U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is promoting a CNN interview with Christian nationalist Douglas Wilson in which Wilson asserts that women should not have the right to vote. Hegseth boosted the interview on social media, adding “All of Christ for All of Life.”
Notorious for publishing a book downplaying the evils of slavery, Wilson publicly stakes out extreme Christian nationalist positions. As People For the American Way President Svante Myrick noted in a recent column for The Hill, in the kind of Christian nation Wilson wants the U.S. to be, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other non-Christians would not be allowed to hold public office — not even liberal Christians. There would be no public expressions of other faiths allowed, because “the public spaces would belong to Christ.” He would like sodomy to be a felony in all 50 states and have the Apostles’ Creed inserted into the U.S. Constitution.
Hegseth, who seems intent on purging women from the top ranks of the military, belongs to a Wilson-affiliated church in Tennessee, and he has attended the new church Wilson has planted in DC to boost his influence over the conservative Christians who work in the Trump administration.
The Idaho-based Wilson already exerts influence nationally through the Canon Press publishing house, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of “classical” Christian academies, and a cadre of far-right “theobros” like Joel Webbon who promote a similar patriarchal Christian nationalist ideology.
Hegseth has begun hosting monthly Christian prayer services during working hours at the Pentagon. Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of his Wilson-affiliated church in Tennessee, was the main speaker. Joshua Haymes, another pastor at the church, has claimed that the Founding Fathers had not envisioned “mosques being erected” and publicly asserted, "The First Amendment was designed to ensure that every American can be any kind of CHRISTIAN he wants. It was not designed to ensure every American has the right to publicly worship demons. False religion can and should be banned from public life."
