Pete Hegseth’s crusade to infuse the U.S. military with Christianity is provoking outrage and pushback.

The secretary of defense says he is creating a new Pentagon office to “elevate spiritual readiness” throughout the armed forces. But not everyone feels included at a time when religious choice in the military is dwindling under Hegseth’s personal brand of Christian nationalism.

Personnel are scrambling on deadline to fulfill a requirement to choose their religion from a new, drastically reduced menu of options.

The secretary’s recent announcement that he was creating an Office of Religious Affairs followed a decision by the Department of Defense to slash the number of recognized religious affiliations by 85%.

A May memo, obtained by MS NOW and first reported by Military.com, shows the Department of Defense dropping 180 faiths from the military’s recognized religions list, reducing the number from 211 to 31.

Of the 31 remaining choices, only nine are non-Christian faiths. The Air Force says active duty airmen must make their selections by Oct. 16.

“Our commitment to the spiritual readiness and religious freedom of every Airman and Guardian remains steadfast,” Richard Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, announced on Sept. 25, referring to those who serve in the Air Force and Space Force.

He said the new designations would ensure that officers in the chaplain corps have the “accurate demographic data they need to provide tailored resources and support to our Service members, while continuing to respect their individual convictions.”

But at least six current and former members of the military, including chaplains, who were interviewed by MS NOW do not buy this explanation.

“The push is to a Christian identity,” said one former military chaplain who now serves as an endorser — someone chosen by the Pentagon to vet future chaplains — and describes himself as a devout Christian.

“This nation was not founded as a Christian nation,” the former chaplain said, adding that Hegseth “wants to see society go toward a national Christian identity.”

In addition to drastically reducing the military’s mandatory denominational choices, Hegseth has also launched a public relations campaign called “Send Me” that targets recruits and cadets with an Old Testament passage in which Isaiah tells God, “Here am I. Send me.”

The creation of a new religious office and purge of accepted religious affiliations fits within a larger culture war Hegseth has waged against diversity in the military’s ranks.

He first introduced the concept when he delivered a speech at West Point in May, telling graduates, “There are things that unify us. ‘Send me’ becomes ‘send us,’ because you are one fighting force, just as we are one nation under God.”

He repeated the phrase at a D-Day commemoration in France in June.

At the beginning of this month, Hegseth spoke at an Air Force-Navy game in Colorado Springs, Colorado, telling cadets: “‘Send me to fight the Redcoats. Send me to fight the communists. Send me to fight the Nazis. Send me to fight the Islamists.’ And whatever threats of the future, it’s going to require Americans like you to raise your right hand and say, ‘Send me, I will take the fight to the enemy.’”

He again invoked the Isaiah verse in the remembrance ceremony at the Pentagon marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, during which he also talked about fighting Islamic terrorists.

His rhetoric has prompted hundreds of service members to file complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, according to its founder, Mikey Weinstein, an Air Force veteran.

“It’s ripping and tearing them apart,” Weinstein told MS NOW about his clients. “It destroys good order, morale, discipline and especially unit cohesion.”

Last week, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln one day ahead of its homecoming, Hegseth said the military would execute former Army major Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 at Fort Hood in 2009.

Hegseth said, “He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

It would be the first military execution in 65 years.

Weinstein said that since that announcement, 72 soldiers have contacted him looking to file for preliminary religious exemptions that would prevent them from being assigned to the firing squad.

On Monday, prominent U.S. Archbishop Timothy Broglio urged Catholics serving in the Army not to participate in the firing squad, according to the Army Times.

The Pentagon defended Hegseth’s policies. 

“The Department of War protects the constitutional right of every service member and civilian employee to practice their faith without coercion or discrimination,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told MS NOW in a statement. “Despite the Left’s efforts to remove our Christian heritage from our great nation, Secretary Hegseth is among those who embrace it.”

Hegseth’s Christian national hallmark extends to U.S. bases abroad. 

An active duty soldier deployed overseas, who requested anonymity to avoid potential retribution, recounted seeing an open Bible lying on a table in the dining facility with marked passages — “basically saying in order to be a good soldier, that one has to follow the Bible” — and a poster at a U.S. Army battalion headquarters building of Jesus firing a mortar round.

The same service member, who described being raised Roman Catholic with tenets such as “treating others with dignity and respect, treating those how you want to be treated, just being a good person overall,” said Hegseth’s teachings were “completely opposite.”

“He’s wanting the U.S. military to basically wage a holy war with this war that we have going on against Iran or also believing that the U.S. military needs to be completely Christianized,” the soldier said.

Another service member, who is in the Air National Guard, asserted that the reduction of religious affiliation options is part of a greater effort to build a “Christian army, essentially.”

The airman also expressed alarm over the Pentagon’s videos of combat scenes set to the recitation of prayers, telling MS NOW, “Even with the Iran war, he’s framed it as a crusade. He’s framed it as the Christian West against the Islamic East, and that’s very dangerous.”

The service member practices a minority religion that was purged from the list of recognized religious groups, saying the new policy violates their constitutional right under the First Amendment to practice religion freely.

“I found that very alarming and upsetting because we don’t tend to ask for much as service members,” the service member said.

The Air National Guard member ended up selecting “other religion” on the new form.

According to a Marines administrative message, service members who do not select a new religious affiliation in a timely manner will have one selected for them.

Others inside the Pentagon point to Hegseth’s monthly voluntary worship services featuring evangelical figures as another example of his move to push Christianity on the military.

Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, founded by self-described Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, who preached at the Pentagon 11 days before the United States and Israel jointly launched war against Iran.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in March over the monthly prayer services.

The group demanded the Pentagon release information about associated costs, invited guests and any complaints lodged by employees, according to legal filings.

“I think that’s a flagrant violation of law and policy,” a civilian who has worked at the Pentagon for a decade told MS NOW. “It creates the ‘if you’re not with me, you’re against me’ kind of thing.”

“Christian nationalism is in, and everybody else is out, and it is palpable in that building,” the military civilian said.

Hegseth literally wears his religion on his chest. He has publicly acknowledged that his supervisors revoked his National Guard deployment to Joe Biden’s inauguration because they deemed his “Jerusalem cross” tattoo to be “extremist.”

Describing his journey with faith in an interview with Birmingham Christian Family magazine in 2024, Hegseth said he was “brought up by Christian parents whose beliefs paralleled the Baptist Church.”

He said he and his wife joined a new church in 2018 and decided to teach their children a classical Christian curriculum, which teaches liberal arts through a biblical worldview.

In a December interview on “The Katie Miller Podcast,” his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, also described homeschooling their children using a classical Christian curriculum.

In March, Hegseth installed Paul Craft, a former educator and retired Army National Guard colonel, as the head of the Department of Defense Education Activity, an initiative that operates 161 schools across the country and in 11 foreign countries, serving 67,000 military-connected children.

Hegseth called Craft the “right leader to swiftly reorient” the education program toward “patriotic values and classical learning.”

Hegesth went on to ban almost 600 books from DOD-run schools, which prompted the ACLU to sue on the grounds of First Amendment violations.

Hegseth also spoke about classical Christian education in his September “State of the Force” address at Quantico, saying, “We need students of Western civilization and the pillars of our republic … leaders who understand the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the power of Rome, and the freedom of Philadelphia.”

Critics say Hegseth’s book ban and his emphasis on a classical Christian education in government schools is an alarming intersection between church and state. 

“It’s a wholesale burning of our Constitution,” Weinstein told MS NOW.

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