Hegseth Prays for ‘Armor of God’ on Military at Pentagon Worship Service
HUD Secretary Scott Turner gives a sermon on hope and football.
The first Pentagon worship service since the one when Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” offered a prayer that was drawn from the movie Pulp Fiction occurred Wednesday (May 20) without reference to the criticism and jokes over the past month. The service featured rhetoric from Hegseth and others blessing the U.S. military as doing God’s work and a sermon about hope from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, who is a former NFL football player and Southern Baptist pastor.
Noting that these monthly Christian services started one year ago, Hegseth called them “fitting and proper, especially given the business that we’re in.” Later in a prayer, he declared to God that those in the Pentagon were “seeking only to glorify you with what we do” and prayed that their actions would “glorify you in every single context.” He also asked that God would protect members of the U.S. military, adding, “Put on the armor of God in a worldly context and in a spiritual context for all of them.”
Unlike the last two services when he shared particularly violent prayers to justify the war in Iran, Hegseth shared a more subdued message and didn’t mention Iran. He recalled a trip earlier this month back to where he grew up in Minnesota, during which he went to church with his parents (at the Baptist megachurch where he used to attend as well). During the service, the preacher talked about how “at the foot of Christ’s cross, in the shadow of Christ, the ground is level. We are all equal before Christ.”
“Our works, our position, our status, our rank, our good intentions don’t matter in that context, and that should be both humbling for all of us, which I know it is for me,” Hegseth added. “It’s also reassuring that it isn’t us that earns that salvation through our works, it’s through the blood of Jesus Christ.”
A military chaplain who opened the service also christened the Pentagon’s work as God’s. He asked God to help those in the military “to do the work that you’ve assigned to our hands in such a way that it blesses your people and brings glory and honor into your name.”
“This service serves as a vital opportunity for reflection, renewal, and edification in the midst of our demanding duties and shared responsibility of supporting our national security mission,” he added. “It is essential to pause and draw strength both from our faith and our community.”
At the conclusion of the service, the chaplain again prayed to God that as those present “depart in peace,” they would “do so with a renewed sense of purpose and passion to do the work that you’ve assigned to our hands.”
Turner, the seventh Southern Baptist to preach during the 13 monthly Pentagon services, was the second member of the Trump Cabinet to give a sermon at the Pentagon. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, also a former Southern Baptist pastor, preached during the March service. Turner’s also the second former NFL player to preach after businessman Jack Brewer in September.
Turner started his sermon by saying that he and “our beloved team at HUD, we thank God for each of you and what you do for our country.” Preaching about God promising (in Genesis 15) to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars and Paul recounting that story (in Romans 4), Turner urged those in the military to be like how Paul described Abraham by having “hope against hope” and believing in what’s unseen even in difficult times. He explained this kind of hope by sharing his experience in the NFL getting cut by the San Diego Chargers and then brought back (before getting cut again, though he left that part out of his sermon). Through it all, he remained hopeful, he said, because he “knew God was calling me back to the team.”
At the conclusion of his sermon, Turner led those present in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Two members of the military then led congregational singing of “How Great Thou Art,” “How Great Is Our God,” and the “Doxology.”
‘Too Ridiculous’
The worship services at the Pentagon, which Hegseth started a year ago, have only featured rightwing patriarchal preachers. Several of them have joined Hegseth in using biblical references to justify military violence and even genocide. At the December “Christmas” service, Franklin Graham praised a “God of war” and urged the military leaders to follow a biblical call to genocide. In January, Hegseth read Psalm 144 as his prayer for the Venezuela military operation earlier that month. In March, Hegseth read a prayer that was basically a Mad Libs mashup of biblical violence. The next month, he read another violent prayer drawn from a monologue delivered by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
After A Public Witness broke the news about the Pulp Fiction prayer, the incident went viral on social media and sparked jokes by late night comics like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers. Saturday Night Live also mocked the moment with Colin Jost doing his popular Hegseth impersonation. Later, Jost appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and said he had actually pitched having his Hegseth character do the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17 as a joke before the April worship service.
“We were talking in the writers’ room, we were pitching ideas for one of the cold opens, like, two months ago. And I was like, ‘Would it be funny if Hegseth just did that Bible verse that they have in Pulp Fiction?’” Jost recounted. “We talked about it, and we were like, ‘That would be too ridiculous.’ And it would take up all this time in the cold open. … And then he for real did it! Like two weeks later! And I was like, ‘The good news is I’m being surveilled.’”
Despite the global headlines, late night jokes, and even a member of Congress mentioning it during a hearing with Hegseth, the secretary of defense has not addressed or even acknowledged the incident. He claimed during the April service that the prayer was previously used by military personnel who led a search and rescue mission in Iran to find a downed Air Force crew member. However, that has not been confirmed, nor is it clear if Hegseth was aware before the service that the prayer drew from the movie.
Hegseth spoke via video earlier this week at the “Rededicate 250” event on the National Mall. During his remarks, he shared, as he often does, the story of George Washington supposedly praying on bended knee in the snow at Valley Forge, but without acknowledging that the story is a myth. Turner spoke earlier this month at a “National Day of Prayer” event in the U.S. Capitol. He quoted Benjamin Franklin’s remarks to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as Franklin requested that they pray, but Turner didn’t mention that Franklin’s proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by the delegates.
Meanwhile, monthly worship services at the Department of Labor, which Hegseth had inspired the start of, stopped this month following the ousters of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor