The Department of Defense is defending its decision to invite controversial Pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist who opposes women serving in combat, to preside over a 15-minute worship service at the Pentagon this week.
A spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was glad to welcome Wilson to the Pentagon on Tuesday to deliver a devotional as part of a monthly Christian gathering he instituted last summer.
“Despite the Left’s efforts to remove our Christian heritage from our great nation, Secretary Hegseth is among those who embrace it,” the spokeswoman’s statement read.
In an interview with Military Times, Wilson, a Navy veteran who served aboard the USS Tusk and USS Ray from 1971 to 1975, said the heart of his message to the hundreds of troops who voluntarily attended the service was simple: “Stand firm, don’t be cowed.”
Wilson leads the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and co-founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which has grown into a global network comprising more than 160 congregations. But his theological and historical views, particularly on slavery and gender roles, have long drawn scrutiny and criticism.
In his own church, women are barred from leadership roles and congregational voting is structured around what Wilson describes as “household voting.” He uses this term to mean a mechanism whereby the head of the household represents the family, deciding for whom they should vote as a unit.
In practice, especially in a conservative church such as Wilson’s, this mostly means a man casts the family vote. But Wilson insisted heads of the household could also be single women, divorcees and widows. He did not suggest wives as potential determinants of the family vote.
“It’s not, ‘You can’t vote because you’re a woman.’ None of that,” he said. “It’s simply, ‘Are you a member of a household and who is the representative head of that household?’”
Asked by Military Times if he supports the 19th Amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, Wilson responded, “The way we run church elections, in the space where we have full control over what we do, represents my views.”
Wilson has also argued that women are unsuited for combat.
“We should do everything we can do to keep women out of combat roles,” he said during the interview, asserting that there are biological gender-based differences in the levels of aggression and temperament required for warfare.
“I believe that God assigns gender roles to men and women, respectively,” he added. Wilson emphasized that he was not claiming to speak for the Trump administration.
In 2016, the Department of Defense opened all combat positions to women, including infantry, armor and special operations units, following years of study and integration efforts.
Hegseth is the most prominent follower of Wilson’s gospel in the Trump administration. According to the Pentagon, he is a “proud member” of a church affiliated with the CREC in Tennessee and “very much appreciates” many of Wilson’s writings and teachings.
Since becoming the secretary of defense, Hegseth has woven his Christian faith into his public duties, diverging from his recent predecessors who generally avoided foregrounding personal religious convictions in an official capacity.
In a speech on Friday, Hegseth declared, “Protecting our culture and our religion from godless ideologies and pagan religions is not political — it is biblical.” During the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, he said that the soldier willing to “lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his creator — that warrior finds eternal life.”
The issue, critics say, is whether the defense secretary’s visible alignment with a particular religious creed risks signaling bias, or suggests a fusing of political and military power with a specific theology.
The Constitution protects religious freedom for all Americans, including the three million service members and civilian personnel who serve under Hegseth — and including those of all faiths or none.
Fred Wellman, a 20-year Army combat veteran running for Congress in Missouri as a Democrat, called Wilson’s presence at the Pentagon an “unconstitutional and extreme attack” on the First Amendment.
“Hegseth is using his official position to make his religion the official one of the Department of Defense using official facilities, communications channels and personnel,” Wellman wrote in a post on X. “This must end and must be investigated.”
Tanya Noury is a reporter for Military Times and Defense News, with coverage focusing on the White House and Pentagon.
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