There’s no mystery to Pete Hegseth. The secretary of Defense prefers tight-fitting suits and pocket squares with the American flag on them. He bears a Jerusalem cross tattoo in honor of the Crusades. Another Crusade reference, the phrase “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” appears on his bicep. On his forearm, there is a sword inside the outline of a cross, and the word “Yeshua,” or Jesus, marks the blade in Hebrew letters. He projects bellicosity before he opens his mouth. When he does open his mouth, whether to defend our war on Iran or a different violation of international law, he becomes even more obvious. Iran’s “mullahs” are “scrambling,” he said at the Pentagon this month. Then he quoted Psalm 144: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” In his own mind, he is a modern-day Templar knight, and he is here to carry out God’s mission on Earth.

Through the will of God or some other, more infernal mechanism, Hegseth now occupies a position of consequence, just in time for a new Crusade. The war on Iran is wish fulfillment for an entire class of warmongers, including Hegseth. Within this world, Iran has become a bête noire, an all-consuming obsession that, for some, has a religious dimension. An Islamic regime like Iran is a spiritual foe, not just a security threat. For Hegseth, who writes and speaks of himself as an enemy of Islam, the war is an opportunity to score a blow for Christ.

In his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth demands “a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.” Donald Trump is the nominal head of that effort; men like Hegseth are the muscle. “Following the lead of President Trump and beyond, American Crusaders must lead the cultural fight from here,” he later wrote. “Ask yourself: What percent American am I?” The gospel according to Hegseth is simple: To be American is to be Christian, and to be American and Christian is to be violent. Our enemies are Muslims, communists, and trans people. We must fear “genderism,” or woke excess, which “seeks ‘gendercide’” against our manliest men, like Hegseth, “who will always fight our wars, fix our cars, build our homes, and defend our neighborhoods.”

Earlier this March, minister Brian Kaylor observed that Hegseth used his personal Bible when he took the oath of office in 2024. That choice is not so strange on its own, but Hegseth stamped his Bible with the same symbols he wears on his body: a Jerusalem cross and the words Deus vult. As a battle cry, the Latin words called “followers of Christ to take up the sword in defense of their faith, their families, and their freedom,” he wrote in American Crusade. A year later, he presides over monthly worship services at the Pentagon. February’s event featured Douglas Wilson, an Idaho-based minister who told CNN last year that his ideal Christian state would criminalize homosexuality and repeal the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

Hegseth shares much of Wilson’s extremism. He reposted Wilson’s CNN interview on his X account with the caption “All of Christ for All of Life,” a phrase the pastor has popularized. After the CNN interview, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told The 19th that Hegseth is “a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC),” a denomination that Wilson co-founded, and he “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.” Which teachings? Parnell did not specify, but Hegseth and Wilson favor an aggressive, near-cartoonish form of masculinity and agree that women are not suited for combat roles. Still, Hegseth praises bloodthirstiness wherever he sees it. During a press briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Hegseth spoke approvingly of a woman servicemember who, when asked what she needed most to wage war on Iran, answered, “More bombs, sir. And bigger bombs.” If women share Hegseth’s “lethality,” they may have a use.

It’s not particularly difficult to understand why Hegseth, who calls himself the “secretary of war” and speaks, often, of the need to protect the military’s “warrior culture,” might gravitate to Wilson, whose vision of male supremacy extends from the home to the political sphere. In Wilson’s words, a husband “penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants” his wife through sex, and men must “lead” their spouses “with a firm hand.” A husband is responsible for his wife’s “spending habits, television-viewing habits, weight, rejection of his leadership, laziness in cleaning the house, lack of responsiveness to sexual advances,” he wrote in his book Federal Husband, and that might appeal to Trump’s Defense secretary. One woman has accused Hegseth of rape; last July, he and his family attended the inaugural service of Christ Church D.C., a “service” of Wilson’s founding congregation.

A Christian state is central to Wilson’s political theology and, I think, to Hegseth’s personal worldview. Both men favor restrictions on Muslim immigration to the U.S., the Associated Press reported, and Hegseth lamented high “Islamist” birth rates in American Crusade. As Defense secretary, he’s taken steps to enforce a far-right Christian ideology. In March, he tightened grooming restrictions for men in the military, making it more difficult for Sikhs and some Muslims to receive religious exemptions for facial hair. To Hegseth, the American military has a spiritual mission, whether it targets Iran, Venezuela, or fishing boats in the Caribbean. “That’s why wherever we can, we invoke the name of God; we invoke the name of Jesus Christ,” he explained in a podcast interview. “We want that spoken and talked about inside our formations.” In recent weeks, he’s expressed an apocalyptic view of the Iranian regime and told CBS, “We’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.” Hegseth may dream of the end-times in his own way, but his real obsession is brute power, not doomsday.

To other Christians, Hegseth is a heretic. The Lord “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” the Pope said in his Palm Sunday address. Perhaps, but there is precedent for men like Hegseth in Christendom and in American politics. In a column for the New York Times, Lydia Polgreen wrote that Trump is both “a freak of history” and “its fulfillment.” I would apply the same logic to Hegseth, who has, like his earthly master, “revealed a much older malady,” our “unshakable faith” in our “ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one.” Our true national faith is power. Hegseth understands that if nothing else.