Reconnaissance: The Kink in Hegseth’s Crusade Scheme

by Chuck Fager

So, 47’s Iran war may not really be over yet, but the scoring for the current round is well underway. And here’s my pick for one of the conflict’s unexpected, and so far overlooked big winners.

It’s not a president, prime minister, ayatollah, neither an Israeli, Iranian nor Chinese general.

It’s the pope. Leo XIV.

Yes, despite the old sneering wisecrack often attributed to Joseph Stalin, when once warned about crossing the Vatican in a war: “How many divisions does the pope have?” Today’s response could well be, “You might be surprised …”

In the past month, Pope Leo didn’t have a division (typically more than 10,000 troops). But he did deploy some very special forces, in continued and multifaceted sorties: a fusillade of skillful moral challenges.

Leo adroitly used the media to break through to what I believe was his prime target—Catholic American troops, from privates to generals, plus like-minded others.

He didn’t hit them with drones or missiles. Neither did he issue commands or orders—popes don’t deal with the laity that way in this century. He did loose a fusillade of pointed reminders that by their church tradition and moral teaching, the Iran War was immoral and sinful, not to mention illegal; and foolish as hell.

St. Augustine, by Phillippe de Champaigne, c. 1646. Wikimedia Commons

Aiming at the conscience, Leo wielded not a sword, but still trenchant Catholic tradition, particularly the just war theology. It was developed by Augustine of Hippo, not in a postmodern radical faculty lounge, but 1600 hundred years ago in North Africa. (Leo BTW is an Augustinian priest.)

Sure, the Church has many times corrupted & sold out these irenic convictions to empires, tyrants & greedy pontiffs. Its history includes a long bloody trail, especially the Inquisition and the anti-Muslim Crusades. I’ll let them make excuses elsewhere.

But it also has a succession of pacifist saints (not to mention an unarmed Founder). Leo is not the first pope in our time to challenge the American Leviathan.

Yet already, within his first year, and particularly the past month, Leo’s witness has stood out, in several ways:

• He adroitly used U. S. mass media, taking advantage of the many opportunities of the Easter season.
• He based his messages on traditional rules, which even right-wing Catholics had trouble rebutting. Moreover, while “just war” theory may not be pacifist, its rules do have real standards (e.g., last resort, legal authority, avoiding civilian casualties and torture), which much recent American warmaking—and just about everything in the Iran “excursion”—flouted or ignored.
• For a major event, he shrewdly sent as his spokesman Timothy Broglio, the very conservative Archbishop for Catholics in the Military. Broglio went on CBS’s Face the Nation and told a nationwide TV audience that Trump’s Iran war was “unjust” and not “sponsored” by Jesus—and he did it on Easter morning.

(I watched Broglio’s interview: he was visibly uncomfortable when pronouncing an American war “unjust” and un-Christian. His priestly career is embedded in the U.S. military: the words did not come easily. But he bowed to both ancient authority and church order, adding he was thus “in line” with Leo, as pope—remember, the Catholic Church is not a democracy.

I could relate: it makes me similarly uneasy to admit my agreement with almost everything in the fiery antiwar statement by one Marjorie Taylor Greene. No superior ordered that; it’s just a surprising fact.)

• Crucially, with his visibility, clarity and skill, Leo repeatedly outmaneuvered, isolated and discredited his main rhetorical opponent, the crusader Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

On March 25, in a monthly Pentagon prayer meeting, Hegseth had prayed over the war as a divinely-mandated and blessed mission. He beseeched divine guidance even on behalf of American bullets, to make them not only weapons, but tools of a soul’s judgment:

“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. … Give [the troops] wisdom … and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy … and their ‘wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.’”

But on March 29, Pope Leo used his Palm Sunday homily to issue a sharp and widely-reported biblical rebuke:

“Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war … ‘your hands are full of blood.’”

Hegseth, who may have memorized every belligerent Bible verse (there are, alas, many), sent the troops off with texts such as Psalm 144 (“Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war…”), and proclaimed the war a great victory.

At the April 8 post-TACO press conference, where Hegseth fulsomely hailed the “victory,” he also said the troops deserve the “credit,” and then pivoted:

“But God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection.”

Remarkably, though, Hegseth that day was nearly a tinny chorus of one. 47’s evangelical posse, usually quick to swarm into the Oval Office, was notably absent. The loudest voice from this chorus over the apocalyptic weekend was the apostate MT Greene, who blasted the war and called Trump “insane.”

The absence of Trump’s evangelical backup band was also a tipoff that the war involved more than oil, Islam and Israel. It also impinged on Hegseth’s agenda for remaking the military from the inside.

It is widely known that Pete Hegseth regards himself as the reincarnation of the archetypal Christian liberator from the original crusades. His 2020 book American Crusade identified this with Trump’s re-election effort; and his agenda is literally engraved in his skin by several Crusader tattoos.

Less well-known is that he and his vision are part of a small Presbyterian offshoot, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), led by pastor Doug Wilson, who has preached at Hegseth’s Pentagon prayer meetings. Wilson’s project is to remake America into a strict Reformed Evangelical theocracy governed by the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647.

Numerous commentators have noted that Wilson’s program is indulgent toward slavery, would recriminalize LGBTQ people, and deny women the vote. Less noted is that in his CREC-Reformed USA, Catholic religious displays and processions would be banned from public spaces.

This follows directly from the Westminster Confession itself (it’s included in full, open access, on the CREC website here) which declares that the pope “is that Antichrist … son of perdition,” and condemns Catholic worship practices as “abominable” and “idolatrous.” It further assigns civil authorities the duty to “suppress” such heresy and enforce doctrinal purity.

So that’s why Doug Wilson wants Catholic public worship outlawed.

And maybe that’s why, on April 3, the Pentagon chapel was reserved for a “Protestant-only” Good Friday service. When the press noticed, officials insisted there was no suppression—just awkward phrasing.

Well, maybe. But there’s little doubt about Hegseth’s and his church’s religious preferences. Just the day before, he had fired three generals, including Major General William Green, Jr., head of the Army chaplain corps.

Neither Green nor the others were dismissed for misconduct. But theology may have been a factor (as well as race; Green is Black). Green is also a member of the National Baptist Convention, a tradition far removed from Westminster-CREC theology.

Before Hegseth’s arrival, the Defense Department had recognized over 200 religious affiliations, and the chaplains are directed to balance commitment to their own traditions with neutrality among many diverse others.

That was the theory. In practice, exclusionary and End-Times fundamentalist groups have long targeted the military and made inroads, including in the chaplaincy.

Still, efforts continued toward neutrality, properly seen as a means of maintaining  internal morale in a very religiously diverse force. After months of work, chaplains produced a new Army Spiritual Fitness Guide released in August 2025. It acknowledged that roughly half of soldiers identify with no particular church.

This is the guide Hegseth abruptly banned last December. It emphasized personal growth and unit cohesion; it minimized God-talk for the large percentage of non-religious troops. A search turns up no mention of “lethality,” “crusade,” or “damnation.” No wonder Hegseth couldn’t stand it.

Hegseth clearly wants to tilt and badger the Army toward his explicit crusader stance (and color scheme). But there’s another looming demographic fact: CREC is tiny; it is dwarfed by the largest denominational group in the Army, which is (wait for it) Catholic—over 19 percent. Hegseth says he has cut the recognized list of faith groups down to about thirty but not yet released the revision. Could there be trouble from some of the 170 groups who he wants to dump, to favor a miniscule sect?

And who speaks to that nineteen percent, especially this past month?

You guessed right.

My guess is that Hegseth hates playing second fiddle to the guy his church says is the Antichrist. He may do more pushups than Leo; and his tattoos are certainly more dramatic.

But he can’t fire or silence him.

And if Hegseth ever deigned to have a sit-down with the pontiff, what would Leo say? I can imagine a message like this:

“My son, several centuries before your Westminster Confession, some of my brother popes organized and blessed crusades to push the Muslims out of the Holy Land.

Then there followed 200 years of war and destruction.

The crusades failed. And they are long over.

Consider their example. I do.”

I wonder if Pete would listen.