“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood before uniformed military personnel and civilian employees at the Pentagon on Wednesday and prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

The Christian worship service, livestreamed from a Pentagon auditorium, was Hegseth’s first monthly prayer gathering since the Iran war began. He told attendees it was “all the more fitting this month, at this moment, given what tens of thousands of Americans are doing right now.”

He read from the Book of Psalms: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed. I thrust them through so that they were not able to rise.” He then recited a prayer he said was first given by a military chaplain to troops who captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, calling on God to ‘break the teeth of the ungodly’ and praying that ‘wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.’”

Breaking with precedent

Hegseth has hosted monthly worship services at the Pentagon since May 2025. Every service has featured evangelical speakers, including Doug Wilson, the self-described Christian nationalist who co-founded Hegseth’s denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Wilson preached at the Pentagon in February.

Statements of faith are common in American public life. Pentagon aides note historical precedents, including President Franklin Roosevelt’s support for distributing Bibles to troops and George Washington’s establishment of the chaplain corps. But historians say Hegseth’s approach marks a departure.

“Referring to God in broad language is not unusual in this context,” said Ronit Stahl, a historian at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America.” “But the shift towards the specificity of Jesus Christ and therefore Christianity — and in Hegseth’s case, a particular form of Protestant Christianity — is new, especially coming from the defense secretary.”

Hegseth has repeatedly prayed “in the name of Jesus Christ” at official events, including Pentagon briefings and White House dinners.

“In a nation with no establishment of religion per the Constitution, what does it mean to have a leader being not just broadly religious or religious in a pluralistic sense, but religious in a very particular sense?” Stahl asked.

Legal challenge

On Monday, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed federal lawsuits against the Defense and Labor departments seeking records about the prayer services. The organization wants communications, costs, guest lists, recordings, and any employee complaints.

“Secretaries Hegseth and Chavez-DeRemer are abusing the power of their government positions and taxpayer-funded resources to impose their preferred religion on federal workers,” said Americans United President and CEO Rachel Laser in a statement. “Even if these prayer services are presented as voluntary, there is pressure on federal employees to attend in order to appease their bosses.”

The group noted the services occur “amidst the Trump administration’s campaign to punish anyone who doesn’t comply with its Christian Nationalist agenda.”

Chaplain corps overhaul

On Tuesday, Hegseth announced changes to the military chaplain corps, which he said in a video message had been “infected by political correctness and secular humanism” until they were “watered down” to be “nothing more than therapists.” Chaplains will no longer wear rank insignia but instead religious symbols, he said, arguing this would remove “unease or anxiety” about approaching officers for spiritual care.

The military will also reduce recognized religious affiliation codes from more than 200 to 31. The current list includes Wiccans, atheists, and agnostics; the Defense Department has not released the updated list. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. troops identified as Christian in a 2019 congressional report, with nearly a quarter listed as “other/unclassified/unknown.”

Veterans have raised concerns that Hegseth’s religious rhetoric could deepen divisions within the armed forces. “We’re gonna see a lot of Christian nationalists join the military,” Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and CEO of Task Force Butler, told The Guardian last year. “They’re not gonna perform very well, and our national security will suffer for a generation for it, because those that don’t wash out will be toxic leaders.”

At a February gathering of Christian broadcasters, Hegseth addressed criticism of the services: “We hear a lot from the ‘freedom from religion’ crowd. They hate it. The left-wing shrieks, which means we’re right over the target.”

Sources