Reverend Benjamin R. Hegseth recoiled when he heard that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth planned to create a new religious agency within the military.

Here is why:

Hello my friends,

Given recent events, I wanted to send out this newsletter to you today and reflect on them.

On September 30th during his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of the Pentagon’s new Office of Religious Affairs. As of the writing of this post, no individual has been publicly named or announced to head this office.

According to Hegseth, the office will give military chaplains a “direct line” to him without “staff filters” and “bureaucratic dilution” that he characterized as an impediment to meeting service members’ religious needs.

“The experts, our chaplains, will finally have an advocate at the highest levels,” he said. “Policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.” “Accordingly, our department, therefore, has a sacred duty, first class religious support wherever we send our warriors,” he said.

He ended this announcement by saying, “as Psalm 33:12 extols us, “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told USA TODAY on Oct. 1 his organization “condemns in the strongest terms” what he called Hegseth’s “immoral, unethical and unconstitutional actions” that, in his view, violate the First Amendment ban on the government “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

He said his organization would continue working to combat what he alleged was “Christian nationalist bigotry, hatred and prejudice” in the military until “fundamentalist Christian religious extremism is forever eradicated.”

I think it’s easy to shrug off Pete Hegseth for many, or even see this as a good move for “religious freedom,” but I just want to put this move in the context of Christian history, which causes me to agree with Mikey Weinstein.

When nationalist political leaders in the past have created a position that oversees the religious aspects of the military that answers directly to that leader, the goals are often deeply disturbing.

Let me give you just a few examples.

Under the Romanov autocracy, the Russian Tsar ruled by “divine right”. In 1721, Peter the Great abolished the independent patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and replaced it with The Most Holy Synod, a government department headed by a secular government official who was appointed directly by the Tsar.

This effectively turned the clergy into a branch of the state bureaucracy. The Tsar appointed a Protopresbyter of the Army and Navy to oversee all military chaplains. These chaplains were tasked with preaching absolute loyalty to the Tsar, ensuring soldiers took their holy oaths of allegiance, and reporting any political subversion within the ranks directly back to the autocracy.

While the Soviet Union was officially an atheist state, it provides one of the most explicit example of an authoritarian regime appointing officials to manage the “spiritual” and ideological affairs of the military. After the 1917 revolution, Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik leadership established political commissars. These commissars were unified under the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy.

Historians often note that commissars acted as a direct substitute for military chaplains. Instead of theology, they enforced Marxist-Leninist ideological purity.

However, during World War II, facing an existential threat from Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin temporarily reversed his harsh anti-religious policies. He personally met with church leaders and sanctioned a revival of the Russian Orthodox Church to boost wartime morale. He permitted the church to collect funds for tank columns and bless troops, intentionally co-opting religious fervor to serve state military goals.

When Adolf Hitler consolidated power, his regime sought to co-opt and control Germany’s fragmented religious landscape. In 1935, Hitler appointed Hanns Kerrl as the Minister for Church Affairs, tasked with forcibly aligning the Protestant and Catholic churches with Nazi ideology, a process known as Gleichschaltung (coordination). Within the military, the regime kept a tight grip on religious personnel.

Hitler also appointed Franz Justus Rarkowski as the Catholic Field Bishop of the Wehrmacht. Rarkowski was a fanatical supporter of the regime who used his office to issue pastoral letters telling German soldiers that fighting for the Führer was a holy duty blessed by God, ensuring that religious service members did not develop a crisis of conscience while carrying out aggressive warfare.

Following his victory in the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco established a highly centralized, right-wing authoritarian regime deeply intertwined with the Catholic Church, a system often termed “clerical fascism”.

Franco secured a concordat with the Vatican that granted him the right to nominate Spanish bishops, ensuring only politically loyal clergymen were appointed. He revived the Military Vicarate, appointing a Military Archbishop to run the spiritual affairs of the armed forces. Under Franco’s oversight, military chaplains held officer ranks and were integrated into the command structure to ensure the military remained a staunchly conservative, nationalist, and religious pillar of the state.

A foundational pillar of American democracy is a civilian led apolitical military. Service members swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, rather than a specific leader, political party, or religious text.

Just as historical regimes used religion or political commissars to bind the military’s loyalty directly to the ruler’s ideological vision, our concern should be that the explicit Christian nationalist and fundamentalist views Hegseth adheres to could be used to redefine military loyalty. If defending the nation is conflated with defending a specific cultural or religious identity, the military, full of people with different beliefs, could be a place of infringement of religious liberty, causing deep division, impeding military readiness. Military promotions could be based on ideological loyalty rather than qualifications, which is ironic given Hegseth’s consistent comments about “merit based” institutions. And most disturbingly, the military could be weaponized for domestic political, ideological, and religious purposes, undermining its historical role as a neutral defender of the entire populace. Time will tell what course this move will take us.

Given this administration’s continued push for consolidating power in every sector of government and society, this move within the department of defense should be deeply troubling for every American and Christian in America.

As a Christian in America myself, I unequivocally believe that Christianity doesn’t need political privilege or military power.

It needs less arrogance.

It needs less entitlement.

It needs less animosity towards those who are different.

It needs more humility.

It needs more generosity.

It needs more compassion and understanding.

It needs more Jesus.

It needs to be vocal about the separation of church and state rather than any selfish insistence that our country must favor our religious group above all else.

The reason I don’t want a “Christian nation” isn’t because I’m against Christianity. It’s because I’ve studied church history and learned about the horrors caused by the church crawling into bed with the empire. Separation of church and state doesn’t just help protect religious freedom, it helps keep Christianity Christian rather than becoming an empire.

Nationalism keeps telling us Christians to take up our swords and make our nation “Christian” by any means necessary.

Jesus keeps calling us Christians to take up our crosses and be like him, serving the world through grace, humility, compassion, and self sacrificial love.

May it be so with us.