Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has invited a controversial pastor with misogynistic views to speak at the Pentagon’s monthly worship service.
Christian nationalist Pastor Doug Wilson has pushed for a return to patriarchal values, including scrapping women of the right to vote. He told CNN in 2025 that females should focus on being mothers, noting “it doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically.”
In a Politico profile last May, Wilson said that American society, and government, should be governed by a conservative take on Biblical law and he wanted to see America transform into a Christian republic.
It claimed Wilson and his CREC had been adopted by the “New Right” of the GOP, who aligned with his hardline conservative views on abortion and same-sex marriage.
The deeply religious Hegseth is a member of a church affiliated with Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), and the pastor is now opening a branch in Washington, D.C.
Wilson built his Evangelical church in Moscow, Idaho and now has a 150-strong network, as well as running a Christian publishing company, a Christian school and college. He spoke at the Pentagon on Tuesday, with the Pentagon’s X account sharing photos of Hegseth with Wilson.
Hegseth, who has been married three times, has made no secret of his support for Wilson and his extreme views. Last August, he shared a CNN profile on Wilson where he advocated for the return of laws against homosexuality and claimed that women’s priorities should be starting families and raising children.
“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically.”
In the clip, which Hegseth captioned “All of Christ for All of Life,” one of Wilson’s female congregation members admits she “submits” to her husband, while Executive Pastor Jared Longshore said he would support the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, to be repealed.
Wilson also has no females in leadership roles in his church“because the Bible says not to.”
The pastor posted a transcript of his Pentagon Prayer service on his blog on Tuesday, which shied away from some of his previous controversial statements.
“We are looking to God to provide us with what we desperately need in a desperate hour,” he told troops, later noting, “God can do what He likes, as we all should know by now, and what He likes to do is take the most unlikely materials and do something glorious with it. Take a prayer meeting at the Pentagon for a possible example...”
The Daily Beast has contacted Wilson for comment.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson did not address questions about Wilson’s view on females, voting or homosexuals, but said “Secretary Hegseth, along with millions of Americans, is a proud Christian and was glad to welcome Pastor Wilson to the Pentagon today.”
“The Christian faith is woven deeply into the fabric of our nation and shared by America’s wartime leaders like President George Washington, who prayed for his troops at Valley Forge, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gifted Bibles to America sodiers during WW2 and encouraged them to read it,” Wilson continued. “Despite the Left’s efforts to remove our Christian heritage from our great nation, Secretary Hegseth is among those who embrace it.”
Wilson referred the Daily Beast to comments she made last August after the backlash to Hegseth’s X post sharing Wilson’s views. “Of course the Secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote,” she said at the time. “That’s a stupid question.”
“As we have said on-the-record numerous times, the Secretary is a proud member of a church that is affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson,” she continued. “The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
