NOTE: This piece was originally published at our newsletter A Public Witness.
“For the record, I support this — because the Bible says so.”
That’s what Christian Nationalist activist William Wolfe declared on Elon Musk’s X platform in response to a news headline noting that the “Pentagon says firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed.” Wolfe, who served in the first Trump administration and now leads a group trying to make the Southern Baptist Convention more Trumpian, is not alone in his praise for the controversial decision to livestream the first military execution by firing squad since World War II.
“I support the Pentagon’s decision to livestream the execution of mass-murderer Nidal Hassan,” Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas and a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, wrote on X. “Capital punishment is commanded by God in Genesis 9:6 to remind people of the sanctity of human life. The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better.”
Trump later affirmingly shared the statement by Jeffress on social media, although it remains to be seen if the execution of Nidal Hasan on Dec. 3 will actually be livestreamed. And while many Catholic, mainline Protestant, and even evangelical leaders quickly condemned the Pentagon’s announcement, a vocal and connected group of Christian Nationalist voices joined Wolfe and Jeffress in praising the idea as supposedly “biblical.” Brooks Potteiger, the longtime pastor of Pete Hegseth (and who has preached three times at Hegseth’s Pentagon worship services), even offered his support for Hegseth having a pastor preach an “execution sermon” to the condemned man before the soldiers open fire.
“I like this idea. I think I will,” Potteiger wrote on X in response to someone making the suggestion, though it’s unclear if Hegseth will actually invite him to do it in person at Hasan’s execution.
A court room sketch of Nidal Hasan during his court-martial trial in Fort Hood, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2013. (Brigitte Woosley/Associated Press)
Potteiger, who pastors a church in Washington, D.C., that is part of Doug Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, also criticized a rightwing anti-abortion activist for opposing the livestreaming plan. Potteiger insisted that anyone opposing it is “claiming to be wiser than God — and 95% of the history of western civilization.”
Putting aside the theological debates about capital punishment in general, the invoking of the Bible and God to justify livestreaming a firing squad is worth closer consideration. That’s why some people who support the death penalty oppose livestreaming it, like Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler. So this issue of A Public Witness considers the claims that “the Bible says so” and the diverse Christian voices opposing the snuff film planned by the Crusader leading the Pentagon.
Biblical Livestreaming?
The fact that Hegseth would recommend a public execution shocked many politicians, pundits, and preachers. But I wrote last year about how some in his own denomination have been pushing for a return to public executions. Like Joshua Haymes, a podcaster who used to be a pastoral intern at Hegseth’s church and has had Hegseth on his show.
“Public executions are biblical. Therefore, public executions are good. Therefore, we should bring back public executions,” Haymes declared last year on a podcast cohosted with Hegseth’s pastor.
In addition to supporting the idea in general, Haymes even praised the U.S.’s last public execution, which was of a Black man convicted by an all-White jury of raping and murdering a White woman — and then executed less than two months after his three-hour trial. About 20,000 people showed up for the show, during which they could buy sandwiches and Coca-Cola — and many celebrated with parties the night before.
Haymes, Potteiger, and Hegseth are all part of the denomination started and led by Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist pastor in Idaho, self-described “paleo-Confederate,” and a patriarchal figure who wants to repeal the 19th Amendment (and who has a history of condoning sexual abuse). Wilson has also defended Hegseth’s proposal to livestream the upcoming execution. He told Religion News Service he prefers “public executions to those conducted in the recesses of a prison somewhere in the middle of the night,” adding, “Executions in the Scriptures were public.”
“With that said, one of the things that turns people away from the death penalty at all is when public executions turn into a circus, and a ghoulish atmosphere develops,” Wilson added. “So if the Pentagon takes steps to discourage that kind of thing, then I think this is a welcome development.”
While Wilson offered a caveat on tone, Haymes and others have been more celebratory. And they keep doing so by claiming it is “biblical.” But to quote Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
When William Wolfe claims he supports livestreaming a firing squad execution “because the Bible says so,” it demonstrates how claims about being “biblical” are often just using the term as a political soundbite without any serious interpretative effort. Does the Bible really support livestreaming an execution by firing squad? That’s about as absurd as asking if the Bible demands we watch a president’s State of the Union address live on TV. Livestreaming executions is not required by the Bible because livestreaming is not something the Bible even addresses since, in case Wolfe isn’t aware, there was no livestreaming back then. And, for the record, the verses Haymes, Wolfe, and others point to justify public executions also don’t mention firing squads.
While these Christian Nationalists claim to just be advocating what the Bible teaches, they’re doing so by being very selective in their alleged literalism. But it’s literally not taking the Bible literally if you just pick and choose which verses to hold up as universal commands and which to ignore.
Haymes likes to post stories about horrendous crimes to justify public executions, but the passage in Deuteronomy 21 that he uses to justify public executions is about stoning “a stubborn and rebellious son” who won’t obey his parents. The condemned is not accused of being a pedophile or murderer but simply “a glutton and a drunkard.” If Haymes really thinks we should enact that verse, he needs to go all the way and demand public execution of disobedient and lazy children. Guess that would be one way to lower our need to fund schools. That may seem offensive to our modern sensibilities, but, hey, that’s what the Bible clearly says.
Or how about the verses right before that section? It talks about how a man with two wives is supposed to treat his children. That and other verses show that polygamy is biblical. Therefore, polygamy is good. Therefore, we should bring back polygamy. To be very clear in case my wife reads this, that is satire as I apply Haymes’s own words to a line just a couple of verses before the one he cites. (If I tried to get a second wife, I would quickly find myself again with just one!)
Other nearby verses that Christian fundamentalists generally overlook even while insisting on biblical “literalism” include rules about how to marry a woman you capture in war (21:10-14), the requirement to build a wall on the roof of your house (22:8), a prohibition against using wool and linen in the same piece of clothing (22:11), a command to make tassels for the corners of your cloak (22:12), or the requirement that an unengaged virgin woman marry her rapist as long as the rapist pays her father in silver (22:28-29).
Even in his application of Deuteronomy 21:21, Haymes strays from the literal command. Last year, he cited the verse as he suggested “death by a public firing squad.” But that’s not what it says. The Bible clearly says to kill the stubborn, disobedient son by stoning. Anything less is just liberal wokeism.
And while others, like Robert Jeffress, like to point to Genesis 9 to justify capital punishment, it’s telling how Jesus rarely shows up in their theological considerations on the topic. And when Jesus is mentioned, it usually goes pretty poorly. Like when rightwing conspiracy theorist and podcaster Jack Posobiec invoked Jesus amid the debate about killing Hasan.
“The New Testament clearly supports the death penalty for civil authorities,” Posobiec wrote on X. “Christ himself accepted the death penalty.”
Jesus accepting the crucifixion does not mean Jesus would support crucifying (or shooting) someone else. That’s like saying Jesus “accepted” being betrayed by a friend so therefore it is biblical for me to betray my friends. And to my friends, please note I will not actually do that (unless it’s for way more than 30 silver coins).
Just because something happened in the Bible does not mean we are taught to act that way today. Instead, as followers of someone brutally killed in a public execution, Christians should be among the loudest voices against such imperial violence. Thankfully, many are doing exactly that.
Screengrab as Pete Hegseth (left) is interviewed by Jack Posobiec and announces that the execution of Nidal Hasan will be public, while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Oct. 7, 2026.
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‘Barbaric’ and ‘Reprehensible’
While some rightwing Christian Nationalists close to Hegseth and Trump back public executions, many Christian voices across the theological and political continuums quickly condemned the Pentagon’s announcement.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, expressed his “shock and great sorrow” in response to the news. He condemned livestreaming it as “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.” He added, “The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, a recent president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who now serves as head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, went further in his condemnation. Noting that he had preached the funeral of one of the victims of the mass shooting, he insisted that plan was not the correct response to the terrorist act.
“Do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” Broglio wrote in a statement yesterday in which he also urged Catholic members of the military to “request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe similarly argued that “the idea of livestreaming a firing squad execution is reprehensible in the extreme and will cause moral injury to everyone involved. We need to ask ourselves who we have become as a nation when senior officials decide to make a spectacle of state-sponsored violence.”
The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church released a joint pastoral letter yesterday criticizing the planned livestreaming, calling it a failure to resist the temptation “to answer violence with spectacle.” They rejected the idea that the public execution could be called “justice.”
“Turning the death of a human being into a public broadcast does not honor the victims. It coarsens the conscience of a people and contradicts the gospel we proclaim,” the bishops explained. “Our Lord himself died by public execution, staged by an empire to display its power and frighten the watching crowd. Christians, of all people, should refuse to gather around such a spectacle again.”
Soldiers hold a candlelight vigil at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 6, 2009, after Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people the day before. (LM Otero/Associated Press)
In addition to Catholic and mainline Protestant condemnation, some evangelical leaders also criticized the livestreaming announcement. For instance, National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim argued that “a livestreamed execution by firing squad risks turning one of the state’s most solemn responsibilities into a public spectacle, promoting a culture of death, rather than a culture that upholds the dignity of every human being.”
Faith leaders aren’t the only ones attacking the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution. It has also sparked rare criticism from multiple Republican members of Congress (most of whom support capital punishment). And it’s opposed by a survivor of the deadly attack, who supports the execution but not the livestreaming.
It remains to be seen if Hegseth will actually kick off Advent by livestreaming a firing squad killing a man in a wheelchair. Whether this barbaric show is produced or not, the fact that Hegseth is preaching a gospel of bloodlust is, unfortunately, not surprising for a man with Crusader symbols on his body and on his Bible.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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