Up against a Crusader

Robert P. Jones is the founder and president at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) which studies our American religious varieties. He's also a recovering white Southerner out a Baptist faith tradition which he believes has a lot to overcome in the way of sexism, racism, and unfounded smug superiority.

The Senate hearing on TV pretty boy and macho poseur Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Secretary of Defense infuriated Jones. He concluded:

Not a single senator probed the most dangerous part of Hegseth's background: his support for white Christian nationalism.

Apparently, in addition to Hegseth's history of drinking and sleeping around fathering children, the guy is an acolyte of one of those crackpot little sects which white American Protestantism spawns, led by a patriarch with racist authoritarian politics. 

Hegseth is a member of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a small newly-founded church that is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). The denomination was co-founded by Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist who embraces a theocratic vision of Christian dominance of all institutions in society. Wilson has written that slavery produced “a genuine affection between the races” and argues that homosexuality should be a crime. Wilson holds particularly rigid patriarchal views, asserting that giving women the right to vote was a mistake, that women holding political office “should be reckoned not as a blessing but as a curse,” and that women should not “be mustered for combat” (sound familiar?). 

As religion scholar Julie Ingersoll, who has studied this movement for years, points out, adherence to these theological tenets are not optional in CREC churches. Hegseth is a member in good standing and has called Wilson a spiritual mentor, explicitly saying that he is a disciple of Wilson’s teachings and learning from his books.

The Democratic Senators who might have questioned him about any of this (if they were informed enough) were stymied by our ingrained respect for the absolute right of people to adhere to any belief system they choose.

I get it; I believe quite a lot of scientifically unverifiable things too. But just because people adhere to seemingly oddball religious beliefs must not mean that they cannot be questioned about policy implications of what drives them. Hegseth is about to have much influence and some concrete power over the largest element of the national government. It was the right and duty of Senators to interrogate Hegseth about this.

Jones thinks the Senate is about to confirm someone who is committed to overturning the Constitutional principles that enable him to skate away from searching questions.

If it was not outright cowardice, the Democratic senators’ timidity was at best rooted in a desire to respect the Constitution’s important prohibition against instituting a religious test for office. But if this was the reason for their failures during the hearing, it reflects a serious misunderstanding of the purpose of that principle.

The Founders were primarily concerned about prohibiting the then familiar practice of reserving offices for members of religious groups favored by the state. But that Constitutional protection in no way prohibits lines of questioning related to whether a nominees’ publicly professed beliefs and worldview, whether religious or secular, are compatible with the fundamental principles of a pluralistic democracy and the oath of office they will take to defend and obey not a president but the Constitution.

The Republican Party—whose adherents are two thirds white and Christian in a nation that is only 41% white and Christian—has clearly given itself over to the white Christian nationalist vision that fuels Trump’s MAGA movement. If, over the next four years, if the Democratic Party continues to ignore the clear and present danger white Christian nationalism represents, history will judge them harshly for their naiveté and their abdication of duty to our nation in its time of need.

In [his book] American Crusade, Hegseth wrote, “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” With his nomination looking likely to succeed, that yet has arrived. And now, Trump will have his willing leader of an American crusade that will be fought—not just abroad but at home—with the most lethal forces and arsenal of weapons the world has ever seen.

I do not think Jone is being alarmist. Fortunately MAGA has internal contradictions as well as facing democratic (small "d") popular opposition that may constrain what the likes of Hegseth would like to do. Or not.

If the Dems were feeble, there were protesters in the house who Northern Californians might recognize.