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How Christian Nationalists Took Control of the U.S. Military
FORMER FOX NEWS host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has some revealing tattoos. Across his right bicep is the phrase Deus Vult (“God wills it”), a rallying cry from the 11th century Crusades, and on his right pec is the Jerusalem Cross, which was carried by Christian crusaders on medieval campaigns to conquer the Muslim Ottoman Empire.
Back when Hegseth was a TV commentator, he laid out his vision for a new wave of American holy wars, both foreign and domestic, in American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free. “Surrounded by the Left, with the odds stacked against us,” he wrote, “only a crusade will do.” Since becoming defense secretary in 2025, Hegseth has attempted to implement a Christian crusade mentality within the U.S. military.
In the buildup to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in late February, Hegseth held a Christian worship service at the Pentagon. He prayed for God’s blessing on “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” and said, “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.” While President Trump warned Iran to “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Hegseth provided the religious apocalyptic validation for the violence—both positioning the U.S. war machine as being on the side of the angels: Deus vult.
Hegseth’s vicious religious proclamations should be of concern to all Americans—and to people of faith in particular—but it is also important to examine the impact of those words within the military itself. Does religious language belong in the military, an institution constitutionally under secular, civilian control and prohibited from favoring any faith?
Hegseth’s Christian crusade mentality eradicates the wall separating church and state. It gives a government endorsement to Christian nationalist soldiers who supposedly fight to protect God, country, and family. Trump’s war efforts, in this view, are not only removed from the legally mandated oversight by Congress, they are also sanctioned by God.
The rise of religious authority taking precedence over the military’s secular control was the result of what author Jeff Sharlet calls a “cultural transformation” of the American military. Sharlet’s 2009 article “Jesus Killed Muhammad” outlines the strategy for how a “small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officer corps” helped build a “godly army.” Prayer meetings, call-and-response shouts for evangelical cadets, and other actions lent uniformed support to the cause of Christian nationalism. Now, with Hegseth at the helm, Christian nationalist control of the U.S. military—the conflation of God and country—appears to be complete.
Evangelizing the military
TO UNDERSTAND HOW Christian nationalism has suffused U.S. military culture in recent decades, we need to look at the military chaplaincy structure and the civilian Christian organizations now intertwined with the military.
Chaplains have served the U.S. military since the Revolutionary War. An act of Continental Congress in 1775 provided for the appointment of chaplains for all the armed forces, making the chaplaincy second only to the infantry as the oldest branch of the military. During the 1846 Mexican War, Catholics were added to the chaplaincy, and President Abraham Lincoln removed the word “Christian” from regulations relating to the chaplaincy in 1862. Six months after the U.S. entered World War I, Congress passed the “Chaplains-at-Large Bill,” which opened the chaplaincy to Jews, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and others.
By 2017, the military recognized more than 200 denominations and religious groups. Retired Maj. Gen. Steven Schaick, the Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, told me that the purpose for the broad list of recognized religious groups was to respect the country’s diversity and to make sure every member of the military was represented.
In December 2025, Hegseth collapsed the number of 221 recognized denominations and groups to 31. The shortened list, Hegseth claimed, would no longer reflect the “political correctness and secular humanism” that he said had “infected” the chaplaincy under prior administrations—ignoring the fact that Trump was president in 2017 when the longer list was compiled.
The military uses endorsing agencies, operated by ecclesiastical organizations, to recommend chaplains. There are more than 100 churches and denominational endorsing agencies that select potential candidates. In 1952, mainline Protestant denominations including Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians, through their endorsing agencies, initiated and promoted annual preaching missions on U.S. military bases. The National Association of Evangelicals responded with their own endorsing agency and began missionizing on military bases. This was the beginning of a battle between evangelicals and mainline Protestants for influence in the military, with both the NAE and the National Council of Churches promoting proselytization to military personnel and the endorsement of a growing number of chaplains.
The turmoil of the Vietnam War affected the denominational composition of the military chaplaincy, which had been traditionally composed of moderate mainline Protestant denominations and Catholics. Mainline churches such as the American Lutheran Church, American Baptist Convention, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, and United Presbyterian Church were the most active in opposition to the war. The National Catholic Reporter, Christianity & Crisis, and The Christian Century all published editorials criticizing the war. As denominational leaders spoke out against the war, mainline Protestants began moving away from the military.
More conservative Christian groups, who often fought loudly against “godless communism,” supported the war, positioning it as “God’s work,” and soon the void left in the chaplaincy by Catholics and Protestants was filled by evangelicals and Pentecostals. In 1967, the largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God, retracted its commitment to pacifism and proclaimed that worldly war was a counterpart to the spiritual struggle. Assemblies of God leaders developed a strategy of “infiltration,” a term they used for filling the ranks of secular institutions with undercover missionaries. According to Sharlet, they sought to first evangelize military personnel and then have those same individuals become missionaries to the world.
The Cold War era also saw shifts in the composition of the American religious landscape, with an increase in Muslim, Buddhist, and other traditions. The evangelical response to the change in demographics of religion in the nation was to seek a tighter hold on the institutions they considered “most American,” as defined by their version of Christian faith. The military was one of those institutions.
President Ronald Reagan cemented the evangelical hold over the chaplaincy by changing the regulations governing the denomination breakdown of the chaplaincy. Reagan, a born-again Christian, was staunchly supported by evangelicals, and his “Peace through Strength” policies evoked an apocalyptic narrative that reflected their end-time beliefs.
Prior to 1987, chaplains from different faiths were accepted into the chaplaincy based on the religious demographics of the military as a whole. For example, if 5% of the military was Catholic, a similar percentage of the chaplaincy would be as well. In 1987, Reagan reduced the number of religions identified by the military when he ordered that numerous Christian denominations be consolidated under the heading Protestant. This resulted in the number of “Protestant” military members skyrocketing. To respond to the demand of chaplains to reflect this increase, the Pentagon began using Pentecostal and evangelical endorsing agencies to recommend recent graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges, such as Liberty University, to fill these placements.
This had a far-reaching impact. In 2005, The New York Times reported on the breakdown of the Air Force chaplaincy. Between 1994 and 2005, the number of Air Force chaplains from evangelical and Pentecostal churches rose and in some cases even doubled. For example, the Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministries International had no chaplains in 1994; a little over a decade later they had 10 chaplains. During the same period, the number of Roman Catholic chaplains declined from 167 to 94.
According to Department of Defense statistics, 40% of active-duty personnel were evangelical Christians in 2005, whereas only 14% of the U.S. civilian population was evangelical. At this point, evangelical chaplains represented 60% of military chaplains. These changes, in conjunction with the so-called infiltration strategy of the nonmilitary Christian organizations, created a scenario where military personnel, from the first step of their basic training, are predominately ministered to by one branch of Christianity.
Blurring church and state
CHAPLAINCY IS NOT the only conduit to religion within the military. Several Christian organizations operate on or near military bases globally, including the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, the Navigators, the Overseas Christian Servicemen’s Centers, Valor, and Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International.
Cru Military, an affiliate of Campus Crusade for Christ (which is now called Cru), is present at U.S. boot camps and bases in 56 U.S. locations and in 35 countries worldwide, according to its website. In a 2005 sermon, Bob Dees, executive director of what was then called Military Ministry, preached, “We must pursue our particular means for transforming the nation—through the military. And the military may well be the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure.”
A goal of the OCF, which claims more than 15,000 members and is active at 80% of the U.S. military bases worldwide, is to create “a spiritually transformed U.S. military, with Ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.” The OCF started a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps ministry for the “next generation of Christian officers”—60% of the nation’s active-duty officers get their commission through ROTC at more than 1,600 colleges and universities. An article on the group’s website presents U.S. wars as a spiritual battle “against the powers of this dark world,” citing Ephesians 6:12, where “our prayer orders become just as important as our operations orders.”
In the years following the 9/11 attacks, several military leaders publicly voiced their faith while in uniform, creating a perception that their religious beliefs were associated with their official duties. An example was Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, the U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. At the 2002 Southern Baptist Convention’s National Faith Institute, Boykin—in uniform—proclaimed that the U.S. war in Afghanistan was not against Osama bin Laden but “against the forces of darkness,” a battle Boykin framed as not about military might, but one to be won “on our knees.”
The “spiritual enemies” of the United States, Boykin said, “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” Although President Bush reportedly distanced himself from Boykin’s remarks, Boykin was never officially admonished or punished by the Bush administration for his blurring of the line between church and state, even in the face of congressional calls for censure. Much like during the Trump administration in 2026, the civilian oversight of Congress was ignored.
These dynamics have only intensified and solidified under Secretary Hegseth, who attends churches affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was co-founded by Doug Wilson, who promotes a theology that Christian control of all institutions of society—including the military—is God’s will. Hegseth has effectively eliminated the separation of church and state in the area over which the commander in chief has the most direct authority.
The promotion of military action as being God’s work is directly connected to the unfettered access of religious organizations on military bases and on campuses with ROTC, as well as to the imbalance of conservative evangelical chaplains embedded with the military. While Hegseth proclaims his spurious doctrine of God’s support for the U.S. war on Iran, the military personnel who wage the war are not being offered a corrective by the outside religious groups empowered with their spiritual care and guidance.
Pushing back
SOME ARE SPEAKING out against this movement in the military, predominately through the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The MRFF reported that after the attacks on Iran began, it received more than 200 calls from active-duty personnel, from more than 50 military installations, that “Christian zealot commanders” were positioning the Iran war as a catalyst to biblical Armageddon.
One noncommissioned officer, reporting on behalf of 15 unit members, told MRFF that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.” The NCO reported that their commander “said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’”
Reports of these complaints led 30 Democratic members of Congress to ask Pentagon Inspector General Platte B. Moring III to investigate. The letter to the inspector general argued that publicly positioning the war in religious terms, both by military leadership and by senior civilian officials, “risks emboldening similar messaging within military ranks.” The members of Congress decried Hegseth’s “extreme religious rhetoric,” which they said has “metastasized into segments of the military chain of command,” and demanded an investigation to “ensure that military operations are guided by facts and the law, not end-times prophecy and extreme religious beliefs.” At press time, the inspector general had not publicly responded to the congressional letter.
I asked Schaick, the former Air Force chief of chaplains, about the American men and women who have been ordered to participate in a war that Trump has described in genocidal and apocalyptic terms, threatening that “a whole civilization will die.” The retired major general expressed concern about secular civilian control of the military—a constitutional mandate—under Hegseth and Trump and said that this was a defining moment in many ways for the nation.
Americans have “resiliency,” Schaick told me, that stems from slowly learning from the country’s great mistakes in the past. Schaick said he hopes and prays that America has that same resiliency in the future.
James E. Parco, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a former faculty member at the U.S. Air Force Academy, produced in 2013 a deeply researched analysis titled “For God and Country: Growing Religious Fundamentalism in the U.S. Military.” In it, Parco decried the “egregious actions of military leaders who are fundamentalist Christians and have been allowed to act with impunity to embed their religious views into the very fabric of military culture.”
In prescient anticipation of the dangerously improper actions of Hegseth and Trump, Parco warned that “a significant number of leaders at all levels have become so accustomed to crossing the line between church and state, they no longer see a need to separate their religious beliefs from their actions as officials of the federal government.”
Parco argued that we shouldn’t expect real cultural change in these behaviors to come from what he called “the foxes who guard the henhouse.” Rather, what’s needed now is the political will to demand and compel a new direction—and that will only come when people take concerted action against those who have sought to claim God’s blessing on their decidedly ungodly behavior.
Carmen Celestini, a lecturer in religious studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, is the author of God’s Angry Men: The Political Legacy of the John Birch Society.
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