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The Military Chaplaincy Was Already Captured, Well Before Hegseth’s Arrival
Evangelical bodies have built a pipeline to the chaplaincy, many of whom “[weaponize] their spiritual authority and ‘freedom of speech’ to make trouble.”
Leigh LarsonSeptember 2, 2026
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Public concern over Christian nationalism in the armed forces has been almost entirely preoccupied with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—and not without good reason. He invited his personal pastor to lead prayer breakfasts at the Pentagon while Hegseth himself prayed: “Let every round find its mark and every mission be carried out in the name of Jesus Christ.” Headlines cast him as the wrong man, with the wrong job, or that it’s the wrong theology for a pluralist institution. There have been calls for his impeachment to restore normalcy.
While that framing is honest, it’s also inadequate.
Hegseth didn’t introduce Christian nationalism into the US military chaplaincy or the Pentagon. He walked into an institution that had spent decades preparing for his arrival. His visible, loud, leadership is the surface expression of a structural vulnerability that goes back to the 1960s. Hegseth is a symptom of the problem, but he’s not the problem. Not the only one, anyway.
The chaplaincy’s endorsing agency system is a military institutional mechanism that most Americans never knew existed. Under the architecture of the military chaplaincy, civilian religious organizations—like denominations, seminaries, or para-church groups—serve as the gatekeepers for the chaplain corps. Chaplains cannot commission into the military without an endorsement from one of these approved civilian religious bodies.
The Supreme Court established in Katcoff v. Marsh in 1985 that this civil-state structure protects religious freedom by keeping the government out of theological credentialing and defining, based on the Establishment Clause. In other words, the military doesn’t train chaplains on religion, only on how to be an officer in the service. The religion comes from the chaplain’s faith endorsers.
This structure hands off the power of the institutional pipeline to whoever controls the endorsing agencies.
And since the 1960s, Southern Baptist and other evangelical endorsing bodies have coalesced and fundraised to build that pipeline, and the numbers are staggering. While Southern Baptists represent roughly 3 percent of the US military’s general force, they represent approximately 69 percent of its chaplains. Evangelical divinity schools supply around 87 percent of chaplain candidates, according to Col. Chaplain Steven Keith.
These religious ideologies create a perfect pipeline into the volunteer chaplaincy and are the predictable result of a coordinated, long-term institutional investment in a specific kind of presence inside the American military. While chaplains could share these beliefs from the pulpit without interference in a civilian congregation, they see serving in the military as part of their messianic mission.
When I wrote my MTS thesis at Phillips Theological Seminary on this subject, I wanted to make clear (and still do) that the problem isn’t that bad actors slip through from time to time, but that organized Christian nationalist networks have intentionally exploited the system’s constitutional structural vulnerability. The rhetoric about holy war and changes to the chaplain corps policies aren’t outliers related to a one-off (or, I guess, technically a two-off) presidential administration. These are the deliberate goals of those who voted to make this administration possible. The chaplain corps and its rhetoric are working exactly as intended by those who’ve worked behind the scenes to make this happen for decades, paralleling the creation of today’s right-wing Supreme Court majority and the conservative Christian capture of local school boards.
There’s a sort of litmus test consisting of “two questions” that some use to “check to see which evangelical was a ‘truly Christian’ chaplain,” says Army Chaplain Lt. Col. (Ret.) Steve Peck, who served in both combat and chaplaincy leadership roles during his service 1996-2024. The first asks whether they invoke ‘In Jesus’s name’ in prayers; and the second asks whether or not a chaplain’s organized marriage or counseling retreat is ‘biblical’—Christian-speak for ‘heteronormative.’
Risks of divisive rhetoric or behavior impact the way commanders see the chaplaincy. “The average battalion commander became wary of the chaplains because an evangelizing chaplain could become a liability for the commander and unit. Chaplains were now a wildcard,” Lt. Col. Peck told RD. Peck, who identified as an acolyte of muscular Christianity-proponent Mark Driscoll in the 1990s has since distanced himself from Christian nationalism, though he continues to identify as evangelical. While chaplains were traditionally seen as community-builders, pluralistic caregivers, or morale-boosters, Peck says, “they’ve weaponized their spiritual authority and ‘freedom of speech’ to make trouble.”
When chaplains fractionalize, the fractures run deep down into the unit they care for. This manifests in the real world care and treatment of troops who are then excluded from marriage retreats that can provide critical support in the face of a chaotic, abnormal job, or they’re isolated in moments of prayer that could otherwise be an opportunity to include and affirm the whole unit cohesively. Litmus tests say more about social identity-signaling within the chaplaincy than it does about being a trusted, moral guidance for the entire unit in the theater of war.
“There is a chaplain that me and my fellow soldiers have had an issue with,” says National Guard E-5, Pat T.* “Every day at drill, he hands out daily quotes from the Christian Bible and will stand there next to you until you grab it from their hand.” And this uncomfortable invasion of privacy wasn’t just confined to the workplace. After learning that Active Duty Army intelligence officer, Raya R.,* was queer, she says, the “unit chaplain sent ‘pray the gay away’-type pamphlets and materials to my home address.”
Efforts by JAG and troops to rein in discriminatory or proselytizing chaplains are often thwarted by the endorsing agencies’ legal teams. After a Southern Baptist chaplain refused to include a queer soldier and their spouse on a military retreat because it was against his endorsing agency’s theology, the chaplain was investigated for discrimination . But the legal team of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention, the chaplain’s endorsing agency, pushed back.
“If chaplains were no longer welcome because of their religious beliefs, that would be a clear violation of the Constitution,” NAMB attorney Mike Berry said in Army Times. “And then what happens to all the other endorsing agencies that hold similar views? …It would virtually eliminate the Chaplain Corps.” Almost two decades after the Southern Baptists officially cited the military chaplain corps for “hostility,” they were outraged that they were charged with discriminating against and excluding soldiers within their unit. They see themselves as constantly under attack, even when they’re the ones drawing the boundaries of community.
Queer, female, or non-Christian service members navigate a system that was not designed for them. Constitutionally, the chaplaincy is mandated to “provide or provide for” the spiritual needs of service members from all religious or nonreligious backgrounds and to support female and queer chaplains and troops in the general force, but the provide-or-provide-for loophole is wide enough to wiggle doctrine through.
Over the last two decades, conservative, evangelical chaplains have pushed back on the “provide for” clause and expectation by increasing protections for themselves. These chaplains claim that being forced to minister to or care for those whose identity or beliefs the chaplain finds theologically disagrees with is a violation of the chaplain’s freedom. These chaplains argue, for example, that being required to work with a lesbian couple is forcing belief on them. This creates a situation where the chaplain’s beliefs are weighed against the well being of the soldiers the chaplain was intended to care for.
What Hegseth has done is accelerate and bring media attention to a process that was already well underway. Whether it was the monthly evangelical prayer services at the Pentagon led by his mentor, Doug Wilson (a pastor who has publicly endorsed marital rape, minimized the evils of slavery, and opposes women’s suffrage); invoking Jesus to a gathering of generals; or cutting DACOWITS, the advisory body that spent seven decades monitoring and supporting women in military service; Hegseth could not have pulled off “capturing” an institution in the middle of the night on his lonesome. He walked through an open door into a room of folks praying for his entrance.
A March 2026 Americans United for Separation of Church and State lawsuit names Establishment Clause violations in the Pentagon’s mandatory and semi-coerced worship events.The Constitutional argument is serious and the legal challenge is legitimate. But lawsuits can only address individual violations. They can’t fix the underlying structural conditions that make those violations possible and they can’t control what happens in the military chaplaincy at the institutional level, which isn’t subject to congressional oversight or federal litigation.
Most of the conversation continues to focus on Hegseth’s theology, or his disposition, or his capacity for office—and that’s to be expected. He’s no stranger to the camera and he certainly gives people something to talk about. But the story goes deeper: to the Christian nationalist capture of the endorsing agency system and the manipulation of a constitutional architecture that was designed to protect religious freedom but has been exploited to discriminate against service members who aren’t the ‘right kind of American soldier.’ These aren’t problems that a new administration or firing someone at the top of the Defense Department will remedy. These issues run deep; they require structural attention. But the first step is to look down the cracks to find out just how deep it really goes.
*Name has been changed to prevent potential retaliation.
Authors
Leigh Larson
Leigh Larson holds an MTS from Phillips Theological Seminary, where her thesis examined Christian Nationalism in US military chaplaincy; she served as a Chaplain Candidate in the USAFR and hosts Follow the Leighder, a multi-platform society and culture brand with 245K+ followers at the intersection of religion, politics, and women’s history.
Comment by Truth Uncensored Afrika. Please read Chuck Baldwins excellant article called Impeach Hegseth
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