Pete Hegseth’s Crusader Bible
Pete Hegseth’s Bible, like his body, is stamped with two Crusader tattoos.
When he was sworn in as the 29th secretary of defense by Vice President J.D. Vance on Jan. 25, 2025, Hegseth raised his right hand and placed his left hand on his olive green Bible. As he swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” his fingers rested on a Jerusalem Cross stamped into the leather of the front cover of the Bible. That same symbol, a large cross with four smaller crosses in the quadrants, is also tattooed on the right side of Hegseth’s chest.
His wife Jennifer held the Bible during the ceremony. On the back cover that rested on her hands, down near the bottom — kind of like the tramp stamp spot of the Bible — was the phrase “Deus Vult.” That phrase is also tattooed on Hegseth’s right bicep.
Hegseth’s tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult” are frequently invoked as literal signs of his Christian Nationalism — and rightly so. But the same symbols on his Bible were overlooked until now.
The Jerusalem Cross, also known as the five-fold cross and the crusader’s cross, served as an emblem of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was a medieval Crusader state. While the symbol is sometimes used in solely religious ways, it also often carries a political message and in recent years has been popular among far-right extremist groups — especially as White supremacists have appropriated Crusader imagery to cast themselves as Christian warriors fighting to drive out Muslims and others in the name of God.
The phrase “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” is also associated with the Crusades. Supposedly uttered by Pope Urban II as he launched the First Crusade in 1095, it became a chant of the Crusaders. Today, its popularity with White supremacists shows how they imagine themselves as continuing the fight of the medieval Crusaders. The phrase has been seen on flags, along with a Crusader cross, at the 2017 White supremist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and elsewhere. And its placement on Hegeth’s bicep got him flagged by a fellow National Guard member, thus keeping him from helping provide security during Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 out of concerns it showed he held extremist beliefs.
In Hegseth’s 2020 book American Crusade, he wrote that the phrase “Deus Vult” called “followers of Christ to take up the sword in defense of their faith, their families, and their freedom.” He then ended the book with that cry: “See you on the battlefield. Together, with God’s help, we will save America. Deus vult!”
It turns out, he doesn’t just read the Bible like a Crusader; he actually has a Crusader Bible with the cover essentially made in his own image.
There’s another fact about that Bible that caught my attention: the letters “ESV” on the spine. As I paid attention over the past several months to how Pete Hegseth quotes the Bible at monthly worship services he started at the Pentagon and in other speeches and press conferences, I would look up the verses and noticed he usually reads from the English Standard Version.
So I decided to dig deeper to consider what we can read about Hegseth from the Bible he reads. That’s the focus of the newest episode of “A Trick of State,” a special occasional series from Dangerous Dogma. In this series, I investigate underexplored issues at the intersection of church and state that expose the false promises of Christian Nationalism.
While I open the episode with the story of the Crusader images on his Bible, the focus is on the ESV, patriarchy in the faith communities Hegseth has been a part of, and his Christian Nationalism. To explore all of that, I interviewed sociologist Samuel Perry (author of Religion for Realists and coauthor of Taking America Back for God and The Flag and the Cross) and journalist Sarah Stankorb (author of Disobedient Women and the forthcoming Damned If She Does).
You can listen to the show wherever you get podcasts, including on Spotify, iTunes, or YouTube. Or just click the player below. Thanks for listening!
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor