US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video on Friday in which a Christian nationalist pastor said he would like to see Christianity take a more dominant role in the United States.
Hegseth was seen attending the opening of Christ Church in Washington, which was founded by Doug Wilson, the senior pastor of Christ Church and the cofounder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
Wilson has founded a network of over 150 evangelical institutions, spanning from schools to churches. The network also consists of churches in Canada, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Australia.
Women's vote
On Friday, Hegseth reposted a clip of Wilson's interview with CNN, in which he and several other pastors state that they would support repealing women's right to vote, with the caption "All of Christ for All of Life."
“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” he said, adding that women’s role should be to stay at home to take care of several “eternal souls.”
Several other senior pastors of Christ Church said that they would support repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave women in the US the right to vote.
Slavery in the US
The pastor further claimed that slavery had created a warm relationship between the races. “Slavery 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,” a booklet he co-wrote in the 1990s read.
He later added, “It depends on which master, which slave you’re talking about… Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings, and there were horrendous abuses, and there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn’t mistreat them…I think that system of chattel slavery was an unbiblical system, and I’m grateful it’s gone. ”
“I’m not a White nationalist. I’m not a fascist. I’m not a racist. I’m not a misogynist, and those are the names that usually get thrown at me,” he said. “And then when someone says, well, that’s Christian nationalism, I can - well, I can work with that.”
Role of Christianity in America
When asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown if he intended to influence US policy in a more Christian direction by putting one of his churches in Washington, he affirmed that he identifies as a Christian nationalist.
“Every society is theocratic,” Wilson told CNN. “The only question is who’s ‘Theo’? In Saudi Arabia, Theo is Allah. In a secular democracy, it would be Demos, the people. In a Christian republic, it’d be Christ.”
He later went on to assert that he would like to supplant other religions with Christianity “by peaceful means.”
He has previously advocated for a complete ban on abortion and the recriminalization of homosexuality.
Hegseth’s children reportedly attend a school that is one of several in Wilson’s network of institutions, and he attended his first Christian prayer service at the Pentagon with the pastor.
In a statement to CNN, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said: “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”