NOTE: This piece was originally published at our newsletter A Public Witness.
One day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure that would require President Donald Trump to end the war with Iran and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie moved to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon held its “SECWAR Monthly Christian Prayer & Worship Service.” Though Hegseth did not address the controversies swirling around his actions in the weeks leading up to midterm elections, he did take the time to praise a military rescue segment from Sunday’s “60 Minutes.”
“Some of you may have seen … the episode on Dude 44, Alpha and Bravo, and you may not know this, but last month’s service, they were actually in the audience with us anonymously that day. I had the great fortune of getting to know them and just hear more of their story, which I think ‘60 Minutes’ did a nice job,” Hegseth told those gathered at the Sept. 16 service.
“Faith — as Bravo did so powerfully and so well in that episode — faith shone through at every step,” he added. “I get chills just talking about it, and then of course I remember noting sunset and that some of those rescue forces were coming out Sunday morning, of course Easter morning, having rescued a pilot out of a cave who had been there for three days. Can’t make that kind of stuff up.”
Notably, this is the operation in Iran where Hegseth claims the prayer “CSAR 2517” was used — which, as was first reported here at A Public Witness, borrows some wording from Ezekiel 25:17 but is mostly taken from the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction.
The episode of “60 Minutes” that Hegseth complimented was the first to air under the new leadership of Bari Weiss. CNN has reported that Weiss, CBS News’s Trump-friendly editor-in-chief, pressured Hegseth for exclusive access to the story. However, the ratings for the premiere dropped to the lowest the program has seen in more than 25 years.
Screengrab as Pete Hegseth speaks at the Pentagon on Sept. 16, 2026.
Hegseth also sought to justify why these government-run worship services are in line with his interpretation of the U.S. founding by reading from Psalm 33:10-12: “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”
This led Hegseth to muse that, “Things like ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘One Nation Under God’ ought not be slogans for our nation. They certainly were not slogans for our founders.”
It makes sense that the founders didn’t use those sayings as slogans or even something more — they came about much later. The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. “In God We Trust” was put on coins during the Civil War and adopted as the national motto in 1956.
Hegseth continued: “Our founders understood in the DNA of this nation for 250 years, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.’ They proclaimed it then. Then may we be bold and willing to proclaim it now, that America was founded as a Christian nation, remains one, and our commitment to that is important to be willing to say.”
“It doesn’t mean we’re not open to all the … [pause] other faiths and pluralism and the things that our freedoms provide — but we should recognize where the freedoms came from to begin with, and who fought for them,” he concluded.
The sermon for this service came from Southern Baptist pastor Wesley Welch of King’s Church DC. He offered a fairly conventional Christian message focused on how Moses taught followers to faithfully use the time they have been given on Earth through three core petitions found in Psalm 90.
“We take these three little prayers with us. Lord, teach us. Give us Your wisdom. Lord, satisfy us with your gospel. Remind us that your steadfast love is enough. And Lord, would you establish the work of our hands? Would you take what is temporary, our temporary work, and breathe your life and your grace in it, so that it would have significance beyond us?”
Another pastor from King’s Church DC, Ben Palka, delivered the homily at the Pentagon service in October of last year. The church previously hosted Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri who fist-pumped the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and has become a hot spot for young MAGA evangelicals — partially due to its unconventional location inside the bar Penn Social.
After the sermon, Welch led those gathered in saying the Lord’s Prayer and three uniformed officers, accompanied by an acoustic guitar, sang the hymn “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” and the “Doxology.”
Screengrab as Wesley Welch preaches at the Pentagon on Sept. 16, 2026.
Broader Christian Nationalist Agenda
The monthly worship services at the Pentagon, which Hegseth launched in May 2025, are the most consistent example of his effort to push Christian Nationalism inside the U.S. military. All of the services have featured rightwing, patriarchal preachers — with many of them closely associated with Hegseth and churches he has attended. The 17 services have now featured nine sermons by Southern Baptists, three by pastors in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (including Doug Wilson), Franklin Graham and one of his sons, a businessman/evangelist, and a former priest who is now a married Fox News commentator.
But the monthly services are far from the only way Hegseth pushes Christian Nationalism. Throughout his tenure, he has also conscripted Bible verses out of context to use for military recruitment, pushed a Crusader theology to suggest dying for the country is how a soldier “finds eternal life,” and repeatedly offered violent prayers for military operations. Additionally, he also shows off his Crusader mentality as he generally brings to the monthly worship services a Bible stamped with Crusader symbols that match two of his controversial tattoos.
Over the past month, two additional initiatives to push sectarian content in the military sparked headlines. The Associated Press reported in August that the Department of Defense was including more Christian content in its curriculum for the schools operated for children of active-duty military or civilian service members. Currently, there are about 70,000 children in the 160 schools found in 11 countries.
Billed as an effort to include a more “classical” education approach and patriotic material, a new course on “Western civilization” for high school students will use a textbook from a rightwing publishing house and additional materials and lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a rightwing Christian school whose president, Larry Arnn, has been an active supporter of President Donald Trump. Arnn spoke during the “Rededicate 250” worship rally on the National Mall in May (as did Hegseth) and the school’s choir performed. Historians who reviewed the course material told AP that it misrepresented history, justified the Crusades, and pushed Christianity.
Earlier this month, another controversy erupted over religious greetings given to people arriving at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation alleged that officers at the gates were repeatedly greeting people by saying, “God bless you.” The group claimed it received several complaints and that the greetings ended after it raised the issue. However, Kirtland base officials told Military.com that they “have not issued, and have no plans to issue, any changes to procedures either mandating or restricting the use of common phrases while welcoming personnel to the installation.”
Hegseth quickly elevated the issue by defiantly pushing back on Elon Musk’s X platform: “The MRFF is a radical anti-Christian, pro-atheist group that attacks any/all faith inside the Department of War. We will never cave to them. The U.S. Air Force will confront this. God bless our Airmen.”
Despite his assertion, Air Force policy requires that they “must ensure their words and actions do not discriminate against any individual or group because of their faith, belief, or absence of belief, or extend preferential treatment for the same.” Of course, the same paragraph would also suggest Hegseth’s worship services are inappropriate: “Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for free exercise of religion and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. … Leaders must ensure that their personal expression is not reasonably associated with their government role.”
As a public witness,
Jeremy Fuzy & Brian Kaylor
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