A controversial pastor who supports repealing women’s right to vote and believes homosexuality needs to be against the law led a worship service on the Pentagon this week, saying he was invited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
During a 15-minute sermon within the Pentagon’s auditorium and broadcast dwell on the division’s inner TV community, Douglas Wilson delivered a sermon sprinkled with military-themed jokes about placing Jesus Christ first and what Jesus can accomplish by way of believers.
“God can do what he likes, and as we should know by now, what he likes to do is to take the most unlikely materials and do something glorious with it,” Wilson mentioned, in accordance to video of the sermon obtained by NCS. “Take a prayer meeting at the Pentagon for a possible example. Many stranger things have happened. God is great.”
A supply who attended the service instructed NCS Wilson’s message was “pretty vanilla” and steered away from political rhetoric. Attendees didn’t hear Wilson’s stance on girls within the navy and in fight.
The service from Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist, was a part of a daily month-to-month Christian worship collection Hegseth began on the division final summer time that critics say has underscored the erosion of the separation of church and state below the Trump administration.
The pastor, who based his church in Moscow, Idaho, within the Nineteen Seventies and has since grown it to a community of greater than 150 church buildings internationally, is a part of an ascendant group of Christian religious leaders discovering affect amongst MAGA conservatives. Hegseth is the pastor’s most distinguished and public follower within the Trump administration.
The Christian nationalist pastor with ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Wilson has publicly described his perception in a patriarchal society the place girls are anticipated to submit to their husbands and helps repealing the nineteenth Amendment granting girls the precise to vote. Women are banned from management positions in his church and are usually not allowed to vote in congregational choices.
He has additionally advocated for the concept that the US ought to undertake a Christian theocracy and cling to a biblical interpretation of society.
Hegseth is a member of certainly one of Wilson’s church buildings in Tennessee and has mentioned he moved to the state in 2022 to ship his youngsters to a college that’s a part of a Christian community that Wilson helped discovered.
In a earlier assertion to NCS, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell mentioned: “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.”
The Pentagon’s speedy response X account posted photos confirming Wilson’s attendance on Tuesday.
Hegseth joined Wilson on stage after his sermon, however mentioned he had been working from one other assembly and missed the pastor’s remarks.
Kris Fuhr, co-founder of the Women within the Service Coalition, mentioned bringing Wilson to the Pentagon was “beyond inappropriate” given his well-established views on the remedy of ladies and ladies within the navy.
“It was an absolute insult to everyone that room, that someone who represents views that are a total 180 from Army values would be allowed to speak at a denominational-specific, Christian religious service in the Pentagon,” Fuhr mentioned. “When you have a secretary of defense who is so strongly influenced by someone who thinks only white men are worthy, you now have a Secretary of Defense who is not looking for the best and the brightest across his entire talent pool.”
The supply who attended the sermon mentioned it is a “totally voluntary prayer service” and that Wilson is “one of many (preachers) over the last year who have come from several different Protestant denominations.”
They mentioned there are providers for different religions and that they’ve seen Jewish and Buddhist providers marketed as properly.
The Pentagon is certainly one of a number of authorities businesses which have moved to open conferences with a prayer, host common religion providers and submit Bible verses and Christian imagery on social media since President Donald Trump returned to workplace final 12 months.
When requested Thursday about Hegseth’s monthly prayer service and criticism that it’s eroding the longstanding custom of separation of church and state, Wilson instructed NCS, “The actions taken by the Secretary of War in starting this prayer service are disrupting the ‘longstanding separation of church and state,’ but only if ‘longstanding’ is limited to recent decades.”
“From the Founding of the republic it was not so,” Wilson added. “Worship services used to be held in the Capitol building, starting before the building was completed, and lasting up until the Civil War. Worshipers in that place included such worthies as Jefferson and Madison.”
NCS has reached out to the Department of Defense for remark.