religious rhetoric using the Establishment Clause," Platt wrote in an email.

Hegseth, for his part, appears determined to continue leading the armed forces with Bible in hand, according to images tweeted out by conservative podcast host Mike Watkins, who attended the service earlier this month.

Watkins added a quote, which he attributed to Hegseth: "We are on the verge of a spiritual renaissance."