Next week the U.S. Senate will kick off a series of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees, starting with Pete Hegseth, a veteran, former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host, and bestselling author who is now under consideration to head the Department of Defense. One question the senators may not need to ask: Might his religious view dictate his decisions? A look at his five books holds clues. They're laden with his view that the Christian faithful should live out their convictions in the public square.
Start with his latest: The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Published this spring as his second title for Fox News Books, it got a bounce in attention on the Publishers Weekly bestsller list in November after Trump announced Hegseth as his Pentagon pick. In it,Hegseth condemns "progressives" and "the Left" as attacking the militant patriotism that warriors represent. To attack their "Western White Male mindset (American values of federalism, capitalism, and Western-Christian constitutionalism)" would "dismantle the American Way," and then, he writes, "the need to protect and defend the Constitution and its citizens falls by the wayside."
For weeks, news programs have shown on loops Hegseth's comments that women should not serve in combat and controversy over his many tattoos including a Jerusalem Cross that critics have called a Crusader symbol adopted by Christian Nationalists who were on parade in Charlottesville in 2017.
In The War on Warriors, he lauds women for valiantly serving in support roles but disqualifies them from frontline fighting because it disregards "a Christian ethos for God’s creation" to view men and women with the same roles and purposes. And he denies that his tattoos are supremacist symbols. Rather, the crosses are "signifying to the world that I am an unapologetic follower of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Hegseth writes.
Championing Christian virtues
The military leadership today serves the wrong masters, he writes in the book. He fulminates against their programs to address diversity and LGBTQ+ concerns. And he decries military leaders who "serve ideological politicians, upside-down regulations, Ivy League graduate degrees, and opportunistic defense contractors. The next president of the United States needs to fire them all—or at least most of them—and install leaders with real fidelity to the Constitution... The only thing that matters is first principles, courageous leadership, laser focus on readiness, and the ability and willingness to exact lethality."
Those are the very virtues Hegseth celebrates in Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes, his 2020 book. The book, part of the successful launch of Fox News Books as a publishing imprint that year, is a collection of first-person stories of military veterans, decorated for their deeds and successful in their civilian lives today. Their stories extol resilience, courage, and service to others during and after their years under fire. And almost all refer to God or the Bible.
From the first, Hegseth's books honor those qualities. In the book In the Arena: Good Citizens, a Great Republic, and How One Speech Can Reinvigorate America (Threshold Editions, 2016), Hegseth elaborates on a speech by Teddy Roosevelt that lionizes those who, win or lose, brave the battle.
In his 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, he calls Christians to the frontline of a social-political battleground, writing, "We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must …” The front cover shows him waving a huge American flag, the tattoo "We the People" evident on his right forearm. According to the Washington Post's look at the book, the enemies are "open-borders leftists" and "squish" Republicans who are actually supporting Islamists plans to " 'conquer' Europe and America demographically, culturally and politically, allying with secularism to tear down 'our nation’s Judeo-Christian institutions.'"
Educating for a Christian culture
To Hegseth, public education is as critical as the military in defining and defending the nation. His 2022 book, The Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation (Broadside, co-authored with Christian educator David Goodwin), blasts "leftist indoctrination," led by atheists, Marxist sand socialists," for producing kids who "roll their eyes at religion and disdain our history," are barely literate and "flailing for purpose in a system that says racial and gender identity is everything."
If he is confirmed as Secretary of Defense, the "Department of Defense Education Activity agency (which) educates some 67,000 children of active-duty military and civilian service members," will come under his control, according to Politico.
But New York magazine, in a look at Hegseth's views and writings, cautions senators against leaping to conclusions about Hegseth: "Critics of Christian nationalism in the Trump administration need to keep essential distinctions straight and avoid exploring the religious views of nominees if they are truly private articles of faith directed to matters of the spirit, not secular laws. It’s likely there will be plenty of examples of theocratic excesses among Trump nominees as Senate confirmation hearings unfold. But where potential holders of high offices respect the lines between church and state, their self-restraint commands respect as well."