(The Conversation) — The most serious allegations against Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick
to head the U.S. Department of Defense, involve mismanagement, heavy drinking, infidelity, sexual harassment and even rape.
Hegseth denies the allegations but also claims that because of Jesus he’s a “changed man.” The roots of Hegseth’s version of Christianity are worth a look as he heads into confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate in January 2025.
In 2023, Hegseth moved from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church and school community that arises from a 20th-century movement, called Christian Reconstruction. It holds deeply conservative views about the family, roles for women, and how religion and politics are related.
The followers of the movement seek to make America a Christian nation, by which they mean a nation built on biblical law, including its prohibitions and punishments.
Christian Reconstructionists want to dismantle public education and replace modern ideas about family with a patriarchal family model because they claim that biblical law requires both. They believe that Old Testament biblical law applies to today’s society and to everyone, whether or not they are Christian. For them, all of life is religious; there is no separation between religion and politics.
Though only a handful of people are formally tied to Christian Reconstructionism, its influence has been broader.
As a scholar of religion, I have studied Christian conservative movements, especially Christian Reconstructionism, for over 30 years, with six of those years explicitly devoted to the research on Christian Reconstruction. In my book “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction,” I trace the rise of this obscure theocratic version of Christianity.
When the Trump transition team announced in mid-November 2024 that Hegseth was the choice to serve as Secretary of Defense, his pastor posted on X that Hegseth and his family are members of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a church directly tied to this movement. I know through my research that the workings of the church he has joined make it quite impossible to dissociate and still remain a member in good standing.
History and influence
The movement’s origins go back to the late 1950s and the work of thinker, writer and theologian R.J. Rushdoony. His goal was to “reconstruct” all of society to fit how he understood the Bible. And as I explain in my book, one of his most important strategies for doing that was to eliminate public education and replace it with Christian education.
By establishing the Christian school and Christian home school movements, Christian Reconstructionists brought their version of a biblical worldview to generations of Christians who attended those schools, many of whom had no ties to Christian Reconstructionism itself. The schools taught, and still teach, a curriculum entirely infused with a Christian Reconstruction worldview based on a specific reading of the Bible. History classes become Christian history classes, science classes become the study of creationism, and the study of economics becomes Christian economics.
In the 1970s a Moscow, Idaho, Christian school founder named Doug Wilson, deeply shaped by Christian Reconstruction, expanded his school efforts to include a church, a college, a publishing house and a seminary.
Historian Crawford Gribben also connects Wilson to the earlier Christian Reconstructionist movement. Wilson has said he’s not a Christian Reconstructionist. Nonetheless, he shares their goals and strategies for remaking society according to the Bible.
Wilson also founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelicals, or CREC, and the Association of Classical Christian Schools, or ACCS. CREC is a group of affiliated churches, somewhat like a small denomination, while ACCS, according to its website, exists to “promote, establish, and equip member schools that are committed to a “classical approach” that emphasizes a “Christian worldview” built on Western philosophy and literature.
Wilson and his institutions send out men to start churches and schools modeled after Moscow. These churches and schools work to shape the larger society, according to their reading of the Bible, starting with the U.S., but the goal is to spread this across the world.
The members of Wilson’s community are known as “Kirkers” – based on the Scottish word for church – and include people who move to Moscow to join. Once there, they buy property and set up businesses. Some of the residents of the town, who are not members of the church, call it “an invasion.”
Wilson is an intentionally provocative and controversial figure who got attention early on for his 1996 book “Southern Slavery: As it Was,” which revives pre-Civil War arguments in favor of slavery. He has also been implicated in accusations of abuse, including abuses of power and sexual abuse. A new 2024 podcast, “Sons of Patriarchy,” explains the culture of Wilson’s world through interviews with scholars, other experts and survivors of abuse.
Church government structures ensure conformity
Hegseth hasn’t talked about Christian Reconstructionism directly, but when he talks about education he repeats their talking points. During an interview on a right-wing podcast, he used militaristic language and agreed with the host that “classical Christian schools” could be “boot camps” to provide “recruits” for an underground army that could eventually launch an “educational insurgency.” He laughingly added later the implications of violence in the larger quote are “metaphorical.” Even taken metaphorically, I believe that the comments show him supporting the goal of using Christian schools to make America a Christian nation.
In Tennessee, Hegseth sent his children to a specific Christian school; he then joined a nearby church, both of which are tied to Wilson’s CREC and ACCS.
The structures and informal workings that make up the CREC and ACCS are designed to ensure theological agreement and submission to church leadership, and protect churches from lawsuits when there are accusations of abuse. These aren’t just churches you can join by showing up.
From my research, I know the CREC churches embrace a style of church government where a candidate for membership must go before the elders – called a session – to show that their conversion was authentic and submit to thorough questioning of their theology. They then usually sign a covenant or make a public verbal covenant, submitting to church elders. These practices are common in old presbyterian and reformed style churches. They are less common today in mainline churches, but still exist in smaller Presbyterian denominations.
If people’s beliefs change after becoming members, they can be brought before church courts on heresy charges.
Members must bring any dispute they might have with members of “recognized churches” to these church courts, as opposed to taking them to “worldly” courts. This largely closes off other avenues for addressing grievances.
The governing bodies that comprise the sessions and the courts are all made up of elders. And only men can be elders, a fact that has become an issue in accusations of abuse.
No distinction between religious and political issues
The U.S. has a long tradition of protecting religion from public criticisms: The U.S. Constitution forbids a “religious test” for officeholders, civic groups often prohibit discussions about religion, and it is generally considered impolite to do so in social contexts.
Senators at Hegseth’s confirmation hearings will likely be reluctant to engage in questions about religion, yet in the religious community with which Hegseth has associated himself, there is no distinction between religious issues and political ones; there is no separation of church and state. Every area of life is to be governed by the Bible, and there is no secular sphere of authority that exists apart from religion.
(Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Florida. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
