WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he’s proud to be part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, an archconservative network of Christian congregations.
Hegseth recently made headlines when he shared a CNN video on social media about CREC, showing its pastors arguing women should not have the right to vote.
Pastor Doug Wilson, a CREC co-founder, leads Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, the network’s flagship location. Jovial and media-friendly, Wilson is no stranger to stirring controversy with his church’s hard-line theology and its embrace of patriarchy and Christian nationalism.
Wilson told The Associated Press on Monday he was grateful Hegseth shared the video. He noted Hegseth’s post was labeled with Christ Church’s motto: “All of Christ for All of Life.”
“He was, in effect, reposting it and saying, ‘Amen,’ at some level,” Wilson said.
Hegseth, among President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks, attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a CREC member church in a suburb outside Nashville, Tennessee. His pastor, Brooks Potteiger, prayed at a service Hegseth hosted at the Pentagon.
CREC recently opened a new outpost in the nation’s capital, Christ Church DC, with Hegseth attending its first Sunday service.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed Hegseth’s CREC affiliation and told the AP that Hegseth “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
Here are other things to know about the church network:
What does Wilson’s church say about women?
Wilson’s church and wider denomination practice complementarianism, the patriarchal idea that men and women have different God-given roles. Women within CREC churches cannot hold church leadership positions, and married women are to submit to their husbands.
Wilson told the AP he believes the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote “was a bad idea.” Still, he said his wife and daughters vote.
He would prefer the United States follow his church’s example, which allows heads of households to vote in church elections. Unmarried women qualify as voting members in his church.
“Ordinarily, the vote is cast by the head of the household, the husband and father, because we’re patriarchal and not egalitarian,” Wilson said. He added that repealing the 19th Amendment is not high on his list of priorities.
Hegseth’s views on women have been in the spotlight, especially after he faced sexual assault allegations, for which no charges were filed. Before his nomination to lead the Defense Department, Hegseth had questioned women serving in combat roles in the military.
Wilson, a Navy veteran who served on submarines, also questions women serving in some military roles.
“I think we ought to find out the name of the person who suggested that we put women on those submarines and have that man committed,” Wilson said. “It’s like having a playpen that you put 50 cats in and then drop catnip in the middle of it. Whatever happens is going to be ugly. And if you think it’s going to advance the cause of women and make sailors start treating women less like objects, then you haven’t been around the block very many times.”
What is the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches?
Founded in 1998, CREC is a network of more than 130 churches in the United States and around the world.
CREC ascribes to a strict version of Reformed theology — rooted in the tradition of 16th-century Protestant reformer John Calvin — that puts a heavy emphasis on an all-powerful God who has dominion over all of society.
Wilson and CREC are also strongly influenced by a 20th-century Reformed movement called Christian Reconstructionism, according to Julie Ingersoll, a religion professor at the University of North Florida who wrote about it in her 2015 book “Building God’s Kingdom.”
She sees that theology reflected in the Wilson slogan Hegseth repeated on social media.
“When he says, ‘All of life,’ he’s referencing the idea that it’s the job of Christians to exercise dominion over the whole world,” Ingersoll said.
Since the 1970s, Wilson’s ministry and influence have grown to include the Association of Christian Classical Schools and New Saint Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho.
The ministry has a robust media presence, including Canon Press, publisher of books like “The Case for Christian Nationalism” and “It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity.”
What is the connection to Christian nationalism?
Wilson wants the United States to be a Christian nation. He does not mind being called a Christian nationalist.
“I am more than happy to work with that label because it’s a better label than what I usually get called,” Wilson said.
“If I get called a white nationalist or a theo-fascist or a racist bigot, misogynist thug, I can’t work with them except to deny them,” he said. “I’m a Christian, and I’m a patriot who loves my country. How do I combine those two things? How do they work together?”
U.S. Christian nationalism is a fusion of American and Christian identity, principles and symbols that typically seeks a privileged place for Christian people and ideas. Wilson contends that early America was Christian, a notion historians dispute.
“If we succeed, this will be Christian America 2.0,” Wilson wrote in 2022.
American Christian nationalism involves overlapping movements. Among them are evangelicals who view Trump, a Republican, as a champion, some of whom are influenced by Christian Reconstructionist ideas; a charismatic movement that sees politics as part of a larger spiritual war; and a Catholic postliberal movement envisioning a muscular government promoting traditional morality.
CREC now has a closer relationship to the upper echelons of government. This has renewed scrutiny of Wilson’s other controversial views, including his downplaying of the horrors of Southern slavery in the U.S. But it’s also given Wilson a bigger stage.
Hegseth and Wilson have spoken approvingly of each other. Wilson said they have only met in person once, when they talked informally after Wilson preached at Hegseth’s home church in Tennessee this year.
Wilson said CREC’s new Washington church began as a way to serve church members who relocated to work in the Trump administration.
“This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now,” Wilson said. “But this is not an ecclesiastical lobbying effort where we’re trying to meet important people. We’re trying to give some of these people an opportunity to meet with God.”
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Smith reported from Pittsburgh.
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