Pete Hegseth Is Creating a Patriarchal Pentagon to Fight Domestic Foes

On August 7, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X a clip of a CNN segment featuring Doug Wilson, the pastor who cofounded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the extremist Christian nationalist sect that Hegseth joined in 2018. Hegseth added a catchphrase to the post that he learned from the church, “All of Christ for All of Life.” In the video itself, Wilson and other CREC pastors affirm a theocratic and patriarchal vision of the world. Wilson tells CNN, “I’d like to see the nation be a Christian nation, and I’d like to see the world be a Christian world.” Another CREC pastor calls for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which enshrines the right of women to vote, and a female parishioner supports the church’s teaching that wives must submit to their husbands.

While Hegseth’s post ignited controversy, Wilson was delighted by to have such a powerful government official give CREC an imprimatur. The pastor told the AP:

[Hegseth] reposted it, and he himself said “All of Christ for All of Life,” which is a tagline that we use. This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in the national government as we do now.… We’re trying to give these people an opportunity to meet with God.… I think the 19th Amendment was a bad idea.

Hegseth’s religious faith is more than a personal matter since the church has such a far-reaching program for remaking the United States and the world. While Hegseth can’t overturn the 19th Amendment, he can reshape the Pentagon along patriarchal lines. Donald Trump, who nominated Hegseth, is himself trying to turn the military into a tool of his partisan agenda, sending troops to Washington, DC, ostensibly to fight crime.

Hegseth joined CREC at one of his frequent moments of personal crisis. In 2017, he paid $50,000 in a settlement with a woman who accused him of sexual assault. The following year, Hegseth’s mother wrote him a letter that read in part, “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” (She later disavowed this letter.) At that time, Hegseth was a twice-divorced alcoholic who had been repeatedly accused of mismanaging the nonprofits he oversaw (on occasion allegedly creating an environment where sexual harassment flourished). Wanting to rebuild his life, Hegseth joined CREC in 2018 and remarried the following year.

As Amanda Marcotte noted in Salon, Wilson’s theology is grounded in the idea of female sexual subservience:

In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women’s fault for not being submissive enough. “[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes. “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to “dream of being rapists,” deprived of the “erotic necessity” found in women’s submission.

In running the Pentagon, Hegseth has been a cultural warrior more concentrated on defeating liberalism than in fighting foreign wars. He has been especially focused on purging the military of transgender troops. Hegseth also believes that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have weakened the military’s war-making ability. He has assiduously blocked the promotion of officers he sees as opposed to his vision. Sometimes these officers are white men Hegseth views as hostile, but a strikingly large number are women and/or people of color.

The New York Times made a partial list:

Hegseth and President Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.… Hegseth accused General Brown, who is Black, of prioritizing diversity over the combat effectiveness of the force.

Also removed during the first months of the new administration were the first woman to command the Navy, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the first woman to command the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; Mr. Hegseth’s senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short; and the U.S. military representative to the NATO military committee, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield. All were dismissed as part of a campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion from the military and restore what Mr. Hegseth has described as a “warrior ethos.”

Mr. Hegseth also recently withdrew the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly to lead the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in Japan—its largest overseas force—amid reports in conservative media that seven years earlier the admiral had allowed a drag performance to take place on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.

The message of these firings and failures to nominate is clear: Under Hegseth, the military is an institution for conservative cis white men. You are automatically suspect if you are a woman, trans, or a person of color. Even if you are white man, any sign of tolerance of diversity makes you suspect.

Hegseth grabbed on to Christian nationalist patriarchy as a solution to his personal failures. Now he is trying to impose that Christian nationalist patriarchy on the military. The logical outcome of this program is a military geared not to fighting military threats but to waging internal domestic war against the foes of Christian nationalism. Along with Trump, who is using the military as a personal army, Hegseth is paving the way for an authoritarian United States.