Pete Hegseth, widely considered the least qualified Defense secretary in American history, is hardly anyone\u2019s version of the ideal Christian husband and father.<\/p>\n
Only 45 years old, he\u2019s been married three times.<\/p>\n
His first marriage \u2014 to his high school sweetheart \u2014 lasted a mere four years, deteriorating after Hegseth admitted<\/a> to multiple extramarital affairs.<\/p>\n A couple of years later, he married his second wife, with whom he had three children. During that marriage, he fathered a child with a Fox News producer who eventually became his third wife<\/a>.<\/p>\n He paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault<\/a> (he denies the assault). He routinely passed out drunk at family gatherings and misbehaved in public when inebriated, according to numerous witnesses<\/a>. His own mother once accused him of being \u201can abuser of women,\u201d<\/a> though she later retracted her claims when Hegseth was facing Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n Still, the Senate\u2019s Republican majority, cowed by President Trump, confirmed his appointment. Hegseth has two qualities that Trump prizes above all others. He is blindly loyal to the president, and he looks good on TV.<\/p>\n After his installation, Hegseth proceeded to fire top military brass who happened to be Black<\/a> or women<\/a> or both<\/a>. He has restored the names<\/a> of Confederate generals to Army bases (Bragg and Benning). His petty \u201canti-woke\u201d crusade led him to strip the name <\/a>of the assassinated gay rights leader Harvey Milk, a former Naval officer who served honorably, from a Navy ship. And he has considered doing the same<\/a> to a ship named in honor of the abolitionist and Civil War hero Harriet Tubman. He has said that women do not belong in combat roles<\/a>, and has kicked out transgender soldiers, cruelly stripping them of the pensions<\/a> they earned for their service.<\/p>\n In March, he shared classified information about an impending American airstrike in Yemen on an unsecured Signal group chat that included his wife, on purpose, and the editor of the Atlantic, by accident.<\/a> <\/p>\n He is, in short, the least serious man ever to lead this nation\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n As if all that weren\u2019t dispiriting enough, Hegseth is now in bed (metaphorically) with a crusading Christian nationalist.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Hegseth made waves when he reposted on social media<\/a> a CNN interview<\/a> with Douglas Wilson, the pastor and theocrat who is working hard to turn the clock back<\/a> on the rights of every American who is not white, Christian and male.<\/p>\n In the interview, Wilson expounded on his patriarchal, misogynistic, authoritarian and homophobic views.<\/p>\n Women, he said, should serve as \u201cchief executive of the home\u201d and should not have the right to vote. (Their men can do that for them.) Gay marriage and gay sex should be outlawed once again. \u201cWe know that sodomy is worse than slavery by how God responds to it,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Pamela Brown. (Slavery is \u201cunbiblical,\u201d he avowed, though he did bizarrely defend it once, writing in 1990 a pamphlet that \u201cslavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.\u201d)<\/p>\n When a new outpost of his church opened in Washington, D.C ., in July, Hegseth and his family were among the worshippers. CNN described Hegseth\u2019s presence as \u201ca major achievement\u201d for Wilson.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of Christ for All of Life,\u201d wrote Hegseth as he endorsed and reposted the interview. That is the motto of Wilson\u2019s expanding universe<\/a>, which includes his Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, the center of his Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of more than 100 churches on four continents, parochial schools, a college, a publishing house and media platforms. \u201cAll of Christ for All of Life\u201d is a shorthand for the belief that Christian doctrines should shape every part of life \u2014 including government, culture and education.<\/p>\n Wilson is a prolific author of books with titles such as \u201cHer Hand in Marriage,\u201d \u201cFederal Husband,\u201d and \u201cReforming Marriage.\u201d His book \u201cFidelity\u201d teaches \u201cwhat it means to be a one-woman man.\u201d Doubtful it has crossed Hegseth\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n \u201cGod hates divorce,\u201d writes Wilson in one of his books.<\/p>\n Given the way sexual pleasure is celebrated in the Old and New Testaments, Wilson has a peculiarly dim view of sex. I mean, how many weddings have been graced with recitations from the Song of Solomon, with its thinly disguised allusions to pleasurable sexual intimacy? (\u201cLet him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.\u201d)<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s world is considerably less sensual.<\/p>\n \u201cA man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants,\u201d he writes in \u201cFidelity.\u201d \u201cA woman receives, surrenders, accepts.\u201d Mutual sexual pleasure seems out of the question: \u201cThe sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party.\u201d Ugh.<\/p>\n There is nothing particularly new here; Wilson\u2019s ideology is just another version of patriarchal figures using religion to fight back against the equality movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. They are basically the hatemongers of the Westboro Baptist Church dressed up in respectable clothing.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people may conflate Christian nationalism and Christianity because they both use the symbols and language of Christianity, such as a Bible, a cross and worship songs,\u201d says the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism<\/a> on its website. \u201cBut Christian nationalism uses the veneer of Christianity to advance its own aims \u2014 to point to a political figure, party or ideology instead of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n What you have in people like Hegseth and Wilson are authoritarian men who hide behind their religion to execute the most unchristian of agendas.<\/p>\n God may hate divorce, but from my reading of the Bible, God hates hypocrisy<\/a> even more.<\/p>\n Bluesky: @rabcarian<\/a>
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