Pete Hegseth’s War on Religious Freedom and the Constitution

Almost as remarkable as Hegseth’s views is the fact that none of this came up during his confirmation hearing. The religious identities of presidential nominees for high office and judgeships have become something of a third rail that Senators dare not touch, despite the potential consequences for the foundations of constitutional democracy.

To say that Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was appalled by the Senate’s lack of attention to Hegseth’s Chrisian nationalist and Dominionist views, would be an understatement. He told Barn Raiser, “Failure to specifically confront the miserable wretch Donald Trump’s equally miserable wretch of a Defense Department secretary nominee about his complete embrace of despicably unconstitutional fundamentalist Christian nationalism extremism is tantamount to asking Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play other than the assassination.”

Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who served as Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House, added, “The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been around for nearly 20 years and currently has assisted over 92,000 members of the U.S. military-active duty, reserve, National Guard, including military academy/ROTC/OTC/OTC cadets and midshipmen as well as veterans, and clients in all 18 national security agencies. Consistently about 95% of those desperately coming to us for help in fighting the Christian Nationalism attempting to extinguish them, are practicing Christians themselves, who have been abused by their superiors in government for not being ‘Christian enough.’ ”

Hegseth showed us who he was in 2018, when Minnesota State Sen. John Marty (DFL) stood to oppose an amendment to an education bill that would allow privately funded displays of the national motto, “In God We Trust,” in Minnesota’s public schools. Little did he know that he would soon be smeared, along with other opponents of the measure, on Fox & Friends Weekend by the bill’s sponsor Republican State Sen. Dan Hall and the show’s co-host Pete Hegseth.

“Why is God, the mention of God in our schools, controversial to the Left today?” Hegseth asked. Hall replied that “There seems to be an anti-faith movement in our country—to suppress anything that is religious in any way and wipe it out of government.” It was, said Hall, a matter of “religious freedom” that “In God We Trust” be posted prominently in public schools.

Hegseth concluded the segment by claiming, “When we stripped God out of the schools, we replaced it with something else—like ideological indoctrination, and we are seeing the fruits of that right now.”

Unbeknownst to Hegseth and Hall, Marty was in church during their faith-baiting performance. “Came home from church this morning to a vile, obscene voice message attacking me for hating religion,” Marty wrote on Facebook. “Also, several angry emails and Twitter messages attacking me as anti-religious and un-American.”   

It turned out that Hegseth and Hall had picked on the wrong Democrat to call anti-religious. Senator Marty comes from a family of Lutheran clergy who take their faith seriously. His father, Martin E. Marty is one of the most prominent religion scholars of our time and was a longtime professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. John’s brother Peter is the publisher of The Christian Century magazine.

In a subsequent appearance on Fox & Friends, Marty defended the integrity of his faith and his opposition to the In God We Trust amendment. He insisted that the prospective In God We Trust posters in schools was “offensive” to both religious believers and the non-religious. Speaking as a Christian, he said that the “government sanctioned motto does not strengthen our religion, but it demeans, devalues and cheapens our religion.” 

Apparently, rather than continue to give the articulate Marty a platform, the smears stopped.

In an interview at the time Marty told me:

“I spoke out on behalf of the 21% of the public who do not believe in God, and on behalf of many of the 79% who (according to the author of the legislation) do hold religious beliefs. The ‘In God We Trust’ motto is certainly not a welcome message to people who do not believe in God, or to people who believe in different gods, or to Christians who don’t want government interfering with their religion and telling them what to believe.

“When I learned that the ‘In God We Trust’ bills are part of a long-term plan for conservative Christian domination… under the rubric of religious freedom, I realized that this is a moment to sit up and take notice.

“I am continually surprised that people who say they want a smaller, less intrusive government are so eager to promote this intrusion of government into the most personal parts of our lives.”

Whatever Hall and Hegseth’s intention, they certainly got opponents of posting ‘In God We Trust’ in public schools on the record. Right-wing media from Breitbart to LifeSiteNews exploded with coverage of this minor legislative discussion, smearing Marty and other proponents of the separation of church and state as un-godly.

While the legislation did not pass in Minnesota, similar bills have become law in several states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

Project Blitz

Hegseth and Hall did not disclose that the bill they were promoting was drawn from a strategy playbook produced by Project Blitz, a coalition of religious groups that has drafted model legislation to advance Christianity’s dominion over civic life. “ ‘Project Blitz’ Seeks to Do for Christian Nationalism What ALEC Does for Big Business,” reads the headline of an article I wrote in April 2018 for Religion Dispatches.

In 2017, the then-little known Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, and led by the founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, former Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) authored the 116-page “Report and Analysis on Religious Freedom Measures Impacting Prayer and Faith in America,” in partnership with the Pro-Family Legislative Network, led by Christian nationalist activist David Barton of Wallbuilders and the small National Legal Foundation.

The manual served two purposes. First, it was a remarkable distillation of lessons learned from legislative battles around the country. Based on that experience, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation crafted 19 model bills and resolutions. These were accompanied by talking points and responses to the likely objections from the opposition. Second, it informed a national network of state legislative “prayer caucuses” in three dozen states modeled after the national Congressional Prayer Caucus. The lists of prayer caucus chairs and members were posted on the foundation’s web site. Some states had dozens of members, others only a few.

The model legislation ranged from efforts to display posters of the Ten Commandments in public schools, to anti-LGBTQ adoption bills, to versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and what they termed the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which sought religious exemptions from legal respect for marriage equality. Their stated purpose of these model bills was to offer “the collective wisdom and experience of individual legislators and legal teams” to “groups who have or will support such legislation.”

Following my original exposés, Project Blitz drew unwanted media coverage (from the  New York Times, the Guardian, Religion News Service, Church & State magazine, and Salon, to name a few) and massive opposition. Project Blitz was forced to drop its name and scrub most related material from its website, including the names of members of the prayer caucuses for whom Project Blitz had become politically toxic. However, Project Blitz lives on in the form of prayer caucuses under the rubric of the American Prayer Caucus Network, and legislation whose provenance is Project Blitz, is still being introduced in state legislatures today. It also continues to be monitored by Blitz Watch, which has archived the Project Blitz legislative playbooks on its website.

It is worth noting that the original U.S. motto since 1782, “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one), which still appears on the Great Seal of the United States and some U.S. currencies, much better reflects the aspirations of the founding fathers who sought unity amidst diversity. But that’s not the goal of the new national motto, “In God We Trust,” which was passed by Congress during the height of the Cold War. The new motto was part of an effort to frame the United States as having God on its side against allegedly godless communism. This framing has lived on in the smear of John Marty and many others to this day. This is, of course, why the prominent display and invocation of In God We Trust is central to the Christian Right’s program.

Following the playbook

Nevertheless, this Christian Nationalist program features a stealth component.

In the Fox segment, Hall did not disclose that he was the Minnesota chair of the state Legislative Prayer Caucus, which had been organized by Project Blitz. He also did not disclose that his amendment was based on the model bill, the “National Motto Display Act.”

Unsurprisingly, the segment closely followed the talking points and political strategy behind the bill as outlined in the manual.

“It is critical to think strategically” the 2017 manual advised. Thus, legislators were urged to consider, “before filing any piece of religious liberty legislation” to assess the probability of success once they have established their goal: “Is it passage? To educate fellow legislators and the public on an issue? To get opponents on a recorded vote? To change the terms of the discussion?”

Maggie Garrett, Legislative Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me at the time she saw these bills as introducing government-sponsored religion into public schools, where children are a “captive audience.”

“For students who don’t believe in God or have non-traditional concepts of a deity,” she said, “this is a fundamental violation of the​ir right of conscience. Government should be neutral in matters of religion and certainly should not be using public schools to tell young people ​that there is one God and they must trust that God.”

David R. Brockman, a Nonresident Scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told me that he viewed Project Blitz “as a covert campaign for conservative Christian dominion over law and public policy.”

“Dominionism as I understand it,” he said, seeks to align law and public policy with conservative Christian beliefs.”

In light of this episode, it is not unreasonable to think that Hegseth might act on his view of using the institutions of government to promote his religious views across all branches of the armed forces, should be become Secretary of Defense.

Raising up an underground army

Indeed, since 2018, Hegseth has gone on to embrace an even more militantly Dominionist form of Christian Nationalism. In 2023 he moved his family from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church in the Nashville-headquartered Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida has said of the church, “Their goal is to reestablish biblical law as the standard for society. So, when they say they believe that America should be a Christian nation, they actually believe that all nations should be Christian.” 

The denomination was formed in 1998 by Pastor Doug Wilson, who emerged from the Presbyterian Reformed world of Calvinist theologian R.J. Rushdoony, the leading theocratic theologian of the 20th century. Wilson, who leads a church in Moscow, Idaho, has also cobbled together an education and publishing empire of national influence. It includes New St. Andrews College and a related seminary in Moscow; as well as the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which serves as an accrediting agency for about 500 K-12 Christian member schools in 48 states and serves as an accrediting agency. Wilson also founded the Canon Press, which has published his books and others consistent with his views.

Wilson is part of the broad movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to take Christian “dominion” by transforming society to be governed under what they call “Biblical Law.” (Their political theology is known as Dominionism.) The movement has been profoundly influential in the development of the politics of the Christian Right over the past half century. For his part, Wilson is unambiguous about seeking this kind of Christian dominion, ominously adding in March 2023 that more mainstream Christians are in “the enemy camp” and that “you don’t have to die for dominion, but you have be willing to.”

According to Ingersoll, Wilson was notorious for his 1996 book Southern Slavery: As it Was, which, she says, “revives pre-Civil War arguments in favor of slavery.” He has also been implicated in accusations of abuse, including abuses of power and sexual abuse.

In a 2018 YouTube video, Wilson calls for implementing a Christian Reconstructionist vision to replace the secular U.S. Constitution with biblical law. He says he does not favor imposing it in a “top-down” fashion. He does, however, heartily support Hegseth’s nomination, as do the pastors of Hegseth’s church. One of them cheered the idea of Hegseth “replacing degenerates with God fearing Christian men,” adding, “Trump’s White House will be staffed by (at least some) faithful, God-fearing Christians who will be advising president Trump and wielding political power.”

As for Hegseth, in 2023 he and David Goodwin, the co-author of their book The Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, discussed “mounting an insurgency” aimed at public education. This is not surprising, as Ingersoll observed, since one of Rushdoony’s most important strategies for Christian Reconstructionism to prevail, “was to eliminate public education and replace it with Christian education.”

In a November 2024 interview with CrossPolitic to promote his book, Hegseth described his vision of classical Christian schools as “bootcamps” for a future insurgency. He said:

“[We] draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like—because I was a counter-insurgency instructor in Afghanistan—and kind of the phases that Mao wrote about.

“And we’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize, and as you do so you build your army underground, with the opportunity later on taking offensive operations in an overt way. And obviously all of this is metaphorical and all that good stuff.”

At this point in the interview, Hegseth and the CrossPolitic hosts laughed. Whether their chuckles reflect a vision of violence, or the perspective of revolutionaries playing the long game, is unclear. Their dire view of education and of society is, however, unambiguous.

The Christian supremacism Hegseth displayed in the Project Blitz episode in 2018 has apparently intensified since he gravitated into Pastor Wilson’s orbit. The Constitution, the First Amendment and the Supreme Court do not hold that one’s religious identity should be either an advantage or a disadvantage in one’s status as a citizen. But apparently that is not Pete Hegseth’s view. As someone who advocated the use of public schools to promote his religious views, one can only imagine what he might want to do with the Pentagon and the military academies, bases, ships, and planes and communications media of the armed services to promote or impose his theocratic views on others.

Frederick ClarksonMore by this author →

Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has written about politics and religion for four decades and is the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy and editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America.