Pete Hegseth's Christian rhetoric draws renewed scrutiny after the US goes to war with Iran

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/pete-hegseth-pentagon-christian-nationalism-iran-war-f246bca60f2927336b5d06b2c9daee80

Pete Hegseth’s Christian rhetoric draws renewed scrutiny after the US goes to war with Iran
By TIFFANY STANLEY
Updated 6:08 AM CDT, March 20, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — Since becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has found no shortage of ways to bring his strand of conservative evangelicalism into the Pentagon.

He hosts monthly Christian worship services for employees. His department’s promotional videos have displayed Bible verses alongside military footage. In speeches and interviews, he often argues the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and troops should embrace God, potentially risking the military’s secular mission and hard-won pluralism.

“The mullahs are desperate and scrambling,” he said at a recent Pentagon press briefing, referring to Iran’s Shiite Muslim clerics. He later recited Psalm 144, a passage of Scripture that Jews and Christians share: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”

Hegseth has a history of defending the Crusades, the brutal medieval wars that pitted Christians against Muslims. In his 2020 book “American Crusade,” he wrote that those who enjoy Western civilization should “thank a crusader.” Two of his tattoos draw from crusader imagery: the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase “Deus Vult,” or “God wills it,” which Hegseth has called “the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem.”

Christian Zionist pastor John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel, said of the Iran war, “Prophetically, we’re right on cue.”

...

[leftstreet]

1. This just sounds like flat out mental illness

He needs an intervention