NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.
During the National Prayer Breakfast this morning (Feb. 5), U.S. President Donald Trump delivered rambling remarks — speaking for more than an hour longer than his timeslot — where he attacked the faith of Democrats, criticized Republicans who have opposed him on the Epstein files and blowing up Venezuelan boats, falsely claimed he won the 2020 election, and repeatedly cursed. And while his remarks dominate the headlines about the event, more concerning Christian Nationalist comments came a few minutes later from the Trump administration official perhaps doing the most to push Christian Nationalism.
Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself the “Secretary of War,” spoke after Trump to baptize the U.S. and especially its military. He did so by highlighting the worship services he’s been leading at the Pentagon. And he even suggested that soldiers can gain salvation by fighting for the United States.
“America was founded as a Christian nation. It remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it. And as public officials, we have a sacred duty 250 years on to glorify him,” Hegseth said as he pointed upward. “That’s precisely why we instituted a monthly prayer service at the Pentagon, an act of what we see it as, spiritual readiness.”
“We talk a lot about ‘peace through strength,’” he added. “But we also need to remember that we derive our strength through faith and through truth and through the word of God.”
After reading from Mark 8 — in the English Standard Version — about confessing Jesus and following him, Hegseth claimed that’s what the U.S. military does.
“[Christ’s] mission was to divide truth from lies, the things of the world from the things of God, light from darkness, good from evil. And like Christ, in earthly ways our brave warriors are not called to appease the world, they must confront it. We know we fight a physical battle but ultimately grounded, as the president said, in a spiritual battlefield,” Hegseth declared. “Not only are we warriors armed with the arsenal of freedom, we ultimately are armed with the arsenal of faith and have been from the beginning.”
Pete Hegseth at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2026, before speaking. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
In an effort to prove his argument that the U.S. military has always been the Lord’s army, he mentioned George Washington praying at Valley Forge. It’s a story Hegseth often likes to mention at the Pentagon worship services. But it’s a fake story that was made up after Washington’s death. Undeterred by the facts, Hegseth added about Washington supposedly praying that “so too our warriors do today.”
“So in that cause, we live the motto of our great nation, ‘In God We Trust,’” Hegseth added, even though the motto doesn’t come from Washington’s time but from 1954.
Hegseth also claimed that soldiers fight for the U.S. because they believe in Jesus — even though there are many members of the armed forces who are Jewish, Muslim, or from other religions or no religion. And he suggested that someone who dies fighting for the U.S. gains salvation, making dying for a country a salvific act. Such rhetoric echoes comments that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church made about Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine or that medieval popes told crusaders.
“The willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one’s country is born in one thing: a deep and abiding belief in God’s love for us and his promise of eternal life,” said Hegseth, who has crusader tattoos. “The passage says, ‘For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.’ The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.”
“To preserve the soul of America, we must continue to wield not just the physical sword but the sword of truth. Unafraid and unabashed in this fight, we must remember every single day especially, especially in this town, that all power, honor, and all glory belongs to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ is king and may God bless our warriors, may God bless our great republic in these United States of America.”
Hegseth’s God-and-country theology didn’t occur in a vacuum, but instead represented the Christian Nationalist climax of the more than three-hour service.
God Bless Dictators
Before Hegseth spoke, the National Prayer Breakfast this morning started by fêting two authoritarian leaders.
First, the bipartisan congressional hosts of the event supposedly about honoring Jesus invited President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to speak. Despite the terms “president” and “Democratic,” the country is not free. Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks democratic freedoms around the world, gives the DRC a score of just 18 out of 100. The U.S., by comparison, is an 84, while the United Kingdom is a 92, Iraq is a 31, and Russia is a 12.
“Citizens are unable to freely exercise basic civil liberties, and corruption is endemic,” explains Freedom House, which was founded in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Thompson, Wendell Willkie, and others. “Physical security is tenuous due to violence and human rights abuses committed by government forces, armed rebel groups, and militias, particularly in the east.”
Shortly thereafter, the NBP featured remarks from President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. He has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator.” Freedom House currently grades El Salvador with a score of 47 (meaning “partly free”), but the country’s democratic status has been falling since Bukele took office in 2019. In addition to targeting journalists and human rights groups, he more recently expanded his violations of human rights by partnering with the Trump administration to jail more than 200 people deported from the United States (including some in violation of U.S. court orders). Reports from numerous human rights groups and international media outlets have shown the El Salvadoran prison is subjecting deported people to torture, sexual assault, and other abuses.
But this morning, Speaker Mike Johnson and dozens of members of Congress from both parties basically responded by saying, “Praise Jesus and please pass the creamer.”
Screengrabs as President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (left) and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador (right) speak at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2026.
Trump later came to the stage to offer a long, rambling speech filled with curse words, political attacks, false claims, personal grievances, and praise for the two authoritarians who spoke before him. He falsely claimed there’s a religious revival occurring in the United States and said he wants prayer “back” in public schools (even though prayer was never banned, just government-mandated prayers were). He also talked about his task force on so-called “anti-Christian bias” and the recent protest at a church with an ICE official serving as a pastor (both of which are issues I spoke about this week with journalist Sarah Posner on the new episode of her Reign of Error podcast). He attacked Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Republican Sen. Rand Paul for opposing him on key issues, attacked “Barack Hussein Obama” and “sleepy Joe” Biden, and argued that people of faith cannot vote for a Democrat (and then mocked Democratic members of Congress for coming to the NPB).
On matters of war and violence, he praised Hegseth as “a tough cookie, flamethrower” who he liked for defending soldiers accused of committing war crimes. Trump bragged about the “hell of an attack” in Venezuela earlier this month and how the military “knocked the hell out of” ISIS in Nigeria on Christmas Day (about which he added that he told Hegseth to wait so the attack could be made on Christmas Day). Trump also invoked a Beatitude of Jesus — which his administration likes to co-opt — to suggest that Jesus was really teaching about the importance of having a strong imperial military.
“As the Bible tells us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ That’s true. Peacemakers are very important. But you can only have peace, I find, through strength. If you don’t have strength, peace is very hard. And we have strength,” Trump claimed after quoting a man who was nailed to a cross and killed by soldiers.
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Skipping Breakfast
In Baptizing America, Beau Underwood and I documented the start of the National Prayer Breakfast in 1953. While the event today is often depicted as showing the political influence and power of conservative evangelicals, mainline Protestant politicians and clergy were the ones who actually created it and provided the main leadership for decades. From the beginning, this event was about advancing Christian Nationalism. The theme for the first one, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower present, was “Government Under God.”
In the seven decades since, the NPB has continued to push Christian Nationalism, demonstrating the bipartisan embrace of this ideology as well as its support from mainliners, evangelicals, Catholics, and others. But through it all, it was generally billed as bipartisan and a time to put political differences aside.
Trump destroyed that pretense in 2020 when the NBP occurred one day after the U.S. Senate had voted to acquit him in his first impeachment (the one prompted by Trump’s attempt to get a personal political favor done by shaking down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky — who later led Ukraine to stand up to Vladimir Putin’s aggression). Trump waltzed onto stage with newspapers to show off the headlines of “Trump Acquitted.” In his remarks, he criticized his political opponents like Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney, even attacking their faith. Somehow, this act of bad faith failed to cancel breakfast.
The first Trump term also brought other scandals to the NPB. Because of the international aspect of the event, it often facilitated efforts to build connections with authoritarian regimes around the world. One person who pleaded guilty during the Mueller special counsel investigation was alleged Russian spy Maria Butina. Among other activities, the U.S. Justice Department’s affidavit accused Butina of attempting to use the 2017 NPB as part of her effort to “establish a back channel of communication” between Russian and U.S. officials. As she corresponded with NPB organizers, she noted that Russian attendees to the event were “important political advisors” to Putin. And she saw the event as critical for relations between Putin and Trump, writing, “A new relationship between two countries always begins better when it begins in faith.”
President Donald Trump speaks during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2026. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
During the Biden administration, congressional leaders worked to take control of the breakfast from the rightwing nonprofit that had been running it. Then in 2024, Speaker Mike Johnson moved it from the Hilton hotel where it had long been held to the U.S. Capitol.
But this year, things got weird. There were actually two different events held at the same time (although the one without Trump ended much sooner) that called themselves the “National Prayer Breakfast.” The one with Trump, Hegseth, and international authoritarian leaders was held at a Hilton hotel and led by House members. Meanwhile, some senators followed the model of the last couple of years with a more subdued event in the Capitol. Like a true church split, both groups claimed to be the real one building on a 74-year history.
No matter which recipe one uses — the Trumpian version with Hegseth baptizing the military or the more polite tone in the Capitol — the National Prayer Breakfast is at its foundation a problematic effort to fuse and confuse American and Christian identities. So it’s time to break from this tradition and fast from dangerous Christian Nationalism.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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