U.S. military leaders have long understood the power and perils of invoking faith — especially in wartime.
Facing the Germans in World War II, Gen. George Patton ordered a chaplain to write an interfaith prayer for troops to say on the battlefield.
It took just a week in September 2001 for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to change the name of the campaign against terrorism from Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Enduring Freedom — a switch meant to clarify that the U.S. was not in a religious war.
And as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the late 2000s, with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen kept Mass off his public schedule, aiming to keep the particulars of his Catholic faith private.
But those longtime norms are being upended by the proselytizing Christian campaign of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, say multiple former high-ranking military officials and experts on religion and law. Rather than boosting cohesion through a more universal spiritual uplift, they say, the new approach violates the Constitution and undermines the bonds of mutual respect between troops that are essential, especially in wartime.
Every month at the Pentagon, Hegseth hosts evangelical worship services that legal experts say are unprecedented. His social media profile and public comments routinely espouse his understanding of Christianity, which is one that would dominate American life and cast those who disagree with him as God’s enemies. He has brought clergy from his small Christian denomination to preach at the Pentagon, including a prominent pastor who says women shouldn’t have the right to vote.
And in recent weeks, the war with Muslim-majority Iran has only made Hegseth’s approach more stark.
On Wednesday at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayedfor U.S. troops to inflict “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy … We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.” Later that day, his department announced military chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform and instead would wear religious insignia.
The Pentagon’s shift from previous historical norms is dangerous, according to multiple former high-ranking military officials, heads of chaplain corps, some veterans groups, current Pentagon staff and current officers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution from the Trump administration.
“The American military has had a remarkable ride of equanimity and fairness and justice and all manner of good adjectives with regard to religion. It’s done this in a way that’s really remarkable — until now,” said retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state and then was chair of the Joint Chiefs. Hegseth’s actions, Wilkerson said, “are totally violative of everything that transpired before it. This has come on us in a very quick fashion.”
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, who was second-in-command at the National Guard from 2011 to 2012, has worked in recent years to train hundreds of interfaith military chaplains. Manner said he has talked with “dozens and dozens” of active-duty chaplains in recent weeks who say those who don’t identify with Hegseth “are being marginalized.” They feel they can’t voice their concerns to their own superiors, he said, and feel their work as the primary advocate for troops’ spiritual, mental and moral health is being threatened.
“I’ve had people tell me they’re not included in staff meetings,” Manner said.
Requests for interview to the chaplain corps of all the branches of the military and the Military Chaplains Association were not answered.
A senior Army civilian who has worked in the Pentagon for decades said people who work there are afraid to talk to one another or their superiors about concerns over Hegseth’s actions. The Army civilian, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear of being punished at work or fired, said limits that used to exist around proselytizing have evaporated under Hegseth. The situation, the person said, is “terrifying.”
If troops are trained to believe that “God is on our side,” the person said, “what precludes us from doing anything we want to win? The strength of our military is our people, and their sense of belonging to their unit and their service.”
Hegseth has also scrapped the Army’s Spiritual Fitness guide because, he said, it was more focused on self-care than “truth.” He has wiped out dozens of military codes for faith groups he has deemed overkill.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said their office is “proud to host these services” and will continue to do so.
“Prayer services at the Pentagon are 100 percent voluntary and are not mandated whatsoever. It is not against the law to worship Christ voluntarily anywhere in the United States,” Wilson said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The Secretary’s prayer services undoubtedly improve morale for those who choose to attend and are constitutionally protected. No special treatment or punishment is given as a result of one’s choice to attend these prayer services.”
A move to inclusion
Faith is woven into military life, say longtime military leaders, enlisted members and experts. But the role of religious communities and chaplains have long been understood as part of a broader support umbrella.
“There has been a lot of inclusion. It was never used in a way that was meant to push anyone out,” said Lou Elliott-Cysewski, a former Army nurse who now is a spokesperson for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The idea behind faith in the military and in combat — whatever your faith is, even if it’s atheistic — the idea of having a greater mission is really, really useful in the military. However, being weaponized is the opposite of what the original intention is. People tune out and I think that’s really, really dangerous.”
Which is why, former military and current military officers said, the military has historically adopted an unspoken rule: no religion and no politics.
“The point was, it didn’t matter, and it shouldn’t have mattered, who you worship, or whether you worship at all. What mattered was doing the job and being mindful that you represent all Americans, no matter what they believe,” said a person who was in the leadership team of a recent chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I don’t approve of cramming your religious faith down people’s throats, and when the top of the chain couches these operations in this hyper-Christian tone, it flies in the face of the freedom of religion that the Constitution enshrines and that our men and women in uniform sign up to defend.”
Experts say in the 1990s, 20 years after the draft ended, the military shifted to pull disproportionately from conservative-leaning areas of the country. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, pushed ideas of religious war into the fore. The Air Force Academy in the 1990s and early 2000s faced investigations and litigation over allegations that religious intolerance and proselytizing were rampant. An investigative panel in 2005 said some academy officials used their positions to promote their understanding of Christianity and didn’t accommodate the religious needs of non-Christians.
President George W. Bush and Rumsfeld, in the years after 9/11, spoke often about de-emphasizing any religious differences between U.S. troops and their enemies. Rumsfeld in 2001 invited some local Muslim leaders to the Pentagon to gauge their feelings about how the administration was communicating, said a chaplain who was at the meeting.
Around that time, the Navy Chaplain Corps changed its motto from “Cooperation Without Compromise” to “Called to Serve All.” The change aimed to emphasize that chaplains served everyone in their command, no matter the faith, said someone involved in the change.
The military had been making steady progress toward inclusion, said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. In 2017, the Pentagon expanded its list of recognized faiths so that people who belong to smaller groups receive the same rights and protections as those in larger groups, and also helped give the military an accurate depiction of its members. In 2014, the Air Force stopped requiring personnel to say “so help me God” for various appointment oaths.
“Things were improving, which in a way is not surprising because that was the trend in society. Society was moving towards its better angels, being more tolerant,” Laser told The Post. Hegseth’s about-face “is part of this rigorous march backwards.”
In an interview with The Post, an Air Force general agreed that the military had made concrete strides in the recent past toward increased accommodation and welcoming. Since Hegseth’s arrival, the general said, “it feels like decades worth of progress has been undone in 12 months. It’s heartbreaking and it’s heartbreaking to watch our chaplains try to navigate this.”
Americans United earlier this week sued the Defense Department for not turning over public records requests about the Hegseth-led Christian prayer services at the Pentagon. In a release, it said Hegseth is abusing his position and taxpayer funds to impose his preferred religion.
“Even if these prayer services are presented as voluntary, there is pressure on federal employees to attend in order to appease their bosses — especially since these services occur amidst the Trump administration’s campaign to punish anyone who doesn’t comply with its Christian Nationalist agenda,” AU wrote.
Hegseth’s change comes as the Supreme Court has in recent years weakened church-state separation and supercharged the free exercise of religion. Among the concepts the justices are reexamining are what constitutes religious coercion and an illegal government “establishment” of religion.
The Pentagon’s pastor
To the Rev. Doug Wilson, an Idaho pastor who co-founded the 24,000-person denomination to which Hegseth belongs, the defense secretary “is simply being Christian in public.”
Doing anything but declaring Jesus is God is a violation of Hegseth’s religious liberty, Wilson said this week in an interview with The Post.
“If Pete didn’t go to these meetings and said, ‘I’m privately a Christian but I won’t go because I want everyone to feel safe,’ then he’s offering a pinch of incense to the secular God. We all honor some ultimate system. The reason [Hegseth’s faith community is] radical is we believe the Christian God is the true God.”
Wilson said Hegseth was boosting morale in the military, citing, among other things, the Trump administration’s efforts to ban transgender service members.
“I think the morale is very high, because we don’t have admirals in dresses, who aren’t supposed to be wearing dresses. Pete’s emphasis on lethality and warrior readiness is, for the average sailor or marine — that’s just the jam,” Wilson said. “People feel like someone is running this department who wakes up in the morning knowing what he thinks.”
But Wilkerson, the retired Army admiral, said Hegseth’s actions are pouring fuel on a military that is on the precipice of becoming polarized the way the country in many places is. Wilkerson is on the board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which works to protect religious liberty and church-state separation in the military. The foundation says since Trump returned to office it’s been receiving a spike in military members calling for help, with hundreds coming in each month.
“One side is very pro-MAGA and other is not. If you have something like another Jan. 6, now we’re looking at a military that will start fighting itself, it’s a recipe for a civil war with military on both sides. And God is not going to help that.”
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