In early April, the State Department encouraged employees to report allegations of anti-Christian bias within the agency, and soon after, the Department of Veterans Affairs took the same step. The developments were largely overlooked, but they were early indications of a larger effort.
A couple of weeks later, for example, Attorney General Pam Bondi convened a meeting of a task force charged with eradicating “anti-Christian bias” within federal agencies. The Washington Post reported at the time, “[E]ven before the group’s inaugural meeting, critics have assailed its mission as a bald attempt by government to elevate one faith over others and to rewrite recent history under the guise of protecting religious freedoms.”
The critics obviously had a point. After all, the attorney general and her colleagues didn’t say they were focused on perceived “anti-religion bias” within the government; they focused only on perceived “anti-Christian bias” within the government. The Trump’s task force clearly had a faith-specific focus.
Among those joining Bondi for the inaugural meeting of the group was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, it turns out, held a related event one month later. The New York Times reported:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth led a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium on Wednesday morning, during working hours, in which President Trump was praised as a divinely appointed leader. The event, billed as the “Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service,” was standing room only and ran for about 30 minutes, with Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of Mr. Hegseth’s church in Tennessee, as the main speaker.
This was not a one-time gathering: The Times report added that the beleaguered Pentagon chief said that he wants these prayer services to become monthly events.
Hegseth and his allies will likely argue that his “Christian Prayer & Worship Service” shouldn’t be seen as controversial because he’s an American citizen with the same First Amendment rights as everyone else. If you and I can host and/or attend prayer services, why can’t he?
The answer is simple: Context matters. If Hegseth led a Christian prayer service on his own time in a house of worship, that would be no one’s business but his own. The Pentagon, however, doesn’t belong to Hegseth — it belongs to all of us. When he, as a public official, commandeers it for a faith-specific event, it’s easy to make the case that this was an inappropriate use of government resources.
Similarly, Hegseth and his allies are likely to argue that attendance was voluntary, so no one was coerced into attending the event. But the details matter on this front, too: The Times’ report added that the Cabinet secretary “encouraged the uniformed military personnel and civilian employees there to tell their co-workers about it.”
The message hardly seemed subtle: Pentagon officials were notified that their boss was poised to lead a midday Christian prayer service — on the premises — and department personnel were invited. Imagine being a Jewish service member, for example, hoping to stay on the secretary’s good side, and perhaps even looking for an upcoming promotion, and the pressure that person felt when told about Hegseth’s “invitation.” As for Potteiger, the pastor of Hegseth’s church in Tennessee, the Times quoted the reverend’s Trump-specific comments at the Pentagon. In his sermon, the pastor said, “We pray for our leaders who you have sovereignly appointed — for President Trump, thank you for the way that you have used him to bring stability and moral clarity to our land. And we pray that you would continue to protect him, bless him, give him great wisdom. … We pray that you would surround him with faithful counselors who fear your name and love your precepts.” For those concerned about the administration and the emergence of Christian nationalism, this was a step in an unsettling direction.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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