Last spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to his culture war campaign and led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium, which was controversial for all sorts of reasons. It was not, however, a one-time gathering: The beleaguered secretary announced that he’d continue to hold these faith-specific prayer services, without modern precedent in this country, on a regular basis.
In a country that’s supposed to honor the separation of church and state, Hegseth’s events raise all sorts of legal, political and theological questions, but complicating matters further is who, exactly, the former Fox News host is welcoming to the Defense Department to help lead these Christian events.
This week, for example, Hegseth brought in pastor Douglas Wilson, a radical Christian nationalist, to lead an audience in prayer. We know this for sure because the Pentagon published a photo from the gathering, held on Tuesday.
For those unfamiliar with Wilson, he’s not just another Christian conservative advocating for and against the usual culture war issues. Rather, as The Wall Street Journal reported in September, the right-wing pastor endorses a vision “in which same-sex relations are illegal, Muslims are barred from the public square and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, is repealed.”
The Associated Press had a related report, noting that Wilson was “relegated to the fringe” for decades, until Donald Trump and his team rose to power and gave the pastor new influence and clout.
“This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now,” Wilson told the AP.
The same report added that the pastor insists that the United States is and must be a “Christian nation,” teaches that empathy itself can be a sin, wants to ban abortion and Pride parades and has even downplayed the horrors of slavery.
Wilson isn’t accused of being a Christian nationalist; it is a label he embraces with enthusiasm.
Common sense may suggest that leading American political figures would keep a guy like this at arm’s length. And yet, there was Hegseth, not only inviting Wilson to the Pentagon to lead an official event, but also standing alongside the radical pastor at the gathering, praying with his hand on Wilson’s back.
This was the same Hegseth who sparked a controversy last summer by promoting an online video that, among other things, included a pastor from Wilson’s church arguing that women in the U.S. shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Soon after, the Pentagon officially clarified that the defense secretary does not actually oppose women’s voting rights, despite the video that he chose to amplify online.
Obviously, Hegseth, in his personal capacity, is free to pursue whatever religious practices he wishes. It’s a free country, and his theological beliefs are his own business. But when the secretary of defense makes a conscious decision to invite a radical Christian nationalist to lead an official prayer event at the Pentagon, that deserves to be seen as a scandal worthy of scrutiny.
