Sawt Falasteen - Hegseth's church brings its Christian nationalism to Washington

Six months before, Hegseth attended the first service of a new church set up in Washington by Wilson's small Idaho-based denomination, called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).

The network of about 160 congregations around the world, of which Hegseth is a member, holds deeply conservative, patriarchal views about family, society and the role of religion in politics.

Among them: Women should submit to their husbands and America was founded as a Christian nation -- a concept most scholars reject.

The new congregation, Christ Church Washington, located close to Congress, started a few months after President Donald Trump's second inauguration.

"We knew that there would be people who would be interested in the kind of theological vision and cultural vision that we are putting forward," Joe Rigney, a CREC pastor who has preached there several times, told AFP.

"While our nation was founded as a Christian nation, one that acknowledged that God was over everything, we drifted from that.

"Our effort is to go to DC and to remind anybody who will listen from top to bottom -- from cabinet secretaries and senators down to baristas and housewives -- that Jesus is Lord," he said.

- 'Poster boy' -

Hegseth, a former Fox News host who sports a tattoo of the Crusader rallying cry "Deus Vult" -- "God wills it" -- on his bicep, has given Wilson's network and the Christian nationalism it embraces greater visibility.

This ideology, which seeks to fuse American and Christian identities, has been around for decades, but it has gained ground during Trump's administrations.

Hegseth, who has shared videos featuring Wilson and wrote a book titled "American Crusade," has incorporated overtly religious language into his public statements.

"Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation," he prayed in a March service at the Pentagon soon after the war with Iran began.

"Pete Hegseth is kind of the poster boy for this militant Christianity and militant patriarchy," said Calvin University history professor Kristin du Mez.

Planting a church in Washington is key to Wilson's goal of converting the American capital from a "Babylon" -- a city often used in the Bible to symbolize pride and idolatry -- into a "New Jerusalem," according to his blogpost.

Long considered a fringe figure even among evangelical Christians -- among Trump's staunchest backers -- Wilson has gradually been moving "into the mainstream," said du Mez.

- A Christian nation? -

Most scholars and historians reject the notion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, pointing to a lack of references to Jesus or Christianity in the Constitution or other founding documents.

That belief is "very much a projection of their own interpretation of Christianity," said Sam Perry, a professor at Baylor University who has followed CREC closely.

Perry and other experts also say that the Constitution's First Amendment, which bars Congress from establishing any state religion and guarantees religious freedom, ensures the separation of church and state.

Wilson regularly shares his opinion about politics and current events in his blog posts, debating whether the war in Iran is a "just war" and expressing opposition to the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.

Instead, he believes that heads of households -- typically men -- should vote for the family.

In the eyes of CREC, significant political victories include the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, Rigney said.

Rigney also said they are praying for the reversal of the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

Another priority would be immigration, which is one of the reasons why America has "drifted away from our Christian roots," he added.

Christian nationalists had some influence under former president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, but they were not taken as seriously as they are today, said Julie Ingersoll, a religion professor at the University of North Florida.

Recently, "the rhetoric is getting more virulent in public," she said.

As for Christ Church Washington, Rigney said that his community wants a sustainable presence, independent of "election cycles."

"If the administration changes, how does that impact the church?" he said. "We're not sure yet. We'll have to wait and see.

H.Darwish--SF-PST