Warrior Pete Hegseth Heretic Preacher

Warrior Pete Hegseth Heretic Preacher

I can’t tell which is more dangerous Pete Hegseth in charge of the U. S. military or him leading a Bible study at the Pentagon. Secretary of War Hegseth, in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast bragged about the worship he’s been leading at the Pentagon and suggested American soldiers gain salvation by fighting and dying for the United States.

Hegseth, neither preacher nor New Testament scholar, regularly imbibes vast quantities of Christian Nationalist preaching from pulpits of independent pentecostal prophets (Paula White, Dutch Sheets and Lance Wallnau) and Southern Baptist preachers (Robert Jeffress and Doug Wilson). Hegseth is a member of Wilson’s Christ Church, Washington, D.C.

The thought that dying for the country is like dying for Jesus is not only disingenuous but blasphemous. When preachers and the Secretary of War combine the cross with its primary negation, war, we have a clear and present danger.

When a speaker quotes from Mark 8:34 – 38, a perennial evangelical text about bearing the cross and following Jesus, we expect a revival sermon about trusting Jesus as personal Savior. Instead Hegseth connects carrying the cross with carrying an M-16A2 rifle.

Jesus says, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  (Mark 8:34 – 38).

Hegseth changes the meaning from losing life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel to  soldiers receiving eternal life for dying for the nation. “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.

Hegseth also 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.”

There’s nothing original in Hegseth’s claim. The myth of a promised paradise for soldiers killed in battle lives in all cultures. Viking warriors dreamed of dying in war and awakening in Valhalla. Native American warriors dreamed of being with the Great Spirit. Roman soldiers were promised a place in paradise. Muslim soldiers were promised “seventy-two wives” by the prophet Muhammad.

German pastors in World War II looked upon the warrior’s death as the “most beautiful of all deaths.” The death of a German soldier resembled the “free-will offering of Christ himself, who left his life voluntarily for his brethren.”

As General Patton said, soldiers understand the cross “because they have borne a cross themselves.” They know instinctively what Jesus meant when he said, “Greater love hath no man who would lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Like so many before him, Hegseth attempts to make war a moral practice. His assertions align more with “the powers and principalities” of evil and are all the more dangerous because they are perversions of the gospel.

Something old and something recent

There are two prime examples of Hegseth’s merger of faith and state: Pope Urban II (1095) and President George Bush (September 21, 2001).

Not content to rattle the sword of American military superiority, Hegseth disinterred a motive for the sacrifice of soldiers almost a 1,000 years old and one from 2001.

In Clermont, France, in 1095, Pope Urban II (1088–1099) called for a crusade to wrest the Holy Land—and in particular Jerusalem—from Muslim control. Pope Urban preached a sermon to an assembly of knights from many nations. He mixed sword rattling, tales of Muslim atrocities, Scripture verses, and a promise of salvation.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Urban’s sermon: “Set out on the road to the Holy Sepulchre, take the land from that wicked people, and make it your own. That land which, as the Scripture says, is flowing with milk and honey, God gave to the children of Israel. Jerusalem is the best of all lands, more fruitful than all others, as it were a second Paradise of delights. This land our Saviour made illustrious by his birth, beautiful with his life, and sacred with his suffering; he redeemed it with his death and glorified it with his tomb. This royal city is now held captive by her enemies and made pagan by those who know not God.

Set out on this journey and you will obtain the remission of your sins and be sure of the incorruptible glory of the kingdom of heaven.”

While Hegseth may have never read Pope Urban, his political experience is steeped in a far more recent “Crusade” preacher, President George Bush. On Septemer 21, 2001, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush gave a speech to a joint session of Congress and the American people. He declared our “war on terror” and reached back to the time of Pope Urban to anoint his war as a “Crusade”.  Bush said, “Our nation has been put on notice.” He explained the world had changed on 9/11 and we now inhabited a world “where freedom itself is under attack.”

Bush made clear what he was creating: “This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago …. Americans should expect a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. How will we fight this war? We will direct every resource at our command, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement and every necessary weapon of war – to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.”

Bush asked: “Why do they hate us? They hate what they see right here in this chamber – a democratically elected government …. They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another …. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.”

Since those words, we have witnessed an expanding militarism, a rejuvenation of the national security state, an expanded Homeland Security and along with the Patriot Act, a distressing shift in American foreign policy.

President Bush praised American allies, especially Great Britain. The Prime Minister of Great Britain attended Bush’s address to Congress.

Bush also made clear America was not at war with all Muslims and he extolled the millions of faithful followers of Islam.

Those equitable and diplomatic words have fallen into disrepute in the current administration. President Trump is much more Pope Urban than President Bush. His “Muslim ban” and the increased demands from some Republican members of Congress to expel all Muslims from the country are examples of how far the “Bush Doctrine” has moved from an original war against “terrorism.”

As Cornel West argues, “Aggressive militarism” has become our foreign and domestic policy. On the domestic front, this expands ICE, “legitimates unchecked male power (and violence) in the streets, the homes, and the workplaces.” It views all resistance and protest as criminal and treats protestors as monstrous enemies to be crushed. “Terrorist,” it turns out is a flexible term and has now been applied by President Trump and Vice-president Vance to immigrants, Democratic politicians, and American citizens.

Hegseth has added a layer of religious propaganda about fighting men and women gaining eternal life. This begs the question, “How many people must a soldier kill to enter heaven?” When did we ever fall for the ignorance that humans fight to get into heaven?

The Danger

Hegseth attempts replacing the sacrifice at the altar made possible by Jesus. By so doing, he offers a counter liturgy to the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

He makes a spectacle of war since the American people are not asked to fight or sacrifice. In WWII Americans were asked to make personal sacrifices to aid the war effort. Now, our wars are spectator sports. We are asked only to buy more stuff from Amazon, accept a tax cut, believe the president is right to annex Greenland and even Canada, and to be sacred to death of hordes of enemies like immigrants, Democrats, terrorists, and drug gangs.

Violent blood sacrifice binds American citizens into a cohesive group and we have a sacred flag in its center. According to Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle, in Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag, “Patriotic rituals revere it as the embodiment of a bloodthirsty totem god who organizes killing energy.”

I am convinced Hegseth in his hyper normative masculine image is fascinated by war. He seems intoxicated with the excitement, exoticism, power, and chance to rise above his small station in life. He fantasizes about being the hero in war. Chris Hedges, in War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, says, “War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us.”

How can Christians not see the danger of attempting to ground America on some foundation like military life. Are we dead to the cry of the prophet Zechariah: “Not my might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord God of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

Did not Jesus repeatedly warn against the road of violence. In one of his most radical prophecies, he warned the wives and daughters of the Zealots against the path of war. “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:28 – 31). At the foot of the cross, Jesus insists the “dry wood” of zealous violence will lead to destruction.

Hegseth puts the nation on this dangerous path which is a total denial of the way of Jesus. His perverted theology of sacrifice means more Americans will have to be sacrificed to honor past sacrifices. He produces a sacrificial system that requires constant sacrifices. This flies in the face of the one who died once for all.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts it, “The modern nation-state is …. a dangerous and unmanageable institution …. which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf …. It’s like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

Hegseth’s attempt to make violence, death, and war a part of the eternal life of American soldiers is an act of blasphemy. The gospels tell us that in the cross of Christ war has been abolished.

This may seem a naïve claim, but Jesus has saved the world from war. As Christians, our task is how we can and should live in a world of war as a people who believe war has been abolished.

As Stanley Hauerwas observes, the claim that Jesus has abolished war will strike some as absurd. Christians believe that in the death and resurrection of Jesus another world has come into being, a world more real than our world of war. This new world, known in the Bible as “kingdom of God,” is populated by Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs. This world of Peter, James, Andrew, and John is more real than the world of Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping, Kim Yong Un, Erdogan, and Netanyahu.

With the entire witness of the Bible, the church can testify we are meant to be the alternative to war. Dismissing this claim can be easy especially for a Christian Nationalist like Hegseth.

He attempts to replace the sacrifice of Jesus “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement” (Romans 4:25) with a sacrificial system based on war and death that is crucial to the renewal of moral commitments to the nation.

Hegseth is not selling eternal life; he is hawking “American exceptionalism.” The idea expresses America’s unique status among other nations in the world). Jennifer R. Mercieca, in Demagogue for President says, “Appeals to American exceptionalism rely on Americans’ pride and their desire to believe that their nation is the best among others, that it is chosen by God, and that it has a heroic destiny to spread democracy and enlightenment throughout the world.”

Hegseth’s version of Christianity makes me wish Christianity in America was less Christian. Hegseth, in the end, denies the Christianity he otherwise claims and commits the nation to secular, pagan understandings of violence and war.

Hegseth the preacher is more dangerous than Hegseth the warrior.