Recommendations of the Editorial team
Shortly after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, Navy leadership began briefing us about religious fanatics living in the mountains – men who belonged to no country or national cause, whose only loyalty was to their own interpretation of religion. Al-Qaeda.
These briefings typically ended with an important lesson: The U.S. military is governed by the Constitution, not a religion. The nation’s founding fathers understood the danger that religious extremism posed to a democracy. Donald Trump’s administration apparently sees things differently as it launches a new war against Iran without clear goals or a foreseeable end.
The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation said this week it has received more than 200 complaints from more than 50 military installations that commanders are using Christian rhetoric when describing the war against Iran – much of it related to end-time prophecy. A commander told officers in a briefing Monday, for example, that Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to trigger Armageddon and herald his return to Earth,” according to one of the complaints. Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen was the first to report on the military’s religious messages.
Huckabee, Graham and the Holy War
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee talks about Israel having a biblical right to take control of most of the Middle East, and Republican politicians publicly promote the idea that the United States is now in a holy war with Iran. “This is a religious war,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters this week. “We will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years.”
The U.S. military has always been governed by the constitutional separation of church and state, and soldiers swear an oath to defend the Constitution—no religion, no prophecy, and no particular interpretation of Scripture. This standard has been in jeopardy since Pete Hegseth was appointed Secretary of Defense.
Hegseth’s rise in conservative politics has always been cloaked in the language of Christian nationalism – literally: he wears a Jerusalem cross, a symbol closely associated with the medieval Crusades, tattooed across his chest, along with other religious motifs. For many historians and observers, these symbols reflect a romanticized vision of Christian warriors fighting holy wars in the Middle East. If someone who publicly embodies this repertoire of images rises to the top of the Defense Department, it raises serious questions about whether the line between constitutional duty and religious crusade is being blurred at the highest levels of the military.
Hegseth’s religious rhetoric
Hegseth has not yet explicitly described the war against Iran in religious terms, but he has repeatedly invoked Christianity since taking military command – from reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” to troops to using the Pentagon Auditorium for Christian prayer services. His scandal-filled tenure has been largely focused on banishing what he calls “DEI” and “woke” ideology from the military, rejecting women in combat roles and rolling back recognition of people of color in military history. In February, he invited a Christian nationalist pastor who supports abolition of women’s suffrage to lead one of his prayer services at the Pentagon.
Hegseth’s rhetoric surrounding military operations was similarly troubling. He said this week that the U.S. is winning the new war against Iran “decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” and appears annoyed that he has to answer questions about soldiers killed in the war. He has also complained about the so-called “stupid rules of engagement” – rules that, for example, prevent America or its allies from shooting down their own jets. Hegseth’s disregard for these rules is all the more disturbing because, according to a complaint from an employee of the organization he led at the time, he once shouted in a “drunken and violent manner” “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” is said to have roared.
Pentagon refers to Hegseth’s videos
In response to a request for comment on the complaints the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received since the start of the war against Iran, the Defense Department referred ROLLING STONE to videos of Hegseth discussing the war – including an address to the military in which he castigates America’s past “leaderless wars of pride” before defending the current war against Iran as sombre music plays in the background.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump’s war on Iran is going so badly. It starts at the top. Everything soldiers have been told and taught over the past 250 years is being turned on its head by Trump and Hegseth.
The military is a hierarchical organization in which careers depend on evaluations and the climate of the command area. Religious messages from a superior are not everyday speech. They have weight. They create pressure. Pressure causes errors. In the military, mistakes cost lives.
A matter of faith instead of a constitutional obligation
The follies and collapses of great military powers of the past can often be traced to exactly the kind of environment that Trump and Hegseth seem to be creating in our armed forces: political expediency rather than proven strategy and planning, political loyalty rather than expertise and experience. American lives must never be put at risk unless absolutely necessary—and never in the service of something as dangerous and subjective as the supposed “will of God.”
If the military ever becomes identified with a cult, creed, or apocalyptic vision, it will fracture from within and isolate itself from the nation it serves. We are strongest when we remain neutral in our faith and steadfast in our right. The uniform represents a single sacred promise: to defend the Constitution. Not a prophecy. Not a political movement. The Constitution.
This boundary must never be blurred.
