Defense Secretary praises pastor who thinks women shouldn't have the right to vote
Pete Hegseth endorsed the views of Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist who openly calls for dismantling women’s suffrage
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When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he was heavily scrutinized for sermons delivered by his then-pastor Jeremiah Wright. News outlets and plenty of bad-faith commentators demanded he account for why he would attend any church with a pastor who dared criticize America. Obama said he didn’t agree with those comments and plainly denounced them, but critics were eager to equate them with his campaign. Months later, Obama resigned his membership in that church.
Now look at what’s happening with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who attends a church headed up by patriarchal, conspiracy-spewing Christian preacher Doug Wilson—and sends his children to a school affiliated with Wilson.
On Thursday, CNN aired a segment about Wilson, whose Moscow, Idaho-based Christ Church just opened up a branch in Washington, D.C. that’s attended by people like Hegseth.
In that segment, Wilson openly admitted his theocratic fantasies: “I'd like to see the town be a Christian town. I'd like to see the state be a Christian state. I'd like to see the nation be a Christian nation. I'd like to see the world be a Christian world.”
He described women as nothing more than “the kind of people that people come out of.” He said they should be submissive to their husbands and—importantly—in his ideal world, women wouldn’t be allowed to vote. One of Wilson’s fellow pastors said on camera that he supported repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
And while this didn’t come up in the actual segment, the introduction correctly pointed out that Wilson believes abortion and homosexuality should be criminalized.
They also didn’t mention that Wilson has said sodomy is “worse than slavery,” that abortion is “as great an evil as slavery,” and that slavery was a net positive because it “produced in the South a genuine affection between the races.”
Or that Wilson protects abusers over the abused.
Or that Wilson doesn’t believe Muslims, Hindus, or even “liberal” Christians should be allowed to hold office. (It’s safe to say that extends to atheists, too.)
Meanwhile, Hegseth has his own extremist views. When he was nominated to his current position, news stories pointed out how his tattoo reading “Deus Vult” made waves when his National Guard colleagues spotted it a few years ago.
It wasn’t his only tattoo. It wasn’t even his only Christian tattoo (he also has a large Jerusalem Cross on his chest which is very interesting given Leviticus 19.28). But it was the one that received the most attention because the phrase, which means “God wills it” had become popular with “the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and other extremists groups that participated in the siege at the Capitol” on January 6, 2021.
As Right Wing Watch points out, Hegseth has also purged women from the top ranks of the military and held Christian prayer services during work hours at the Pentagon.
On Friday, Hegseth promoted the CNN segment about Doug Wilson—the one praising Christian Nationalism and repealing women’s suffrage—with a brief comment: “All of Christ for All of Life.” (Depending on your interpretation, that’s either a personal philosophy or a threat to everyone outside their religious bubble.)
In a normal world, that sort of endorsement would be disqualifying. But when you’re a defense secretary who’s already leaked classified secrets in a group chat, surrounded by Republican MAGA cultists who have no principles, none of this will raise so much as an eyebrow from the sort of people who would lose their minds if a Democrat who didn’t hold the same religious beliefs did anything even remotely close to this.
Hegseth won’t get any pushback for this because Republicans have decided conservative Christianity in all its forms, no matter how extreme, rises above everything else.
Just look at how both parties responded to the reaction to his tweet:
Asked for comment, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell defended Hegseth’s association with Wilson
“The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings,” Parnell said.
Wilson, for his part, said that Hegseth and the department he leads are “not organizationally tied” to his ministries, but said Hegseth’s close involvement “is the kind of thing we like to see.”
See? Nothing to worry about. Just the unqualified, alcoholic leader of the Defense Department endorsing a pastor who openly promotes Christian Nationalism and believes women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Why are you liberals making such a big deal out of this?!
What’s terrifying is that none of this will be an issue for the 80% of white evangelicals who continue to back the Trump administration’s incompetence and cruelty. They’ll treat any criticism of Hegseth and Wilson as anti-Christian while keeping their mouths shut if they have any reservations about their beliefs. They can’t be counted on to be voices of ethics or morality. They have no problem normalizing an openly authoritarian, misogynistic, theocratic vision for America at the highest levels of government.
Hegseth isn’t just tolerating Wilson’s ideology; he’s publicly celebrating it. The fact that the Pentagon itself defends this association should infuriate and frighten anyone who believes in a constitutional government.
If they had their way, liberty and freedom would only belong to those who bow down to their God, in their way, in their houses of worship. If conservative Christians and other Republicans aren’t going to sound the alarm about this, then the rest of us need to condemn this as loudly as possible.
𝐻𝑒𝑔𝑠𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑠𝑜𝑛’𝑠 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦; ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑡𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑔𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡.
Frightened? A bit. Infuriate? Incandescent rage burning with the fire of a thousand suns comes to mind. Here is the ideology Hegseth is promoting as goog for the military and good for the country:
[𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑠𝑜𝑛] 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 “𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓.”
Women don't count as people, they count as glorified livestock.
...𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑠𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑚𝑦 𝑖𝑠 “𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦,” 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑠 “𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦,” 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑛𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑡 “𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑠.”
Loving sexual relations that aren't explicitly for procreation are worse than owning people to be farm equipment. Necessary reproductive health care is equivalent to owning people as far equipment. Then a bit of inconsistency in viewpoint because owning people as farm equipment was OK because people who owned people as farm equipment sometimes treated some of them with affection, the way you would treat a pet.
Hegseth can deny that his tattoos don't signify Jesus flavored white supremacy all he wants, but celebrating abhorrent shit like this shows just how much of a Jesus flavored white supremacist he is. It is a good thing that the generals aren't likely to allow that nonsense as policy.
Since 2016, I’ve been saying that to stop this fascist movement, we need to cut off the head of the snake. The head of the snake would be Donald Trump. I believe now that purging Trump will not work, it’s too late. The snake has already wrapped its coils around our government and is choking it to death and we will never ever return to a free and fair society unless the hundred million people who didn’t vote in the last election get off their lazy ass asses and vote.
Remember, that out of that hundred million people, about 75-80 million of them are Democrats.