I guess a zealot, by nature, can’t hide — too extreme are his convictions, too grand his designs, too consuming his arrogance. And so, over recent weeks, Pete Hegseth has fully revealed himself.
He has made clear that every missile the United States fires, every bomb it drops, every Iranian it kills, is for Jesus. Praise be the Lord, who has given America the power to wipe out an entire civilization. That’s what President Trump threatened to do — in an intermittently jaunty social media post, no less — and Hegseth gave no indication of unwillingness to execute that order.
He brandishes assertions about God’s will with the exaggerated brio of an electronics merchant pressing fliers on pedestrians passing by his new megastore: Have I got a holy war for you. Embrace the death. Exult over the destruction. What only looks like hell is a ticket to heaven.
Not everyone agrees. In this era of the extraordinary, Pope Leo XIV has taken the unusual step of publicly and specifically rebuking the Trump administration’s assertion of divine approval for the war against Iran.
In a social media post on Friday, he wrote: “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
That was hardly the pope’s first reprimand. During a Mass just before Easter, he voiced his concern that the Christian mission had been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.” And before that, he cautioned that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
The pope’s preoccupation obviously reflects all the talk of God, God, God from Hegseth and from Trump, whose piety is profound when that’s convenient. Hegseth at one point used a Pentagon news conference in which he celebrated Iranians’ experience of “death and destruction from above” to beseech Americans to pray for our troops daily, on bended knee, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
As my Times colleagues Greg Jaffe and Elizabeth Dias wrote: “More than any top American military leader in recent history, Mr. Hegseth has framed U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America as bigger than politics or foreign policy. Often he has imbued these actions with a Christian moral underpinning that suggests they are divinely sanctioned.”
“Suggests” is gentle. And that article was published before Hegseth volubly likened the rescue of an American airman shot down over Iran to the Resurrection of Jesus. “A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing,” Hegseth said at a news conference. “God is good.”
Hegseth has a tattoo on his right biceps that says “Deus vult,” Latin for “God wills it.” He has described that phrase as a battle cry during the Crusades, which, of course, pitted Christians against Muslims. He titled his 2020 book “American Crusade” — notice any fixation? — and wrote in it that Americans must fight “like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago.”
He belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which exalts patriarchy and descends from a movement that argues that the Bible’s edicts should prevail over secular law.
He tugs church into state. As Michelle Boorstein wrote recently in The Washington Post: “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.”
How exactly did he become secretary of defense, to use the traditional title for the job? (Ever the overcompensating showboat, he prefers “secretary of war.”) It’s astonishing to look back at the period in early 2025 before his Senate confirmation hearing and recall all the worry about the allegations of his public drunkenness in the past, of his gross mismanagement of the groups Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, of his sexually abusive behavior. (He disputed all of this.) Those were, indeed, blaring alarms. But they were no more concerning than his theocratic bent, which was minimized in the shuffle.
That’s how it goes with Trump and his tribe: The scandals and outrages pile too high for even a small fraction of them to be noticed properly. Besides which, Christian nationalism had embedded itself too deeply in the MAGA movement and the evolving Trump administration for Hegseth’s version of it to stand out as boldly as it should. He has faded into the crowd of holy rollers.
In normal times, under a normal president, we would be talking nonstop about the fact that the lethal behemoth of the United States military is under the supervision of someone who holds such extreme religious beliefs and not only admits but brags about the extent to which they define and drive him.
In normal times, under a normal president, we would gasp at the messianic, bellicose timbre of a government video, distributed last year, that wed a montage of our military arsenal to a soundtrack of Hegseth’s voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It didn’t merely imply that ours was an army of God. It trumpeted that — with unsettling fervor, with chilling grandiosity.
Hegseth’s is a gospel of carnage, and I have so many questions about it. How does he square his Christianity with references to “no quarter, no mercy” for enemies of the United States? That’s not how Jesus talked.
How does he reconcile his certainty that he and his spiritual brethren stand at the zenith of all righteousness, empowered to cast unforgiving judgment on all who don’t subscribe to their faith, with the Christian virtue of humility, which Jesus exemplified?
Hegseth exemplifies vanity, and I’m not referring to the shirtless photos and shellacked hair. I mean the insistence that his way is His way and the only way. That God has bestowed a unique blessing on America, whose might proves its right and whose killing is a kind of grace.
What a strange religion. But then there’s so much about Hegseth — and America right now — that I find bizarre.
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For the Love of Sentences
In a post on X, Gregg Carlstrom, a Middle East correspondent for The Economist, puzzled over the initial and immediately troubled truce last Tuesday between the United States and Iran: “If you’re keeping score at home, the ceasefire includes Lebanon but also doesn’t include Lebanon, America has agreed to all of Iran’s demands and Iran has agreed to all of America’s demands, America will recognize Iran’s right to enrichment and also insist on zero enrichment, Hormuz is completely open but also Hormuz is subject to unclear limitations.” Glad we sorted that out. (Thanks to Bruce Levy of Cambridge, Mass., and Don Smith of Silver Spring, Md., among others, for nominating this.)
In her newsletter, Heather Delaney Reese mocked Trump’s ludicrous description of the war’s impact on Iran’s leadership: “The government structure is intact. Calling that regime change is like saying you demolished a building because you broke the windows.” (Steven Cobb, Salisbury, N.C.)
In The Washington Post, Kathleen Parker drew a contrast between what was happening with Artemis II last week and what was happening with the 47th president of the United States: “The astronauts traveled to the far side of the moon while Trump traveled to the dark depths of his own soul.” (Darrell Ing, Honolulu)
In his newsletter, Off Message, Brian Beutler marveled at Republicans’ passivity and complicity: “Whether it’s by way of paralysis or obtuseness or delusion, the G.O.P.’s vast tolerance for Trump’s depravity threatens to cheapen the prize, past the point at which Republicans can justify all this turpitude and brain-dead partisanship to themselves. They will be morally underwater, but we may all drown.” (John Gordon, Watertown, Mass.)
In The Dispatch, Kevin D. Williamson registered his skepticism about some imminent soul baring by the country’s vice president. “One is tempted here to take the Lord’s name in vain: JD Vance, the George Babbitt of Elmer Gantrys, is about to publish a book about Christian conversion,” he wrote. (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.)
In The Times, Glenn Thrush and Tyler Pager showed how Pam Bondi’s sycophancy was no match for Trump’s disappointment in her: “While she effused, he fumed.” (Sam Seltz, Afton, Minn., and Paul M. Kurtz, Athens, Ga., among others)
Also in The Times, Charles Homans wondered at Trump’s evolution from isolationism: “A leader who was once ambivalent at best about far-flung conflicts has, in the space of a few months, tried on several centuries’ worth of American imperialist costumes.” (Larry Link, Brooklyn)
Elisabeth Egan explored what makes an onstage conversation with a prominent writer great. “There are two types of interviewers who appear alongside authors: those who share the spotlight — occasionally hogging it — and those who, over the course of an evening, turn up the brightness on their subject as if with a dimmer switch,” she wrote. (Stacey Somppi, Cottonwood, Ariz.)
And Richard Fausset illuminated Waffle House workers’ and patrons’ incredulity at a federal government official’s claim that he’d teleported into one of the chain’s restaurants. “Among roughly two dozen workers and regulars interviewed,” he wrote, “none said they were aware of anyone traveling to the 24-hour restaurants by paranormal means, despite their reputation as powerful magnets for the sort of idiosyncratic characters who tend to surf the psychic fringes of the American South.” (Chris Mellon, Portland, Ore.)
In The Free Press, Coleman Hughes pushed back sarcastically at a new book’s account of one religion’s spread: “The peaceful Ottomans are said to have ‘ushered’ Islam into Southeastern Europe — sort of like the nice folks who help you find your seat in a theater.” (Peter Samson, Orange, Va.)
And in The Economist, an unsigned article recognized how Italy — in which Vatican City is tucked — accounts for a disproportionate share of Roman Catholicism’s miracle workers: “Of the 388 saints with known birthplaces, 156 were born in Italy. (God moves in mysterious ways, but he appears not to move very far.)” (Harold Gotthelf, Fords, N.J.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Watching
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As of this writing, I’ve made it through nearly all of the new HBO limited series “DTF St. Louis,” which takes a kinky look at a kooky love triangle (or maybe it’s the other way around), and I’m still not quite sure what I think of the show. Its flamboyant weirdness and determined slowness can seem inspired one moment and precious the next. Not one of its characters are wholly plausible. And its murder-mystery framing feels forced. But a sense of recognizable, piercing human hurt permeates the show, and there can be no split verdict on David Harbour’s performance as one of the three haunted souls at its center, a goofy stepfather with a bent penis and a bruised heart. He’s wonderful.
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The current, almost-over season of HBO’s “The Pitt” is the subject of much online debate. Have the writers needlessly turned Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) into a jerk? Is there too little plot or too much? My high regard for the show is firmly established, but minor misgivings are creeping in. Since her well-deserved Emmy last year, Katherine LaNasa, who plays a nurse, seems to have thickened her character’s Pittsburgh accent and intensified her emotionalism, as if the actress is hellbent on a second statuette. And I cry foul at how insanely chaotic and frantic the emergency room is, until two characters need a hushed, poignant face-to-face; suddenly they have all the quiet and time in the world! I shall shelve my disbelief and will definitely hang around for the show’s third season, expected next year.
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After much anticipation, I finally saw “Sirat,” the Oscar-nominated movie about a road trip through the Moroccan desert that takes some harrowing turns. There’s spectacular scenery and a few excruciatingly tense moments near the end. But the pacing is slack, the characters thin, the dialogue dull and the metaphors obvious. I’m not sure why it generated quite as much fuss as it did.
On a Personal Note: Dictation Gone Wrong
I wasn’t certain of my friend’s location as we texted, but then she filled me in. “I’m standing in temptation,” she wrote, or at least those were the words that flashed on my iPhone’s screen.
Temptation? Was that some cocktail lounge or children’s dessert place and she’d forgotten to capitalize it? Either way, why was she there before noon?
“Penn Station,” she corrected herself. She was standing in Penn Station, the Manhattan railway hub. She’d been dictating her end of our conversation, and her voice-to-text program had converted that humdrum location into something at once infinitely more intriguing and totally incoherent.
As more and more of us vocalize our messages, more and more of them become a nonsensical mash of homonyms and near homonyms.
I recently texted my older brother and his wife about how I’d idiotically put my Honda’s electronic key fob through the washer and was going to try a water-absorption trick. When I reported back to them that I’d had success, I said I wondered if putting the fob “in the Reis for a day” had really made the difference. That was the translation of my dictation. But I’d been talking about grains of good old Uncle Ben’s. The stuff you cook and eat. The stuff that can — and apparently did — act like a sponge.
I asked another friend of mine if she’d tripped across many of these digital-conversation inanities. She consulted folks in one of her chat groups and produced these examples:
“Appetizer” became “Nebuchadnezzar.”
“Carry-out” became “karaoke.”
“Submitted” became “sunburned,” as in, “I sunburned the report.” Which is what happens, of course, if you coat it with baby oil rather than SPF 50.
I’d love your best examples of dictation gone comically wrong — misfires you’ve sent, bloopers you’ve received — and if I get enough great submissions, I’ll stagger the presentation of the standouts over several upcoming editions of the newsletter.
Very, very important: Put “Dictation Gone Wrong” in the subject heading of your email to [email protected]. Otherwise, given the volume of emails that the newsletter receives, there’s no guarantee that your submission will get proper consideration, and I’d hate to miss your missive. Also, please provide your town or city of residence, as well as your name.
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