When the podium becomes a pulpit.
At a Pentagon press briefing this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closed his remarks with a reading from the Book of Psalms and ended with “Amen.” Press briefings don’t usually end that way.
It’s the latest moment in a pattern that RNS national reporter Jack Jenkins began tracing last fall — and the pattern has only sharpened since. What started as prominent Christian declarations in Hegseth’s public rhetoric has escalated. Some members of Congress are now calling for a Department of Defense investigation over claims related to military officers allegedly invoking the Bible in pursuit of the Iran war.
When Complexified first aired this conversation with Jack Jenkins back in October, Hegseth had already spent nine months reshaping the Pentagon — hosting monthly worship services in the auditorium, overlaying Scripture on images of fighter jets and missile systems, and telling assembled troops the country needed to be “on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
The question at the center of this conversation has become unavoidable: What does it mean to anoint the most powerful military on Earth in the language of Christianity — and then go to war?
This transcript was generated using AI tools and may contain minor transcription errors.
JONATHAN WOODWARD: From RNS and the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, this is Complexified, a podcast for the religiously curious and politically frustrated. I’m Jonathan Woodward. We have a special repost for you this week of an episode on Pete Hegseth we ran back in October. When we first aired this conversation with RNS reporter Jack Jenkins, Secretary Hegseth had already spent nine months reshaping the Pentagon — monthly worship services in the auditorium, advertisements featuring biblical Scripture overlaid on images of fighter jets and missile systems, a secretary of war who told his assembled troops that the country needed to be, quote, on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This week, at an official Pentagon press briefing, Hegseth closed his remarks by reading from the Book of Psalms. He said, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge.” We were asking last fall: How deep does this go? What happens when Christianity isn’t just present in the military, it becomes part of the military? When the pressroom lectern goes from being a podium to a pulpit. That question hasn’t gotten easier. And Jack’s reporting is still the clearest map we have for understanding how we got here. Let’s take a listen.
AMANDA HENDERSON: From RNS and the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, this is Complexified, a podcast for the religiously curious and politically frustrated. I’m Amanda Henderson. Speaking to nearly the entire senior officer corps of the military, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took his Christianization of the military to the next level. Since taking office, Hegseth has woven his conservative Christian beliefs into the fabric of U.S. military leadership, organizing Pentagon worship services and blending war preparations with biblical Scripture. This bold integration has sparked debate, with critics warning that Hegseth’s fervent advocacy of a faith-driven military veers dangerously close to violating the U.S. Constitution. Today we pick back up with RNS reporter Jack Jenkins to find out more about Hegseth’s vision for the future of the military and religion in America. Jack, welcome.
JACK JENKINS: Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be back.
HENDERSON: Tell me about this big meeting of military officers.
JENKINS: Yeah, so this was a very rare event. The head of the Department of Defense, which now goes by a secondary name, the Department of War, Pete Hegseth, called in virtually all of the major military leaders of all the branches of the military into one room to deliver a formal address to them. And that on its own is highly unusual. You have to understand that these military leaders are in the far reaches of the planet, and it’s quite a journey to get here and to be a part of this. And then he, standing in front of an American flag that kind of mimicked similar setups from famous military movies, the secretary delivered this address in which he was trying to outline his vision for what he refers to as the warrior ethos — this idea of how he wants to shape and craft the U.S. military. It had a lot to do with getting rid of what he would call wokeness in the military. This is something that he’s kind of advocated for before he ever became the secretary of defense, and he has written books about it. In fact, he referenced his own book. And then of course he made several religious references and biblical references over the course of the speech, but the most obvious one came at the conclusion of his address before President Trump spoke immediately after him — where as he spoke before these generals and admirals and what have you, who were all silent, which is in keeping with how these sorts of military figures normally…
HENDERSON: And this is a Christian prayer.
JENKINS: It was an appeal to what you know, most ears would sound like an appeal to the Christian God, and then closed out his address. And that was kind of a signal about a lot of the efforts that he’s been instituting at the Department of Defense since he took over that wing of the U.S. government.
HENDERSON: So when we last spoke, I guess it was 10 months ago when Pete Hegseth was confirmed and we had that confirmation hearing where it was really clear the role that his Christian faith plays — one, in how he sees himself and how he sees his work — and we asked what is the role of Christianity, how’s that going to play out in his leadership as secretary of defense? How’s that gone? How has Christianity, and his form of Christianity, shaped the way that he has led the military?
JENKINS: So I want to point out up front that it’s important to note that historically religious expression in the U.S. military is not uncommon. We’ve had many a military leader reference God or Christianity at some point in some sort of vague ways that are often kind of considered part of what’s referred to as the civil religion of the United States — kind of these more vague appeals. But what has been distinctive about Secretary Hegseth’s approach to faith as he has been in charge of the most powerful fighting force on the planet is that he has not only centered Christianity, he centered his form of Christianity. And so what that’s looked like internally is he started his own worship service at the Pentagon. Now, it’s important to remember the Pentagon already has chaplains. The head of the Archdiocese of the Military from the Catholic Church told me they already have Mass there five times a week. There is a chapel that exists in the Pentagon that regularly holds worship services for a myriad of different faith traditions. So this is in addition to all of that. And it’s a recurring monthly worship service, according to the department. And the first one that he kicked off in May — he opened up the service with his own kind of address to the assembled folks in the room. And for the record, when he did that, he said — I’m paraphrasing a little bit — but what he said was: This is where I need to be, and I also believe that this is where the country needs to be, on bended knee, accepting Christ. And you can look at the quote, it’s actually more explicit than I think I just described it. But it was very clear that his idea was, I would prefer that the country, the United States of America, share my faith.
HENDERSON: He’s kind of claiming this role of pastor of the military and the United States in that moment.
JENKINS: Right. And then the person who walked on stage and led the worship service was Secretary Hegseth’s own pastor from a small church in Tennessee that’s affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — which is a very specific denomination that we can go into — but it was his own pastor who led that.
HENDERSON: Wow.
JENKINS: And I should note that we have seen a sign for this worship service that seems to have been in the Pentagon, and it’s described as — because Secretary Hegseth now goes by a secondary name, secretary of war — “Sec War’s Worship Service.” So it is branded as his worship service specifically. And that’s the internally facing part. They only livestreamed the first worship service. The service has been going on monthly. We don’t actually know how many have happened. We do know one other has happened because they publicly acknowledged that one other has occurred, and it was also led by an evangelical Christian leader. But outwardly facing, there’s been even more elements here.
HENDERSON: Yeah, tell me about the imagery. I feel like I’ve seen a couple of those commercials that are pretty wild.
JENKINS: So one of the things that the Department of Defense social media department has done — that kind of mirrors actually something that’s happening at the Department of Homeland Security as well — is the creation of these promotional videos for the U.S. military in which they overlay imagery of weapons of war and service members with a Bible verse. And so that slowly appears on the screen. It’s usually a vertical video, so it’s optimized to be used on mobile, in which Christian Scripture — or potentially Jewish Scripture too, depending on where they’re pulling from in the Bible — is overlaid on the images of U.S. service members. The most explicit version of this was more recently when there was a moment shortly after the activist Charlie Kirk was killed the same day. Secretary Hegseth actually led a prayer in front of service members. And the whole two-minute prayer you can actually find on the Department of War’s social media feeds. But there was a section in which Secretary Hegseth led the Lord’s Prayer — a very specific Christian prayer. And then they recut that moment into its own video, in which it begins with Secretary Hegseth beginning that prayer, and then his prayer turns into a voiceover as the Lord’s Prayer is played over images of fighter jets and missile systems and tanks and service members jumping out of airplanes, and then an American flag, and then Secretary Hegseth himself standing next to the president and vice president saluting as he concludes the prayer — clearly associating this prayer with the service and the department itself. That video was released, and the next day Secretary Hegseth actually spoke at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, where — after having been introduced as the secretary of war and addressing his own work in that regard during his remarks — he again made this overt appeal to Americans to also embrace the specific kind of Christianity that he was modeling. Now he’s not saying, like, join my denomination, but it’s very clearly coming from an evangelical Christian space.
HENDERSON: We’ll be right back.
HENDERSON: So who sees these social media posts and ads, and what kind of effect does that have on our military?
JENKINS: Yeah, so this is an interesting dynamic that I don’t know if we have a clear answer to. I’ll point out that the spokesperson, the Pentagon press secretary — I actually asked her about Hegseth’s worship service and she noted that it is voluntary, but then said it’s a chance for believers, and she capitalized B in the statement. Capital B believers.
HENDERSON: If it has a capital, then you’re a community of people — of Christians.
JENKINS: It is possible that she’s mimicking the president’s tendency to errantly capitalize things, but it was interesting that it was capital B believers, given the evangelical nature of these worship services to our knowledge that have occurred so far. And in addition to that, she releases this weekly celebration of what they’ve done at the Pentagon, and just last week she celebrated how viral the content has gone on their social media feeds and how it dwarfs that of any other previous administration. Now, it’s an interesting thing to claim — that the promotional materials for the U.S. military are going more viral and getting more impressions than previous iterations. So why is that? Is it for recruitment? Now, they do claim that they are seeing record recruitment levels at the U.S. military. And it raises the question as to why that is the case. I think there’s probably a myriad of reasons for that. But if the intended goal is for these sorts of videos to recruit people into the U.S. military that otherwise would not have joined, it stands to reason — or at least raises the question — of whether or not they’re intentionally trying to recruit people with the idea that the U.S. military is also something that can be held in concert with one specifically evangelical Christian faith.
HENDERSON: Right. Yeah.
JENKINS: So you wonder if that’s part of it. There’s also a degree to which I would note that people who hold the idea that America should be a Christian nation — sometimes referred to as Christian nationalists — claiming this sort of thing boldly, there’s a long tradition of that. And so for Pete Hegseth to get into this position, we’re seeing something we see elsewhere, like at DHS and what have you, where in some ways it’s kind of trolling the left as well in order to put this forward and say, hey, this is what we claim America is. Now, I don’t know precisely why they put up those videos, but that’s certainly how it’s being read by many — both its critics and those who’ve celebrated these videos.
HENDERSON: Mm-hmm. Now I often think about the ways that Christianity shows up in U.S. politics as providing this sense of moral authority — that we are a blessed nation and our actions are blessed and coming from this divine source. How do you see Christianity functioning, and this form of fundamentalist Christianity functioning, for Pete Hegseth and the way they’re guiding and directing and shaping the military?
JENKINS: This is really the interesting theological question, right? What is the value of invoking faith — not only just in your job, there’s no shortage of people who do that, like this is what inspires me to do my job — but associating it with the department itself, associating it with the project that is the U.S. military. And I should acknowledge up front, there is an entire wing of Christianity that is actually very present in American history, was very present at the founding, that takes a radically pacifist stance and opposes militaries in general. There are Mennonite colleges that do not play the national anthem at sporting events because of that. So Christianity has multiple things to say about the use of force and arms and what have you. But with Hegseth in particular, what I think is really interesting is that he is continuously invoking his faith — which seems to reflect a very deeply evangelical Christian leaning — very publicly in this role and even linking it to his specific denomination. He actually posted on his personal Twitter feed, or X feed, that still carries a Department of Defense label by the way — that’s what Twitter associates it with now. On his personal account he forwarded an interview that CNN had done with Doug Wilson, who co-founded the denomination that he belongs to, and Doug Wilson has now founded a wing of his church in D.C. that Hegseth now attends, and Hegseth approvingly promoted that as an idea. That’s unusual to see someone kind of rah-rah for their specific denomination that has very controversial views while operating as the head of the most powerful fighting force on the planet. So I think that’s the part that is really interesting to watch — it’s kind of like baptizing the U.S. military in a very specific, not just Christianity, but a specific kind of Christianity.
HENDERSON: Is there any pushback to that from within the military force?
JENKINS: So, this is interesting because it’s actually hard to know. One thing that’s gotten a lot of attention of late is that Secretary Hegseth has really clamped down on the way that journalists can function in the Pentagon. We’re seeing new regulations be put forward that you cannot get a hard pass or a credential at the Pentagon — or you risk losing it — if you release classified information or if you use information that has not been approved by the Pentagon. There’s also the lie detector tests that reportedly the secretary is going to institute. There’s a lot of concern. And we say this knowing that very early on in his tenure as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth was part of a Signal chat that put the head of a major publication, The Atlantic, on there, in which they were discussing plans that — whether or not they were classified — many would argue contained nothing the public was supposed to know.
HENDERSON: Yeah.
JENKINS: And so it’s actually kind of hard to get information out of the Pentagon — insofar as that was ever easy, it’s even harder now. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t pushback, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been things said, but it is a bigger lift for a journalist like myself, or even those who’ve been doing this for a long time, to get anyone on the record or even find other sources of information to quantify whether or not there is this sort of pushback. Now, it is happening externally.
HENDERSON: We’re seeing lots of criticism — folks who are concerned that this is running afoul of the establishment clause. The worship service in particular, there are concerns about whether or not that is coercive, particularly when the head of the military is holding his own worship service. Is that considered coercive? Do you feel obligated to go? There are lots of questions around that.
JENKINS: Whether or not there’s any sort of direct and established pushback within the military, I look forward to either reporting that out or seeing who is able to, because it’s harder than it sounds to get that reporting these days.
HENDERSON: Well, if you get that reporting you’ll have to come back and share it with us.
JENKINS: Absolutely.
HENDERSON: And it seems like this is definitely a clear turn, and we’re continuing to watch the ways that this baptism of the military, as you said, is going to play out in the future. So thank you so much, Jack, for coming on and continuing this great conversation.
JENKINS: Of course. Thanks so much for having me.
HENDERSON: Complexified comes to you from the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Iliff School of Theology in partnership with Religion News Service. Senior producer is Jonathan Woodward. Associate Producer is Josh Perez. Consulting producer is Paul O’Donnell. I’m Amanda Henderson. The world still needs us. We need more big questions, more curiosity, more great conversations. More Complexified. So share this episode with your brother or your sister today, and then email me right now at [email protected]. That’s Complexified at I-L-I-F-F dot edu.