There is perhaps no corner of the Trump Administration that more clearly exhibits Christian nationalism’s challenge to how we typically think about the relationship between “religion” and “secularism” than Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War.”[1] In bringing church services and Bible studies to the Pentagon, whitewashing military leadership, pushing out LGBTQ servicemembers, and increasingly limiting roles for women such that they are ultimately relegated to what patriarchy considers their appropriate roles, Hegseth has relished the opportunity to empower those he considers real men. All these steps represent efforts to make the military conform to what Hegseth considers a “biblical” model, following mentor Doug Wilson’s vision of a Christian Nation.
Three Versions of Christian Nationalism
Though it may seem like a unified movement, Christian Nationalism is, in reality, a confluence of at least three different styles of Christianity. First, there is the traditionalist Catholic strand, which claims that all authority is delegated by God (in ways similar to the Divine Right of Kings) and thus seeks to establish Catholicism as the basis for law and policy. Christian Nationalist efforts to dismantle the administrative state have their roots here. Second, there is a Pentecostal movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that claims that there are modern day prophets and apostles who lead God’s people with anointing directly from the Holy Spirit. The NAR infuses Christian Nationalism with spiritual warfare they see as literal, and with which they frame current political divisions and battles. For them, these battles are between the people of God and the forces of Satan working through enemies of God.
And finally, there is the theocratic form of evangelicalism from which Hegseth comes. This group seeks to “bring all of life and culture under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” This third style of Christianity, rather than focusing on dismantling the administrative state (though its members have approved of doing such things) has worked for at least 75 years to build a widespread, on-the-ground set of institutions to, first, transform American Christianity itself and, second, reconstruct the United States government according to biblical law. The most important of these efforts has been the establishment of a system of education apart from those that promote “secularism.” This was initiated by an earlier iteration of the Hegseth/Wilson version of Christian Nationalism called Christian Reconstruction. Beginning in the late 1950s, R. J. Rushdoony and a small circle of followers built what has become the Christian school movement and the Christian homeschool movement. At the same time, they have fought to transform what Americans think about public education for the express purpose of dismantling it. Their aim has been to replace the system of education with what they see as a biblical model and then to expand their efforts out by promoting a biblical model for ordering all of society—and ultimately dismantling public education altogether.
Each of these three styles of Christianity, in its own way, rejects the idea of religious neutrality (or any other kind of neutrality).
Maximalist and Minimalist Religion
Neutrality as an ideal shapes modernity and notions of secularism and as such require contesting. Religion scholar Bruce Lincoln’s work examining classification systems shows the (often hidden) work they do to shape how we see the world. Lincoln pushes us to see how what we think of as a “natural” distinction between “religious” and “secular” is, in fact, a product of a historically particular classification system. That’s not to say that it isn’t real. Indeed, the impacts of this system are felt by real people. The goal is to show that the world could be arranged otherwise, and that the categories of the “religious” and the “secular” do not exist independently of one another or from the past from which they come. A good example of this are the related categories of fundamentalist and modernist, which developed in the middle of the twentieth century. These two identifiers seemed to clearly delineate a style of being religious that not only helped us to understand current developments, but could also help us understand the past. There was a great deal of work carried out that looked for “fundamentalisms” across the globe, both in the past and present.
It was not long before scholars started to question the categories themselves. What this critical scrutiny revealed was that these concepts were the products of a certain time and culture and, perhaps more interestingly, a rhetorical device used by the so-called fundamentalists to establish their legitimacy as the “purest” form of Christianity. Though allegedly “anti-modern,” these forms of Christianity were quick to embrace modern technologies to promote their views on present-day issues and concerns.
Similarly, an effort to employ the distinction between what is secular and what is religious relies on the assumption that there are parts of life that are not religious and that we can agree on what comprises them. For example, should education be “secular”? Christian Nationalists in the present say no as did Puritans many years before them. In the nineteenth century American Protestants thought education should be, and was, religiously neutral. American Catholics, on the other hand, thought education was religious and even Protestant. This perceived bias led American Catholics to create their own educational institutions.
Each style of Christianity that makes up what we collectively call Christian Nationalism described above embraces the idea that all of life is religious. Given the issues raised in the preceding paragraphs, however, rather than using older model of religious/secular, or fundamentalist/modernist, I would propose that we draw on Lincoln’s classification of different traditions as minimalist/maximalist with relationship to how they view the place of religion in society. Lincoln uses the word minimalist for religion that embraces modernity; this is the kind of religion that stays in the private, personal sphere, where the rest of life outside that sphere, i.e. public or political life, is “secular.” Maximalist religion is religion that rejects this Enlightenment model and, instead, claims that all of life is religious.
Modern commitments to pluralism, egalitarianism, religious neutrality, and the way the “separation of church and state” has been understood in the US, all depend on a minimalist understanding of religion. Minimalist religion doesn’t understand itself as a product of classification. Rather, it sees a minimal notion of religion as “natural” and is comfortable declaring exactly what counts as religion and what does not in ways that make no sense to maximalists.
This poses significant problems for the preservation of a separation of church and state. In the U.S. one way the legal system has sought to protect religious freedom has been to give wide berth to religious practice. But if all of life is religious, as it is for maximalists like Hegseth and Wilson, then this exempts them from having to follow any secular laws.
Christian Reconstruction
The contours of the maximalist version of Christianity promoted by Hegseth and Wilson arise from their commitment to three interrelated principles, all of which have roots in earlier versions of Christianity. First, the unity of scripture leads them to treat the relationship between the Old Testament and the New as one continuing revelation in ways that make the Old Testament more central than it is for most modern Christians—though it is a Christian reading of the Old Testament, not a Jewish one. To emulate this God is to embrace characteristics that, when applied to humans, are authoritarian. Second, presuppositionalism underpins their claim that there are only two ways of knowing: presupposing the authority of God or the autonomy of human reason. Between the two there is no neutrality, and they are ultimately and inescapably incompatible with each other. And, third, sphere sovereignty names how they interpret the Bible as governing all areas of life by the delineated and limited authority delegated by God to the church, the family, and the civil government. This is how they can stake out “biblical” positions on all manner of issues others might see as “secular.” This is also how they can sometimes say they believe in a separation of church and state because they do separate them institutionally. All three, however, are to be governed by biblical law.
In practice, the exemplar of the biblical leader in any of the three spheres is the Western/European white male. This is a system built on pre-Civil War Presbyterianism with its attendant racial/gendered hierarchies. While they are explicit about their views on women and less so on their racial views, their explicit criticism of efforts to foster “social equality” echo earlier justifications for slavery, including the idea that slaves needed the structure of the slave system and ultimately benefited from it.
What they call biblical patriarchy serves as a hermeneutical frame for all of this. Each of these spheres is governed by male authority, where women are understood as “helpmeets” whose whole purpose is to support men in their efforts to make all of life subject to biblical law. This is the meaning of the motto Hegseth quotes from time to time: “All of Life for All of Christ.”
Implementing God’s Law
This is the backdrop to Hegseth’s leadership of the Department of Defense and is reflected in his actions in multiple ways. He is systematically removing people he deems inappropriate for military service. A ban on transgender service members (and anyone with a history of gender dysphoria) was modified by the courts to apply only to new enlistments, but he has successfully ended Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts and gender affirming care. He has cancelled promotions for women and black people, ensuring military leadership that is increasingly white and male. And he has instituted a requirement that both men and women must undergo “fitness” and testosterone testing using male standards. And though he has not enacted such policies yet, he has opposed lesbian/gay people and women in the military.
While these might seem like “secular” policies, they are deeply embedded in Hegseth’s biblical worldview. Rejecting the idea that the military should be about defense, he has renamed it the Department of War. He has called for rolling back “stupid rules of engagement” to support “maximum lethality.” He not only rejects any notion of gender except that which is binary and patriarchal, but also sees a certain kind of masculinity rooted in the character of God.
The unity of scripture requires that the God of love we see in the Sermon on the Mount be the same God we see the Old Testament God, who is often described as angry and wrathful. Both are understood as part of the character of God. But this is not the version of God we find in most modern versions of Christianity, where the angry wrathful characteristics of God are understood to have been replaced by a “God of love.”
Hegseth’s God of War, who fights wars against enemies whom he hates, is the God who gives Hegseth his model of biblical masculinity, the legitimation of his angry, aggressive, belligerent style, and the model for how to engage those he perceives of as the enemies of God.
[1] The focus of this essay is Christian Nationalism in the US but this is not a movement limited to the US. It is global and Christian Nationalists in the US aren’t just seeking to make “America a Christian Nation,” but to make all nations Christian nations.
