Deus Vult: Pete Hegseth's Christian Nationalist Crusade to Remake the U.S. Military

[Celerity]

Pete Hegseth is using the Pentagon as a vehicle for Christian nationalism, normalizing crusader rhetoric, ignoring religious pluralism, and reshaping military policy around a narrow theological worldview. From worship services that members say feel coerced, to attacks on inclusive pastoral care and renewed efforts to push women out of combat roles, this project weakens the Constitution’s protections and threatens military cohesion.

https://globalextremism.org/post/pete-hegseths-christian-nationalist-crusade/



On January 16, 2026, the Office of the Secretary of War sent an email to Pentagon employees inviting them to a “Christian prayer and worship service” the following Wednesday. The invitation, featuring a graphic resembling a tombstone against an American flag backdrop, was nothing new. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has held such services monthly since taking office. What was new: the email also went, unsolicited, to defense contractors. And it made its way to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

Within hours, MRFF began receiving panicked calls. “For the first time that we’re aware of, it went to DOD contractors,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told GPAHE. “If you’re probably at Martin Marietta, General Dynamics, Boeing, you start wondering if we don’t make an effort to be there by not going, will we turn out to be a tarantula on a wedding cake?” The expansion of Hegseth’s prayer campaign to the private sector marks a new front in the religious transformation he is waging at the Department of Defense, one that threatens the constitutional bedrock of religious pluralism that has sustained the American military since George Washington’s Continental Army.

On December 16, 2025, Hegseth announced sweeping changes to the military’s Chaplain Corps. He claimed that military chaplains had been operating as therapists rather than ministers “in an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism.” His first target: the Army’s 112-page Spiritual Fitness Guide, which Hegseth mocked for mentioning God only once while referencing “feelings” 11 times and “playfulness” nine times. “In short, it’s unacceptable and unserious, so we’re tossing it,” he declared. The guide, designed to support service members of all faiths and belief systems, has since been scrubbed from the internet entirely.



A Denomination of One

Hegseth’s critics aren’t all atheists or secular humanists. Many are Christians themselves, alarmed at what they see as the imposition of one narrow theological perspective on an institution that includes roughly 70 percent Christians among its active-duty personnel alongside substantial numbers of atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, and followers of Eastern religions. “Hegseth is overstepping his boundaries, trying to become the denominational policeman for members of the military,” Reverend Justin Cohen, a Baptist chaplain, told The Daily Mail. One chaplain endorser, speaking anonymously, characterized the current environment as “the weirdest era we’ve ever seen when it comes to the chaplain system.”

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