When Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth as his pick for secretary of defense, the initial public reaction was, understandably, something along the lines of, “A Fox News host is going to run the Pentagon?” It was only in the following days that the media fleshed out the public’s understanding of Hegseth and shone a light on one of his most prominent and controversial facets: his deep involvement with the Christian nationalist movement. As I dug into Hegseth, something deeper struck me.
National outlets like The Guardian and The New Republic have flagged Hegseth’s crusader-inspired tattoos, his links to ultra-conservative Christian organizations, and his frequent espousal of Christian nationalist beliefs, but most of these write-ups were not granular enough for me to tell just what kind of Christian nationalist Hegseth is.
The Christian nationalist movement is a unified political force, but the coalition of believers who constitute the movement arrive at it from different theological and cultural backgrounds – from the emotionalistic charismatic Pentecostals to the stern and bearded Reformed crowd. As I learned more about the ins and outs of Hegseth’s particular brand of Christian nationalism, I was struck by how similar it was to the version of the movement I was raised in: more “TheoBro” than charismatic, more literary and rationalist than emotional and inspiring.
And then I dug further and realized the reason for the overlap: Pete Hegseth’s version of Christian nationalism is not just similar to the version I was raised in. It’s the exact same, and it’s coming from the same places.
Hegseth and his family attend a Reformed Calvinist congregation in a suburb of Nashville – just like I did. And Hegseth’s children attend a classical Christian school in the area – just like I did. And the overlap goes deeper: I know leaders at Hegseth’s church. I have childhood friends who have taught at his children’s school. If those who groomed me for success in the movement had gotten their way, I might have been one of them – but they didn’t.
All that to say: I understand exactly what kind of Christian nationalist Pete Hegseth is. I was raised to be the same kind. His beliefs should concern you.
Unlike the flashy world of charismatic Pentecostalism, which produces many of the biggest names of the modern Christian nationalist movement, the Reformed world is smaller, quieter – but it’s no less influential. While charismatic Pentecostals like Lance Wallnau occupy the limelight as the faces of the movement, Reformed pastors like Doug Wilson consider themselves the brains.
Pete Hegseth was not raised in the Reformed tradition, but he is deeply enmeshed in it now. To understand how it has shaped the incoming secretary of defense’s personal beliefs on Christian nationalism, though, you have to understand what it is, and how it operates.
In the grand family tree of Christian movements, the Reformed (or Calvinist) tradition is one of the more prominent children of the Protestant Reformation, the 16th-century spiritual cataclysm in Europe which saw groups like the Lutherans, Adventists, Anabaptists, Calvinists, and eventually Pentecostals, splinter-off from the theretofore largely unchallenged Catholic church. After the splintering, these traditions evolved in different directions, with Calvinists slowly but surely earning a reputation as dour, literate fundamentalists: a group of Christians defined among other Christians by their belief in the predestination of souls to either heaven or hell and what they call “covenant theology” (a specific understanding of God’s relationship to his people which my editor will cry if I try to expound upon here), among other doctrinal quirks.
In the context of modern American Christianity, the Reformed reputation for dour fundamentalism persists, fairly or not. Google “Calvinist stereotypes” and you’ll find headlines like this one from The Gospel Coalition, which reads “Why Are Calvinists So Mean?” Or this one from Desiring God: “As Cool As the Other Side of a Calvinist.” Culturally, Calvinist men like beards and cigars. They pride themselves on appreciating a good IPA (unlike those darn Baptists, they joke, but they aren’t joking), and you’re more likely to catch them well-actually-ing each other about a fine point of scripture than you are to see them praying over strangers at the mall – which, for mall-goers, is a pleasant side effect of that whole predestination thing. They are almost uniformly conservative, and many have been committed to the Christian nationalist struggle since well before it was in vogue, though they tend to call it reconstructionism. Leaders in the Reformed tradition often valorize both the Crusades and the Confederacy as noble fights for godly causes, in a similar vein as the fight to take back the country for god – so much so that the art for the “Why Are Calvinists So Mean?” article is an image of a crusader knight. This was the Reformed tradition of my upbringing in Nashville, one of the cradles of the movement.
Some things have changed since then, though, for better and worse. Like many Christian traditions, the Reformed tradition has taken a body blow from the MAGA movement over the last decade, wrestling with internal divisions wrought by external politics. Some leaders in Reformed churches have pushed back against those external forces, standing against the Trumpification of the American church, and choosing instead to emphasize the tradition’s belief in “God’s overwhelming grace,” as one Reformed pastor recently told me. Unfortunately, another swath of the tradition has leaned into Trumpism with gusto, seeing the would-be strongman as a vehicle for their long-desired reconstructionism – or remaking of society in what they believe to be God’s image.
Since making a physical home in Nashville and a spiritual home in the Reformed tradition, Hegseth has slotted himself firmly into the latter camp. But Hegseth is not just Reformed, he’s also an advocate for a form of Christian education with deep, unsavory ties to controversial Christian leaders who have espoused a desire for “world conquest.”
It was 2018 when Pete Hegseth made the decision to “seek Christ, fully submit to Him, and allow Him Kingship in life,” the Fox anchor told Nashville Christian Family magazine last year. Some time after that commitment, Hegseth fell into the world of classical Christian education and soon relocated his family to the Nashville area to send his children to a classical Christian school there.
That’s when my personal network’s overlap with Pete Hegseth began.
“We drew a 20-mile radius around the school convinced that’s what we wanted for our kid, and we moved,” Hegseth told the magazine, referring to Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy (JCEA) in Whites Creek, TN. Though not specific to the Reformed tradition, the world of classical Christian education, or CCE, is dominated by the Reformed community. It has also expanded dramatically in recent years, riding the rising tide of the Christian nationalist movement. When I was growing up, the classical Christian school I attended in Franklin, TN, was one of fewer than 100 CCE schools nationwide. By 2016, the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), had 200 member schools. By 2023, it had 475.
A model of schooling based on Greco-Roman and medieval educational traditions, classical education is not inherently Christian – but classical Christian education, which Reformed leaders have worked to build atop the classical model since the early 1990s, is a different animal altogether. Promoted since the early 1990s by controversial Reformed minister Doug Wilson – who does not believe that women should be allowed to vote – CCE seeks to holistically integrate Christian teachings into every subject. Advocates implicitly regard it as the most devout and sophisticated form of Christian schooling.
That’s what Hegseth and his wife moved across the country for, when they drew a 20-mile radius on a map of the Nashville area, centered on the CCE school they had chosen for their children: the most devoutly Christian education possible. I have no doubt they found that at JCEA, a school where acquaintances of mine have been employed from time to time, but I expect they found something else as well: a curriculum straying from the finer points of established fact, into a mythical version of history designed to underpin beliefs in Christian supremacy. That, too, is a feature of classical Christian education. When I say that I was indoctrinated to be a Christian nationalist, it’s not my parents whom I’m referring to as the indoctrinators: it’s my classical Christian school.
By the time I graduated from a classical Christian school, I knew things generally reserved for seminary students, and my Latin was better than it had any business being, but I was also taught a great many bizarre things which I spent my early adulthood unlearning. Today, many CCE students, possibly including the younger Hegseths, are being taught those same bizarre things – the exact same things, in fact, because the man who led my school, George Grant, produced a curriculum used by a large number of other classical Christian schools.
Grant is a leader in CCE and a diehard Christian nationalist who has advocated for the death penalty for homosexuality, and openly declared that “world conquest” is the goal of his brand of the faith. At school, Grant taught us – and countless other CCE students up to the present day through his curriculum – that the Crusades were a righteous, Christian struggle. He taught us that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that Christians should rule it in accordance with Biblical laws. He taught us that the Civil War was not about slavery, and he taught us that, even if it was, slavery was not as bad as it has been made out to be. And those fringe beliefs are not unique to Grant: they are core to the CCE movement, and have been uniformly embraced by Doug Wilson, the movement’s founder. In fact, in 2004, Grant joined Wilson for a speaking tour promoting a controversial new pamphlet by Wilson which argued that American slavery was a largely beneficent institution.
Wilson himself is no stranger to controversy. In addition to his less-than-mainstream views on women’s suffrage and chattel slavery, Wilson has also come under fire for advocating for Christian theocracy (“I want the authority of the Lord Jesus to be confessed by the House and the Senate, and I want the president to sign it,” he said.) and sheltering child abusers in his church. Hegseth’s familiarity with Wilson is more than passing: in the same Nashville Christian Family article where Hegseth discussed classical education, he mentioned that he was at that time reading one of Wilson’s books, and, in a recent podcast appearance, Hegseth suggested that he might send his children to New Saint Andrews, the Wilson-run college in Moscow, Idaho. The congregation Hegseth attends is even part of Wilson’s own small Reformed denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC.
Together, Grant’s and Wilson’s philosophy has defined and delineated the CCE community – a community which Pete Hegseth is now also a prominent member of. In addition to sending his children to a classical Christian school, Hegseth has become a major promoter of the CCE movement. In 2022, he co-authored a book on the subject with David Goodwin, the current president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (and another friend of George Grant’s). The book was published by the Wilson-affiliated printing press, Veritas, and the publisher’s description promises content perfectly in keeping with the corrosive philosophy and flawed history which Grant and Wilson have spent decades building the classical Christian education movement to further.
“Battle for the American Mind is the untold story of the Progressive plan to neutralize the basis of our Republic by removing the one ingredient that had sustained Western Civilization for thousands of years,” the description reads. “We need to recover a lost philosophy of education grounded in virtue and excellence that can arm future generations to fight for freedom. It’s called classical Christian education. Never heard of it? You’re not alone.”
There was a time in my life when I would have been overjoyed to see Hegseth’s ascension to the helm of the world’s largest military; when the idea of a secretary of defense who was a Reformed believer and a proponent of classical Christian education – a fellow member of two of the most exclusive clubs I’ve ever belonged to – would have seemed like my wildest dreams coming true, the ultimate in-group fantasy. Now, it chills me.
Hegseth’s rise to the Pentagon should chill you too. Not just because he’s a Fox News host, not just because he has been accused of sexual assault. Not even just because he is a Christian nationalist. His rise should chill you because of what kind of Christian nationalist he is, and because of what he and his children are being taught by the leaders of their small, dedicated faction of Reformed reconstructionists. There are people who I know and love in that faction, people who I disagree with strenuously but would not trade-away my relationships with. But the lessons taught by leaders in the faction are dangerous.
I was taught – like Hegseth’s children may be taught, like Hegseth himself might be learning from Wilson’s books, or from the time he spends among the brightest lights of the Reformed tradition and the world of classical Christian education – that Christians were the only hope for America. But that hope, as we envisioned it – as Hegseth and his children and his pastor may well envision it – was not for the kind of America I now want to live in. It was the hope for an America that has never existed and which, if we’re lucky, will never exist: an America where laws really are inspired by the Bible, leaving millions outlawed from loving who they love or making decisions about their own bodies. An America where goodness and beauty are not defined by the moments between us, but by the words of long-dead men who will never meet us.
Millions still hope for that version of America. They hope for it when they watch the news and they hope for it in the carpool line at their classical Christian schools. They hope for it when they read Wilson’s and Grant’s books, and now they’re raising their kids to hope for it, too.
Pete Hegseth hopes for it, too, from what we can tell – and, soon, he’ll be the secretary of defense.
