Doug Wilson has a white beard and a round belly, and is therefore somewhat Santa-like in appearance. He does not seem at all like someone who delivers denunciations of homosexuality and women’s suffrage, and who takes an ambivalent position on the subject of pre–Civil War slavery.

On a recent Sunday morning, Wilson preached from the lectern at a conference center near Washington, D.C. The Idaho pastor’s sermon was mostly an academic examination of Ephesians 3:1–6 and its offering of God’s salvation. In this setting, at least, he skipped the hellfire rhetoric for which he’s known, making no reference to his theocratic vision of America’s future or his belief that the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation already took place—and is enabling a project of global Christian conquest. Throughout the service, I couldn’t help glancing from my spot in the back at a familiar figure seated with his family near the front, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Although Wilson’s Christ-or-chaos approach to spirituality is interesting enough, the reason I’d come that morning is that I had wanted to better understand what Hegseth saw in him. Like Wilson, Hegseth—the “secretary of war,” according to a recent declaration by Trump—has called for restoring a Christian ethos to American life, reversing the secularization of state institutions, and barring women from certain combat roles. But unlike the 72-year-old preacher, Hegseth heads a force of 3 million service members and civilians whose mission—a secular mission—is to keep the nation secure.

When the liturgy ended, Pentagon security officers flanked the room, and church officials politely but firmly steered me and the handful of other reporters out of the building so that we couldn’t see whether Hegseth and Wilson spoke. (Wilson wrote on his blog that they did.) When I asked Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, whether Hegseth shares the pastor’s beliefs, she was dismissive. “Despite the Left’s efforts to remove our Christian heritage from our great nation,” she replied in an email, “Secretary Hegseth is among those who embrace it.” Hegseth wouldn’t speak with me to elaborate.

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In an administration that is already heavy-handed in invoking Christian ideas and imagery in government work, Hegseth has gone further than anyone else. The belief that God has picked a political side is widely shared within Trump’s circle of advisers. Mass deportations, the expansion of presidential power, and, especially after Charlie Kirk’s murder, a desire for vengeance against perceived enemies are all, in their telling, divinely ordained. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” the thrice-married, non-churchgoing president has said.

All of this is a departure from how previous U.S. presidents and military leaders have understood the intersection of faith and duty for generations. Although America’s armed forces have always made space for religion, going back to the Battle of Bunker Hill, that place is a circumscribed one, entrusted primarily to several thousand chaplains responsible for attending to troops of their own faith and facilitating observance by those of other traditions. Prayers may be abundant in foxholes, but commanders typically do not dictate matters of spirituality.

Hegseth has swerved dramatically from that precedent. In addition to being the highest-profile member of the administration who belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, an Idaho-based denomination that identifies as Christian nationalist, he has made Christianit