GI-Jihad: Iran War Blurs the Line Between Religion and the Constitution

Shortly after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, naval leadership began briefing us about religious fanatics living in the mountains, men who didn’t belong to any country or national cause, whose only allegiance was to their interpretation of religion. Al Qaeda.

Those briefings usually ended with an important lesson: The U.S. military is governed by the Constitution, not by any religion. The nation’s founders understood the danger religious extremism poses to a democracy. Donald Trump’s administration doesn’t appear to see it this way as it launches a new war against Iran with no clear objectives or end date.

The non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation said this week that it has received over 200 complaints from over 50 military installations that commanders have been invoking Christian rhetoric in describing the war against Iran, much of it pertaining to end-times prophecy. One commander told officers at a briefing on Monday, for example, that Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to one complaint. Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen was the first to report on the military’s religious messaging.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is talking about how Israel has a biblical right to take control of most of the Middle East, and Republican politicians are publicly pushing the idea that the United States is now in a holy war with Iran. “This is a religious war,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters this week. “We will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years.”

The U.S. military has long been governed by the constitutional separation of church and state, and service members swear an oath to defend the Constitution — not a religion, a prophecy, or a particular interpretation of scripture. The standard has been in jeopardy since Pete Hegseth was chosen to be Secretary of Defense.

Hegseth’s rise within conservative politics has long been wrapped in the language of Christian nationalism — literally, as he has a Jerusalem cross, a symbol closely associated with the medieval Crusades, tattooed across his chest, along with other religious imagery. To many historians and observers, these symbols reflect a romanticized vision of Christian warriors fighting holy wars in the Middle East. When someone who publicly embraces that imagery ascends to lead the Department of Defense, it raises serious concerns about whether the line between constitutional duty and religious crusade is being blurred at the highest levels of the military. 

Editor’s picks

The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far

The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

Hegseth has yet to describe the war against Iran in explicitly religious terms, but he’s invoked Christianity repeatedly since taking over the nation’s military — from reciting “The Lord’s Prayer”  in front of troops to using the Pentagon’s auditorium to host Christian prayer services. His scandal-ridden tenure has been focused largely on eliminating what he calls “DEI” and “woke” ideology from the military, opposing women in combat roles and rolling back recognition of people of color in military history. In February, he invited a Christian nationalist pastor who supports repealing a woman’s right to vote to lead one of his prayer services at the Pentagon.

Hegseth’s rhetoric around military action has been similarly disturbing. He said this week that the U.S. has been winning the new war on Iran “decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” and seems to be annoyed that he has to answer questions about the service members who have died as a result of the war. He has also griped about what he called the “stupid rules of engagement,” the kind of rules that keep things like America or its allies from shooting down its own jets. Hegseth’s disregard for them is all the more concerning considering he once chanted “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” in a “drunk and violent manner,” while he was leading a veterans group, according to a complaint from one of the group’s employees.

In response to a request for comment about the complaints the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received since the start of the war against Iran, the Department of Defense directed Rolling Stone to videos of Hegseth speaking about the war, including an address to the military in which he derides America’s previous “rudderless wars of hubris” before defending the current war against Iran as lofty music plays behind him.

It shouldn’t be a shock to anyone that Trump’s War with Iran is going so poorly. It starts from the top. Everything members of the military have been told and trained for over the past 250 years is being turned on its head by Trump and Hegseth.

The military is a hierarchical organization where careers hinge on evaluation reports and command climate. Religious messaging from a superior is not casual speech. It carries weight. It carries pressure. Pressure causes mistakes. In the military, mistakes cost lives.

The follies and collapses of past great militaries can often be traced to the kind of environment Trump and Hegseth appear to be creating in our armed forces: political expediency over proven strategy and planning, political loyalty over expertise and experience. American lives must never be put at risk unless it is absolutely necessary — and never in service of something as dangerous and subjective as the supposed “will of God.”

If the military ever becomes identified with one sect, one creed, or one apocalyptic vision, it will fracture from within and isolate itself from the nation it serves. We are strongest when we remain neutral in faith and firm in law. The uniform represents one sacred commitment: to defend the Constitution. Not a prophecy. Not a political movement. The Constitution.

That line must never be blurred.