{"id":523456,"date":"2026-04-10T14:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/523456\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:29:09","slug":"pete-hegseths-holy-war-the-militant-christian-theology-animating-the-us-attack-on-iran-pete-hegseth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/523456\/","title":{"rendered":"Pete Hegseth\u2019s holy war: the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran | Pete Hegseth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, ripping apart the bodies of schoolchildren, teachers and parents, the personal pastor of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, delivered a sermon<\/a> at the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a temptation to think that you\u2019re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,\u201d preached Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth\u2019s closest spiritual adviser, at the first of what have become monthly Christian worship services<\/a> at the Department of Defense. \u201cBut you are not ultimately in charge of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing a verse<\/a> from Matthew 10, Potteiger told the gathered leaders of the US military: \u201cIf our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrow\u2019s fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus has the final say over all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The available evidence<\/a> and a preliminary investigation<\/a> by the US military all suggest that the US was responsible for the 28 February school bombing that killed more than 175 people, most of them children<\/a>, but neither Donald Trump nor Hegseth has taken any responsibility, nor have they expressed any remorse.<\/p>\n

Instead, Hegseth has persisted in framing the war in Iran, which reached a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday after six weeks of fighting, as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking \u201cGod\u2019s almighty providence\u201d and expressing certainty that God is on the side of the US military<\/a>. Amid boasts about the US\u2019s superior firepower and theatrical disdain for \u201cstupid rules of engagement\u201d, the defense secretary has promised to give \u201cno quarter\u201d to the \u201cbarbaric savages\u201d of the Iranian regime and called on the American people to pray for victory \u201cin the name of Jesus Christ\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s distinct combination of piety and bloodlust was most prominently on display at the 25 March worship service<\/a> at the Pentagon, the first since the war in Iran began, when he prayed for \u201coverwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy\u201d. The prayer was so shocking that it appears to have provoked a direct rebuke<\/a> from Pope Leo, who preached on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose \u201chands are full of blood\u201d from making war.<\/p>\n

Hegseth will hardly mind harsh words from the head of the Catholic church, however. The 45-year-old US army veteran and former Fox News host is a member of an obscure, deeply Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity<\/a> \u2013 John Calvin broke from the Catholic church during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation \u2013 that rejects the pope\u2019s authority and is rooted in a belief in predestination.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey believe that nothing happens that isn\u2019t in God\u2019s will,\u201d said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, who researches this branch of Reformed Christianity. \u201cThey believe that God directs everything that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even a bomb falling on an elementary school full of children?<\/p>\n

Pete Hegseth, left, prays with the theologian and pastor Douglas Wilson at the Pentagon in Washington DC in February. Photograph: US Department of Defense<\/p>\n

\u201cIf God would order a genocide in Deuteronomy 20,\u201d Ingersoll said, citing a passage<\/a> in which God instructs the Israelites to \u201cdestroy every living thing\u201d in certain cities, \u201cwhat makes you think he wouldn\u2019t cause a girl\u2019s school to be attacked?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iran hawks in the US foreign policy<\/a> establishment have never lacked for material and geopolitical justifications for wanting to go to war, but the sheer recklessness of the prosecution of this war raises questions about what other factors may be at play. The US has long managed to pursue its interests in the Middle East without bombing Tehran, and the entirely predictable consequences \u2013 deadly attacks on US bases and allies, the global economic fallout from the closure of the strait of Hormuz, and the consolidation of power by the Iranian regime \u2013 provide an object lesson in why restraint prevailed for 47 years.<\/p>\n

Why take such a risk now? Could the bellicose, belligerent and braying Hegseth \u2013 with his Crusader tattoos, his disdain for diplomacy, and his evident taste for violent domination \u2013 have convinced Trump to start a war to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades?<\/p>\n

On Monday, at a news conference touting the rescue of a crew member from a downed F-15 fighter jet in southern Iran, Hegseth once again invoked his religious beliefs to justify events as they transpired. \u201cShot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday,\u201d he said. \u201cFlown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly the son of God dying for humanity\u2019s sins, but it at least provided a positive spin to some inconvenient facts: a fighter jet felled weeks after Hegseth claimed<\/a> that the US had achieved \u201ctotal air dominance\u201d; a rescue mission that resulted in the loss<\/a> of hundreds of millions of dollars of military aircraft; and all within the context of a war in which the US appears headed for a straightforward strategic defeat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A tattoo reading \u2018Deus Vult\u2019, or \u2018God wills it\u2019, on Hegseth\u2019s right biceps. Photograph: @petehegseth\/Instagram<\/p>\n

\u201cDeus Vult,\u201d reads the tattoo inked across Hegseth\u2019s right biceps. It\u2019s a Latin phrase meaning \u201cGod wills it\u201d that is believed to have been chanted by the Christian warriors who responded to Pope Urban II\u2019s call in 1095 to march to the Holy Land and reconquer it for Christendom. As the American and Iranian people remain trapped in this deeply unpopular war, it\u2019s vital to understand what \u201cGod wills it\u201d means to Hegseth, and what that might mean for the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Hegseth has described his early life as having a \u201ca Christian veneer but a secular core\u201d. Born and raised in Minnesota, he pursued officer training while at Princeton and served multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guant\u00e1namo Bay. (A longtime reservist, he left the service after being reported<\/a> by fellow service members in 2021 for his Crusader tattoos, which have been associated with white supremacist and extremist groups.)<\/p>\n

He was elevated to leadership roles at two different advocacy groups for veterans only to be forced out over what the New Yorker<\/a> called \u201cserious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct\u201d. Twice divorced due to infidelity, he is now raising seven children with his third wife, whom he married in 2019. He paid $50,000 to a woman who accused<\/a> him of rape in 2017, though he denies the allegation.<\/p>\n

The Fox & Friends co-host Hegseth interviews Donald Trump at the White House in April 2017. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/p>\n

In 2016, Hegseth landed a hosting chair at Fox News. With his telegenic coif, square jaw and slightly too-tight suits, he caught the attention of Trump with his aggressive and successful campaign to win presidential pardons for convicted war criminals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s pivot to religion began in 2018, when he and his current wife joined an evangelical church in New Jersey and \u201cfaith became real\u201d, he told a Christian publication<\/a> in 2023. Already an enthusiastic proponent of the rightwing culture wars against secular public education, he ended up co-writing a 2022 book<\/a> arguing that the survival of \u201cWestern civilization\u201d depends on the reintroduction of Christianity to American schooling. Hegseth\u2019s co-author, David Goodwin, was a leader of the movement for \u201cclassical Christian education\u201d (CCE), and Hegseth was an enthusiastic convert, describing the writing process as a \u201cred pill\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Goodwin\u2019s advice, Hegseth moved his family to Nashville, Tennessee, in order to send the children to a CCE school. \u201cWe thought we were moving to a school, but we moved to a church and a community and a whole view of the world that has changed the way we think too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That church was Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, led by pastor Potteiger, who would go on to preach about Tomahawk missiles at the Pentagon, and Hegseth\u2019s involvement with it is by no means casual.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the kind of church that you can just show up on a Sunday and go to worship and sing songs and then go home,\u201d said Ingersoll. It\u2019s part of a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) in which there is a \u201cstrong hierarchy\u201d and church elders hold significant power over congregants, including by running a court system that can excommunicate and shun.<\/p>\n

double quotation mark[Communion of Reformed Evangelical Church folk] don\u2019t believe in social equality among peopleJulie Ingersoll<\/p>\n

To join, Hegseth would probably have had to attend a \u201csession\u201d with the church\u2019s board of elders, during which new converts make a profession of faith and agree to certain covenants, Ingersoll said. \u201cThe key thing is that you commit yourself to be in submission to the elders for church discipline, which means that you are accountable to the elders of the church for everything you do and everything you believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that sounds a bit concerning for someone holding a leadership position in a government founded on the separation of church and state, it is.<\/p>\n

\u201c[CREC] folks don\u2019t embrace democracy particularly,\u201d Ingersoll said. \u201cThey don\u2019t believe in social equality among people. They think that God created the world and that some people are destined to have authority and to rule over other people, and other people are destined to be followers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about legitimate government having its authority coming from the consent of the governed \u2013 they don\u2019t believe that at all.\u201d To Hegseth\u2019s ilk: \u201clegitimate authority comes directly from God.\u201d<\/p>\n

That much is clear in the sixth week of a war that was launched without congressional approval and is broadly opposed<\/a> by the American people. But if Hegseth doesn\u2019t care about the people, whose opinion does he value?<\/p>\n

The \u201cwhole view of the world\u201d adopted by Hegseth after he joined Pilgrim Hill was crafted by Douglas Wilson, a 72-year-old pastor who has spent the last 50 years attempting to establish a \u201ctheocracy<\/a>\u201d in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho.<\/p>\n

Religion was a family business for Wilson. His father, a retired navy officer and full-time evangelist, moved to Idaho in the 1970s to set up a Christian bookstore. Both Wilson and his brother Evan followed, and found themselves drawn into the somewhat hippy \u201cJesus People<\/a>\u201d movement of the 70s. They began studying theology together and helped to found a church, but had a falling-out<\/a> when Doug got interested in Calvinism, and Evan couldn\u2019t give up his belief in free will. (Calvinists are a very small minority within Protestantism.)<\/p>\n

After Evan left the church (the brothers remain estranged), Doug continued exploring niche theological movements, taking a particular interest in a fundamentalist Calvinist movement that seeks to establish \u201ctheonomy\u201d, a kind of Christian governance. His fiefdom in Idaho now counts about 3,000 people<\/a> across three churches, and his followers \u2013 known as \u201ckirkers\u201d \u2013 are increasingly flexing their muscle in local politics and land-use disputes<\/a>, and CREC has grown to 150 churches worldwide. Meanwhile, Wilson built a business empire promoting CCE books, schools and home-schooling materials that grew his influence in the more mainstream evangelical world.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s views are extreme, even for the Christian right. A staunch proponent of \u201cbiblical patriarchy\u201d, he advocates for wives to submit to their husbands, for parents to inflict \u201cpainful\u201d discipline on children, and for boys to be taught the \u201ctheology of fist fighting\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wilson is opposed to women\u2019s right to vote. He is not opposed to the death penalty for homosexuality. He describes himself as a Christian nationalist and wants \u201cto take over the world for Christ\u201d, Ingersoll said. \u201cThe whole world is going to become Christian, and that version of civilization is filled with all kinds of really powerful, strong punishments for people who don\u2019t agree or go along.\u201d<\/p>\n

His praise of the Christian governance of the Confederate States of America has led some critics to call him a neo-Confederate, but he prefers the term \u201cpaleo-Confederate\u201d. In 1996, he co-authored an apologia for the antebellum south that characterized slavery as \u201ca relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence\u201d and abolitionists as being \u201cdriven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God\u201d. The book was withdrawn over allegations of plagiarism, but Wilson returned to the topic in 2005\u2019s Black and Tan, in which he argued that southern slavery was \u201cfar more humane than that of ancient Rome\u201d and that southern Christian enslavers were \u201con firm scriptural ground\u201d.<\/p>\n

But where Wilson\u2019s ideas were once on the fringe of rightwing evangelicalism in the US, recent decades have seen a change.<\/p>\n

Members of Douglas Wilson\u2019s Christ church sing a hymn over the noise from counter-protesters playing drums during \u2018psalm sing\u2019 in September 2020 outside city hall in Moscow, Idaho. Photograph: Geoff Crimmins\/AP<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the second world war, a culture of militant masculinity developed among white evangelicals in the US, according to historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez. A professor at Calvin University who frequently comments on Hegseth, Du Mez traced the emergence of this strain of evangelicalism in her 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whereas in the 19th century, the ideal of \u201cChristian manhood\u201d would have been focused on virtues such as honor, dignity and gentlemanliness, by the early 21st century, the ideal evangelical man had morphed into something that looks a lot more like Hegseth.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could not get a better embodiment of that ideology, that particularly militaristic conception of Christianity and ends-justifies-the-means mentality that baptizes violence and cruelty in the name of righteousness\u201d than Hegseth, said Du Mez.<\/p>\n

Du Mez argues that the transformation of the evangelical masculine ideal grew out of a sense of embattlement. Facing threats to their status from feminism, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and broad economic shifts, evangelicals invested psychically in a kind of chauvinistic religiosity that allowed them to reassert their dominance, at the very least within the home. Cheerleading the cold war and post-9\/11 wars in the Middle East provided another realm to act out these fantasies of domination, usually without needing to get their own hands dirty. \u201cAny enemies of America \u2013 foreign or domestic \u2013 and any enemies of their particular agenda are also enemies of God,\u201d Du Mez said.<\/p>\n

The perverse moral consequences of combining militant masculinity with religious certainty can be seen in the way this movement consistently supported the most questionable uses of American military power. During the second world war, Du Mez writes, white evangelicals defended the firebombing of German cities. During the Vietnam war, they rallied behind the perpetrators of the M\u1ef9 Lai massacre. And during the global \u201cwar on terror\u201d, they were the Americans most likely to support the torture of prisoners.<\/p>\n

As evangelicalism\u2019s culture shifted in his direction, Wilson became less of a pariah. He built ties with more respectable leaders and showed a knack for generating attention and publicity. In the past few years, he\u2019s been featured on Tucker Carlson\u2019s podcast and shared a stage with the Southern Baptist Convention leader Albert Mohler.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s greatest coup has been the recruitment of Hegseth by way of Potteiger. The attention has expanded Wilson\u2019s access to megaphones<\/a> such as the New York Times, and he appears intent on maintaining influence: since Hegseth was named secretary of defense, Wilson has announced<\/a> that Potteiger will move to Washington DC to establish a new CREC church for Hegseth to attend.<\/p>\n

Wilson does not seem particularly interested in the day-to-day minutiae of governance or war-fighting. When he was invited to preach at the Pentagon on 17 February, his sermon largely stayed above the fray, though he mused<\/a> about whether the invitation itself could be a sign of \u201ca black swan reformation\u201d \u2013 an unexpected revival of Christianity in the US.<\/p>\n

double quotation markWhat we\u2019re living through now is seeing what happens when this ideology becomes national policyKristin Kobes Du Mez<\/p>\n

For his part, Hegseth has shown an unprecedented willingness to incorporate his personal beliefs into the official workings of the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

To Du Mez, Hegseth\u2019s role atop the Pentagon \u2013 and apparent enthusiasm for starting conflicts \u2013 is alarming.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, a lot of this seemed like bluster,\u201d said Du Mez, noting that the leading lights of the militant masculinity movement, such as Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, tended not to have actually served in the US military themselves. But with Hegseth, \u201cyou have the bluster, you have the rhetoric, you have that underlying ideology, and he\u2019s been handed the reins of power,\u201d Du Mez said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re living through now is seeing what happens when this ideology becomes national policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Hegseth, that doesn\u2019t just mean waging war abroad, much as he seems to enjoy it. It means attempting to fulfil Wilson\u2019s vision of a world governed by biblical law, a global Christendom. For that, the first step is establishing Christendom at home.<\/p>\n

When Hegseth is trying to make the case that the US is a Christian nation \u2013 something he does often \u2013 he likes to tell a story about the country\u2019s first president, George Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as George Washington knelt in the snow at Valley Forge, appealing to heaven for guidance and protection, so too our warriors do today,\u201d he said at the National Prayer Breakfast<\/a> on 5 February.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with the story is that it didn\u2019t happen,\u201d said Brian Kaylor, the editor-in-chief of the Baptist publication Word&Way, who has closely followed<\/a> (and criticized) Hegseth\u2019s promotion of Christian theology in the government. \u201cIt was made up decades after Washington\u2019s death, by the same guy who made up the story about Washington cutting down the cherry tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless it has been embraced<\/a> by the Trump administration as a kind of absurd alternate origin story for the United States, in which the country was founded not by deists who enshrined the separation of church and state in the constitution, but by Christian patriarchs establishing a Christian nation.<\/p>\n

Several of the original 13 colonies had officially established religions, Kaylor pointed out, and the founders chose not to emulate that system when they drafted the new constitution. Moreover, the only references to religion in the text of the document, in article VI and the first amendment, serve to protect the separation of church and state by barring religious tests for public office, banning the establishment of a state religion, and protecting the right of individuals to worship as they choose.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the exact opposite of creating a Christian nation,\u201d Kaylor said.<\/p>\n

There have been moments in US history when Christian nationalist ideas were broadly embraced. One is the Confederate States of America, which was conceived of as a Christian nation, \u201cinvoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God\u201d in its constitution. (The Southern Baptist Convention, today the largest evangelical denomination in the US, was formed in 1845 when it broke from northern Baptists in order to continue to support slavery.) When Wilson calls himself a \u201cpaleo-Confederate\u201d, he appears at least in part to be referring to his desire for an explicitly Christian government.<\/p>\n

The other was in justifying the genocide of American Indians; early settlers often framed violent aggression against the native population in terms of bringing salvation to the \u201csavage\u201d. By the 19th century, this tendency had evolved into \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d, a belief that white settlers were fated by God to conquer all of North America. The Trump administration\u2019s promotion<\/a> of the painting American Progress by John Gast \u2013 it depicts a white woman clad in robes sweeping across the continent, bringing light and technology to the dark and fearful natives \u2013 has indicated its desire to revive this way of thinking as well.<\/p>\n

\"AAmerican Progress by John Gast, 1872. Photograph: Library of Congress<\/p>\n

At another violent time in US history, Christian nationalism is enjoying a strong baseline of support among Americans \u2013 about one in three are either sympathetic or strong believers in the idea of the US as a Christian nation, according to a recent survey<\/a> by the Public Religion Research Institute. But the real strength of the Christian nationalist movement in the US now comes from its access to power. The second Trump administration is rife with Christian nationalists<\/a> in leadership positions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The contemporary Christian nationalist movement in the US unites Christians from disparate denominations. Hegseth represents the Reformed\/Calvinist wing, which is distinct from the charismatic evangelicalism practiced by figures such as the White House \u201cfaith office\u201d adviser, Paula White-Cain. A third camp are Catholic Integralists, who want to integrate church and state; adherents include Steve Bannon and the Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While these groups may all be able to agree on domestic policy priorities \u2013 including dismantling public education and using government policy to promote \u201ctraditional\u201d family structures \u2013 things are more complicated when it comes to foreign policy, especially as regards the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Reformed evangelicals like Hegseth are post-millennialists, Ingersoll said, which means that they believe it\u2019s the job of Christians to build the kingdom of God on Earth first, before Jesus\u2019s return. Hegseth\u2019s enthusiasm for the Crusades fits into this broader sense of purpose: he might actually believe it is his mission to re-establish Christendom across the Middle East, starting with Iran, in order to pave the way for Jesus\u2019s return.<\/p>\n

But premillennial dispensationalists, such as White-Cain and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, believe that they must bring about the end times on Earth now, so that Jesus can return to Earth and establish the Kingdom of Heaven himself. They are avid Christian Zionists and see Jewish control over Israel as crucial to fulfilling these prophecies, rather than wanting to re-establish Christian control over the Holy Land now.<\/p>\n

Such wholly irreconcilable visions for the Middle East do not appear to matter that much, however. Both camps have a religious justification for supporting the war, and both can use the war to promote the idea that religion has a place in the business of the state in the first place.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the ceasefire at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Hegseth said: \u201cOur troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the ceasefire holds, Hegseth may have to relinquish any fantasies he had of planting a cross in newly conquered land, but that doesn\u2019t mean he \u2013 or Wilson \u2013 will view this as a defeat.<\/p>\n

At the National Prayer Breakfast on 5 February, after sharing his apocryphal tale of Washington\u2019s supposed prayer, Hegseth appeared to channel Urban II, the pope who launched the Crusades in 1095 with the promise that those who fought would receive remission of all sins \u2013 a promise that has since became controversial given the brutal massacres and wanton destruction of the Crusades.<\/p>\n

double quotation mark[Hegseth\u2019s comments were] not just Crusader theology but something that would be considered heretical in most of Christianity todayBrain Kaylor<\/p>\n

\u201cThe willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one\u2019s country is born in one thing: a deep and abiding belief in God\u2019s love for us and his promise of eternal life,\u201d Hegseth said. \u201cThe warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Kaylor, who is a Baptist minister in addition to a journalist, the statement was beyond shocking. \u201cThis is not just Crusader theology but something that would be considered heretical in most of Christianity today,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really dangerous and scary. It makes his comments about the religious fanaticism of Iran\u2019s regime ironic at best, if not downright hypocritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Crusades, like the Confederacy, ended in ignominious defeat. But as with other \u201clost causes\u201d, they maintain a powerful appeal to reactionary minds who luxuriate in grievance and take comfort in glorious hypotheticals. Trump\u2019s return to the White House in 2025 was propelled in large part by the cult of grievance he built around his loss in the 2020 election. He quickly moved to empower Hegseth to restore the names and statues of Confederate<\/a> generals to military installations.<\/p>\n

With the Iran war seemingly headed toward a resolution that will see Iran significantly better off than it was before, and the US\u2019s geopolitical standing and moral reputation in tatters, it\u2019s possible another rightwing lost cause will emerge. Already, some Maga figures are laying the blame<\/a> for the US\u2019s strategic failures on Israel. Trump himself has aggressively promoted the idea that Nato<\/a> is at fault. Hegseth has continued to purge military leaders<\/a>, and he may lay blame at his usual targets (\u201cwoke\u201d generals and rules of engagement).<\/p>\n

Leaders of Christian nationalism are operating on timelines in the hundreds of years, Ingersoll said, and they are enjoying real success. The campaign to get rid of the Department of Education has been going on since it was established in 1979, and now appears to be heading toward fruition. The movement did not give up after the supreme court legalized abortion in 1973, waging a 50-year battle to take down Roe v Wade, and they are now setting their sights on overturning Obergefell<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

That kind of long-term planning and patience is part of why Ingersoll thinks that Christian nationalism is \u201con the ascendancy, historically speaking\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m not optimistic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What seems impossible to imagine, at this point at least, is any kind of honest reckoning with the religious modes of thinking that may have fanned the flames of war in the first place. If you are waiting for Hegseth to concede that perhaps God wasn\u2019t on our side this time, don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

There is an American leader who reckoned with that question, however. In 1865, after four years of bloody civil war, the Confederacy was on its last legs and victory was within reach. When Abraham Lincoln made his second inaugural address on 4 March, he did not speak to the country about the union\u2019s superior military capacity, nor did he draw conclusions about God\u2019s support of the winning side. Instead, he acknowledged that both sides believed themselves to be acting according to God\u2019s wishes, and that he, as a man, was in no position to know who was correct.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other,\u201d he said of the two sides. \u201cLet us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking to the future, Lincoln forecast neither triumph nor domination, but the slow and difficult work of learning once again to live with one another: \u201cLet us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation\u2019s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a year that will be dominated with invocations of US history due to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us also take a moment to commemorate that moment: the nation\u2019s second founding. After the rupture and carnage and emancipation of civil war, a leader was willing to say that we can\u2019t know whose side God is actually on \u2013 but that we owe it to ourselves and each other to attempt to make peace just the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-523456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}