This decline in religious freedom and subsequent increase in calls for help, is partially explained by two historical developments.
First, today’s military is diverse. In 1948, President Truman signed an executive order that abolished discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin,” allowing for the racial integration of the military. That same year, Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, which allowed women to serve in the military. In 1993, President Clinton signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which barred openly gay or lesbian citizens from military service, but formally prohibited the harassment of “closeted” service members. This policy was repealed by Congress and President Obama in 2011 to allow for the inclusion of LGBTQ service members.
Our military today is more diverse than it’s ever been, and that’s a great source of strength, says Weinstein. This is what Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ignore when they “make it clear that our military needs to be straight, white, Christian, male.” he says. “If we don’t fix this in the midterms, assuming we have them—if we don’t fix it in 2028—this is an impact of generational destruction.”
Second, after the elimination of the draft at the end of the Vietnam War, says Weinstein, “there was a huge demographic shift to mostly red states and particularly rural areas,” for military recruitment, which in turn lead to an increase in evangelical Christianity in the military. At the same time, ideologically-driven Christian Nationalist parachurch organizations like Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ were taking American evangelism into a more militant, white supremacist direction, specifically seeking to hijack the military training process for their narrow sectarian ends, as MRFF documented in a 2019 video on “Gov’t Paid Missionaries in the US Military.”
Nonetheless, rural America remained more diverse than its stereotypes, and other factors also drove rural enlistment. Weinstein’s daughter-in-law Amanda Weinstein is a rural economist and the Director of Research at the Center on Rural Innovation. While more recruits come from rural areas, she says, “It tends actually to be a lot of the same rural areas. Some towns have kind of a culture of military service more than others.” But, she adds:
Most veterans actually don’t return to their hometowns. They just can’t find opportunities in terms of jobs that fit the skill sets they have. Veterans are actually more mobile than nonveterans. They do tend to choose places that have higher veteran populations.
Barn Raiser spoke with one of MRFF’s clients, a human resources sergeant in a light infantry unit from rural Illinois who asked not to be named. He says:
I grew up in a rural town in Southern Illinois. It’s very conservative Republican deep red area where Christian Nationalism has a huge impact on the local politics and no Democrat liberal or progressive candidate will ever have a chance at winning this area. The county where I’m from has the highest child abuse rates in the state.
The sergeant explains why he joined the military: “I wanted to get out of a negative environment with high poverty, start a good long career, serve my country. I wanted to meet new people, experience other cultures, and travel the world.”
After enlisting in Trump’s first term, he says:
Things have gotten worse since [Trump] got back in, and I feared retaliation because I’m not the type of Christian that Christian Nationalists want and that’s why I reached out to Mikey Weinstein and MRFF. Morale is low, faith in leadership is low and ever since he and Hegseth came to power, Christian Nationalism in the military has spiraled out of control.
It is against this background that Weinstein points to five seismic events of 2025 that illuminate what’s happening and what likely lies ahead.
1. Hegseth fired the military’s top lawyers
On February 24, 2025, weeks after being sworn in as Defense Secretary, Hegseth announced that he was replacing the top Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs).
“The Navy has one, the Army has one, Air Force has one—they were all fired,” says Weinstein. “And when you fire the top uniformed lawyers it sends an incredibly strong message … They were summarily dismissed, meaning that clearly the rule of law is not going to be there.” Hegseth’s reasoning was that they were not “well-suited” to provide recommendations when orders are given. (On March 7, 2025, Hegseth commissioned his personal attorney, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy JAG. Parlatore represented Hegseth in his 2017 sexual assault case, in which charges were dropped after Hegseth paid the woman who accused him $50,000.)
Hegseth fired the top JAG officers the same day Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first black man to lead a branch of the military as Air Force chief. His firing, along with the firing of other senior military officers, drew more public attention, since the Joint Chiefs are the public faces of the military services, while the top JAG officers play a distinctly internal role—ensuring the integrity of military justice system.
At the time firing, MRFF Board member Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Marty France warned:
Trump’s firing of these generals is a message to our nation and the entire military: Loyalty to him is much more important than loyalty to our country. He isn’t removing these individuals because they’re unqualified … He simply wants a military that will do his bidding whether or not it’s in America’s best interest. … I also believe that recruiting and retention will plummet as all those who aren’t white, Christian, and male no longer see the military as a viable route to honorable service and a fulfilling career. The damage has been done. It will take years or decades to repair.
MRFF Board member Brig. Gen. (Ret.) John Compere—a former JAG officer, as well as military judge—said that firing the top JAG officers “fatally undermines confidence in the military justice system, universally erodes professionalism and irreparably damages morale throughout the Army, Navy and Air Force.”
During Trump’s first term, Hegseth used his role as a Fox host to publicly lobby for overturning the 2018 war crime conviction of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was represented in court by Hegseth’s attorney Parlatore. Hegseth secretly and successfully lobbied Trump, who overturned Gallagher’s conviction.
2. Prayer services in the Pentagon
“The second seismic thing that happened was the Jesus praise services starting in May. being conducted by Hegseth,” Weinstein says.
In the very first service, Trump was praised as a divinely appointed leader. This not only violating separation of church and state, but also separation of the military from politics. “They were held in the Pentagon’s largest auditorium, during duty hours in uniform,” said Weinstein at the time. It was “nothing less than a Holocaust to the First Amendment of our Constitution.” That charge, he said, is not made lightly, given that “members of my family were actually slaughtered in the Nazi Holocaust.”
Commanders forcing their religious views on subordinates is arguably the most egregious forms of religious freedom violation encountered in the military, but Hegseth’s monthly prayer services took it to a new level by using his institutional power to promote his faith. While it was presented as voluntary in the email sent to Pentagon personnel, Weinstein says, “I use the term ‘voluntold.’ That’s a verb we use here and have used for years at MRFF. If you fail to show up, it’s noticed.”
The MRFF has seen such institutional protections disregarded in what Weinstein called “one of our earliest victories.” “We were the first ones to warn about it 20 years ago with the Christian Embassy,” an evangelical organization affiliated with Cru (aka Campus Crusade for Christ).
In 2004, Christian Embassy filmed a promotional video featuring endorsements by six Congressmen and other high-level officials, including seven military officers, four of them generals, filmed in uniform at the Pentagon and identified by name and rank. After they posted the video on their website in November 2006, MRFF demanded an investigation, and in July 2007, the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General issued a report finding that the military personnel had violated DoD policy in blatant ways:
All of the DoD speakers were filmed at the Pentagon, many in specifically identifiable locations within the Pentagon. All of the military officers participating in the video appeared in military uniforms with visible rank insignia … The video prominently featured the DoD seal, military insignia, and similar indicia of military affiliation, including large gold-colored lettering identifying the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It also featured footage of meetings of military personnel in uniform or engaged in daily duties at the Pentagon.
All of this was facilitated by a chaplain who lied about the purpose of the video, claiming it was meant to document the Pentagon Chaplain’s ministry. Twenty years ago the seamless melding of the military and evangelical Christianity had to be done surreptitiously. Today, it’s being trumpeted from the rooftops under the leadership of the Secretary of Defense.
Weinstein says the fallout from the Pentagon’s evangelical service has been chillingly predictable: hundreds of other military officers followed Hegseth’s illegal, unconstitutional example. “We’ve had over 150 reach-outs from clients of ours,” says Weinstein, “instances of these Jesus praise services happening even on an aircraft carrier, even on a submarine because they saw Hegseth do it.”
3. Charlie Kirk
“Within an hour or two of [Kirk] being killed,” says Weinstein. “Hegseth stood above a bunch of members the military and basically ordered them to do a Jesus prayer for his good buddy Charlie Kirk.”
To Weinstein, Kirk’s assassination in September laid bare the Trump administration’s priorities:
How many times do I have to say it? Yes it was horrible the way he died. But he was a despicable person! He was a fucking white supremacist racist, a virulent anti-Semite, unbelievably misogynistic towards women—particularly to women of color, an Islamophobe, a trans and homophobe. But he gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The flag is dropped to have half-mast, Mike Johnson the supine effusive MAGA coward Speaker of the House now wants to erect a statue to him.
Within days, there were reports that Pentagon leaders were considering a recruiting campaign encouraging young people to honor Kirk by joining the military, framing it as a national call to service, an ad campaign with the possible slogan: “Charlie has awakened a generation of warriors.” The fact that Kirk never served appeared irrelevant. There was also talk of using chapters of Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, at schools as military recruitment centers. While nothing official has happened so far, it’s on MRFF’s radar as something to look out for this year.
4. The meeting at Quantico
In September, Hegseth ordered all the military’s generals and admirals from around the world to fly to the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, and hear him and President Trump speak. During the meeting, Hegseth railed against “fat generals” and decried the military’s diversity initiatives.
In his speech, Trump revealed he had suggested to Hegseth an escalation to his deployment of National Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to major cities. Trump said:
We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms.
“We had 17 MRFF clients in that room see what happened there,” says Weinstein. One of them emailed his observations:
Let me just say that the overwhelming number of my fellow military colleagues who were also ordered to attend this Quantico VA meeting view Hegseth and Trump with the same three word description; BULLIES and POSEURS!
Our U.S. military leadership is now totally rudderless and adrift in a world where only our nation’s enemies will revel in our descent into chaos.
Suffice it to say that the demeaning and destructive words spoken by Hegseth and Trump to our captive audience of Generals, Admirals and senior enlisted members eliminated any last vestige of trust and confidence in our chain of command. They want our compliance with our sworn oaths to the constitution to be a thing of the past. Instead they demand loyalty only to them and their orders over our duty to support and defend the Constitution.
That view from inside the room was echoed by the infantry sergeant from Illinois, who is quoted above:
Even though the meeting at Quantico was a waste of time and money and it was an embarrassment to have those two idiots try to lecture our leaders about leadership and what it means to be a patriot. … The generals, admirals and their senior enlisted personnel maintained their professionalism, discipline and remained apolitical in the face of such pressure from two cowardly pathetic excuses of men who’ve never sacrificed anything for our nation. The expressions from the generals, admirals and their senior enlisted showed they aren’t with Trump and Hegseth.
5. Mark Kelly
The hollow show at Quantico stood in stark contrast to the rock-solid resolve of former astronaut Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain who’s currently a U.S. Senator from Arizona. In November, Kelly and five other Democrats in Congress who are military and intelligence agency veterans released a video addressing current service members. They said:
This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution.
Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.
This was a non-controversial statement of fact. “Orders under the Uniform Code of Military Justice are presumed legal,” says Weinstein. “But if they’re not legal, you do not obey them.” As a former JAG officer, no one understands this better than Weinstein.
Two distinct oaths define military life, one for enlisted personnel, who swear an oath of enlistment, and one for officers, who swear an oath of office. (National Guard members include a line that acknowledges their state constitution as well.) Enlisted service members swear they “will obey the order of the President of the United States and the order of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) further specifies that every service members also has an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.
It’s a very live concern, the Illinois infantry sergeant says:
When it comes to illegal orders, I’m concerned about receiving them. But if I do, I’ll go talk to the JAGs for my unit, like my commanders do to see if something is legal, and if it is illegal then I will disobey it. We are taught from the time we come in that it is our duty to disobey illegal orders and that is really important since they fired the top JAGs.
In the Pentagon’s November statement announcing its investigation into Kelly for possible violations of military law, it threatened “further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.”
“Kelly gets threatened to call back on active duty because he retired as a captain, but Michael Flynn and Jerry Boykin, they can walk!” Weinstein says. Unlike Kelly, who was highlighting a key element of the UCMJ, their actions clearly violated the code. (Like Flynn and Boykin, Kelly’s status as a retired service member allows him to be recalled to active duty for possible court martial or other disciplinary measures.)
During the Iraq War, Boykin gave speeches in churches in full uniform proclaiming that the United States was in a holy war. He would point to posters of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and say: “Satan wants to destroy [the United States], he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a. Christian army … [they] will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.”
George Bush eventually censured him for his many other Islamophobic statements, despite Bush’s description of the war on terrorism as a “crusade,” but calls to bring Boykin back to be court-martialed have been ignored.
Retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn behaved himself while in uniform, but critics convincingly charge that his post-retirement actions and statements violate the UCMJ and potentially constitute sedition or at least conduct unbecoming an officer. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, he publicly suggested that Trump declare martial law and order the military to “re-run” the election in states Trump lost. In May 2021, he appeared to endorse a Myanmar-style coup. Even if specific sedition charges were difficult to prove, that shouldn’t be the case for violations of UCMJ Article 133 (“actions unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” and Article 134 (“conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces”).
These apparent violations of military law stand in stark contrast with Mark Kelly reminding members of the military of what the law actually says.
On January 5, Hegseth announced on X that he was initiating action to reduce Kelly’s retirement rank and pay, starting with a censure letter. Within minutes Kelly responded, saying “I will fight this with everything I’ve got—not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.” On January 12, Kelly filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon over its attempts to punish him.
This news was overshadowed by the international capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, a vivid example on the world stage of how lawless our military has become under Trump.
Things could get much worse, says Weinstein. He has three fears:
I fear a fundamentalist Christian Nationalist siege state, Gilead, just as outlined by Margaret Atwood, in The Handmaid’s Tale. Trump’s unconstitutional utilization of the U.S. Armed Forces as his main hammer and cudgel, we are just too goddamn close right now.
I fear that the Christian Nationalists will initiate a nuclear exchange because this will serve as a handy lubricant or accelerant for them to bring about the ‘end days’ as they view them in their twisted version of Christianity through the lens of the Book of Revelation. General Jerry Boykin has made it clear that when Jesus returns, he will be on a white horse carrying an AR-15.
I fear an actual civil war in the United States. I’m not sure if it will precede or come after my second fear of an initiated nuclear exchange. But I and MRFF live in this maelstrom of Christian Nationalist, hatred, bigotry and prejudice. It is ubiquitous, as ubiquitous as gravity now.
Those fears might seem overblown. But what if they’re not? The seismic events of the past year are the kinds of things Weinstein has warned us against for more than two decades. If we don’t heed his warnings now, how will we explain ourselves to our children?
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer. He's been a columnist for Al Jazeera English and Salon.com, and has written for dozens of daily and weekly papers including the Des Moines Register, the Dallas Morning News and the Christian Science Monitor. He is senior editor at Random Lengths News, an alternative biweekly based in San Pedro, California.
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