“All of Christ for All of Life,” the defense secretary wrote alongside the clip.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the man in charge of the U.S. military, is facing sharp criticism after reposting a video from a Christian nationalist church in which pastors openly called for women to lose the right to vote.
The post, shared Thursday night on X, underscores Hegseth’s deep personal ties to Doug Wilson, cofounder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a network known for promoting extreme religious views about gender, politics, and society.
The nearly seven-minute CNN segment Hegseth reposted examined Wilson’s church and featured multiple controversial statements: one pastor advocating a constitutional repeal of women’s suffrage, another proposing that ballots be cast by “households” rather than individuals, and a female congregant affirming her submission to her husband.
“All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth wrote in his caption, echoing a CREC slogan.
The post quickly went viral, amassing more than 12,000 likes and 2,000 shares. Responses ranged from strong agreement with the pastors’ views to outrage over the defense secretary promoting Christian nationalist ideology.
Doug Pagitt, pastor and executive director of the progressive evangelical group Vote Common Good, called the ideas in the video “views that small fringes of Christians keep” and said it was “very disturbing” that Hegseth would amplify them.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that Hegseth is “a proud member of a church” affiliated with CREC and “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
Hegseth’s affinity for Wilson’s brand of Christian nationalism has also been on display at the Pentagon itself. In May, he invited his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, to lead the first in a series of Christian prayer services during working hours inside the Defense Department. Invitations were sent to military and civilian staff through official government email accounts.
In the CNN report, Wilson was blunt about his mission: “I’d like to see the nation be a Christian nation, and I’d like to see the world be a Christian world.”
AP journalists Mike Pesoli in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.