Pete Hegseth's Christian-Nationalist Program at the Pentagon Has Grown So Overt That Service Members Are Now Formally Complaining About It — a Military Religious-Freedom Watchdog Says It Has Logged Roughly 200 Complaints and Seen Requests for Legal Help From Active-Duty Troops Triple, With Some Describing Pressure to Attend Working-Hours "Worship Services" and One Officer Casting the Iran War as the Fulfillment of the Book of Revelation; a Church-State Group Has Sued the Defense Department for the Records
By late April 2026, the Christian-nationalist turn Pete Hegseth has given the Defense Department — the monthly "worship services" he hosts in the Pentagon auditorium, the war prayers, the Jesus-and-country rhetoric this archive has tracked since March — had produced something harder to wave off than op-eds: complaints from inside the ranks. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for service members' religious liberty, says it has logged roughly 200 complaints tied to the Pentagon's religious programming, and that requests for help and legal advice from active-duty troops have tripled. Its founder, Mikey Weinstein, argues the rhetoric corrodes "good order, morale, discipline and especially unit cohesion." The complaints describe real pressures: services held during working hours in the Pentagon auditorium that troops fear they are expected to attend, and, in one account, an officer framing the war on Iran as the fulfillment of prophecy from the Book of Revelation. The Pentagon disputes the criticism and insists the services are voluntary, that no one was punished for skipping them or rewarded for attending, and that they are "constitutionally protected" and "undoubtedly improve morale." Hegseth has brushed off the critics as "the freedom-from-religion crowd," saying, "The left-wing shrieks, which means we're right over the target." A separate church-state group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has sued the Defense Department for records on the services — their cost, their guests, and the complaints received. The MRFF figures are its own tally, not an independent audit; but a secretary of defense whose religious program is generating complaints, legal requests, and lawsuits from the very force he commands has a problem no amount of "over the target" can spin away.