U.S. commanders are reportedly telling troops that President Donald Trump’s surprise war with Iran is part of “God’s divine plan.”
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation—a nonprofit that advocates for service members’ constitutional right to religious freedom—says it has received more than 200 calls from active-duty personnel across 50 military installations since the U.S. struck Iran in coordination with Israel overnight Saturday. Callers say their commanders have likened Trump’s war to a holy war.
A spokesperson for the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated organization shared one such complaint from an active-duty service member in a statement published Tuesday.
“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be ‘afraid’ as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now,” one active-duty military member who identified as a Christian said, according to the MRFF.
“He urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’. He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy.”
The anonymous service member described the remarks as a “violation” of the Constitution and said it was wrong “to have to suffer through what our commander said today.”
“It’s not just the separation of church and state… It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command,” the active-duty member wrote.
In response, MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein said in a statement to journalist Jonathon Larsen: “These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.”
He continued: “Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology.”
Weinstein called on the Department of Defense to adhere to the separation of church and state and to take swift action against any commander found to have violated the law.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
This isn’t the first time Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department has faced accusations of eroding the separation of church and state.
The former Fox News anchor has launched a monthly Christian worship series at the Pentagon and last month invited self-described Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson—who has supported repealing women’s right to vote and criminalizing homosexuality—to deliver a sermon in the Pentagon auditorium.
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.
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 of Wilson in which the pastor advocated for reinstating laws against homosexuality and claimed that women’s priorities should be starting families and raising children.
