The Pentagon Confirmed Hegseth Admires a Theologian Who Called Slavery ‘Benevolent’
Authority enforced by violence is at the heart of the theology of Pete Hegseth's infamous speech to the the generals
The Pentagon confirmed it in August.
Chief Spokesman Sean Parnell stated that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings” (NPR, August 9, 2025).
Doug Wilson is a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, who describes himself as a “paleo-Confederate.” He published a booklet in 1996 arguing that slavery was “far more benign” than portrayed and that “the Christians who owned slaves in the South were on firm scriptural ground.” After University of Idaho historians documented 24 passages plagiarized from another work, Wilson withdrew the booklet — then republished the core arguments in 2005.
Historian Peter H. Wood called Wilson’s arguments “as spurious as Holocaust denial.”
Two months after the Pentagon confirmation, Hegseth summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, and senior enlisted leaders to Marine Base Quantico.
What he delivered was not a policy address. It was a sermon.
“Welcome to the War Department,” Hegseth announced, “because the era of the Department of Defense is over.” (Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 authorizing the secondary title; only Congress can change the legal name, but war.gov is now the official website.)
He called for “risk takers and aggressive leaders.” He demanded the “highest male standard only” for combat positions. He referenced “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” He announced a “1990 test” — any policy changed after that year would need to justify itself or be reversed.
The speech was mandatory viewing for all service members.
Wilson’s theology doesn’t just defend slavery as a historical institution. It extracts from slavery a theory of authority — one that applies to husbands, fathers, rulers, and now, the American military.
The theory is simple: Legitimate authority requires the willingness to inflict pain.
The Theological Genealogy
The theology has a name: Robert Lewis Dabney.
Dabney served as chief of staff to Stonewall Jackson. He was the preeminent theologian of Southern Presbyterianism. His A Defense of Virginia (1867) argued that slavery was divinely ordained — and more importantly, that authority itself requires the capacity to discipline, to inflict pain.
Dabney died in 1898. His theology did not.
R.J. Rushdoony reprinted Dabney’s works through his Chalcedon Foundation, founded in 1965. Rushdoony kept Dabney’s core framework: God ordains hierarchies. Authority requires capacity for discipline. Egalitarianism is heresy. Patriarchy is divine order.
Doug Wilson took Rushdoony’s framework and merged it with masculinity ideology:
“The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts... True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”
— Fidelity: What It Means to Be a One-Woman Man (Canon Press, 1999)
In Federal Husband, Wilson teaches that discipline “must be... painful.”
He and his wife Nancy “laughingly recount to a roomful of parents how they spanked their toddler 20 to 30 times so he would take a nap, in order to ‘win.’” Wilson explains how such discipline should be administered “without attracting the notice of child protective services.”
The Translation
The Quantico speech is Wilson’s theology translated into military doctrine.
Consider the parallels:
On Aggressiveness:
Wilson/Canon Press: “Aggressive traits are gifts from God”
Hegseth at Quantico: “We need risk takers and aggressive leaders”
On Strength:
Wilson/Canon Press: “God made men to be strong”
Hegseth at Quantico: “Either you can meet the standard... or you are out”
On Male Authority:
Wilson/Canon Press: Patriarchy and male headship
Hegseth at Quantico: “highest male standard only” for combat
Hegseth at Quantico: “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings leadership ends right now”
From It’s Good to Be a Man (Canon Press, 2021), published by Wilson’s Canon Press:
“Men’s natural aggressive instincts are gifts from God that are meant to be used for the kingdom. Men are supposed to found households, join brotherhoods, and work towards a mission. God made men to be strong and to be risk-takers.“
At Quantico:
“We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you.”
The language is not similar. It is identical.
The Ten Directives
The Quantico speech wasn’t just rhetoric. Hegseth issued ten specific directives — each one a translation of Wilson’s theology into military regulation.
Male-only combat standards — “highest male standard only”
Combat field test — executable in any environment, no accommodations
Mandatory PT twice yearly — daily physical training required
End of beards, long hair — “No more beardos”
IG/EO/MEO overhaul — “No more walking on eggshells”
“Toxic leadership” redefined — enforcing standards is not toxic
Standards review: the “1990 test” — pre-DADT, pre-women in combat
Merit-only promotions — end race/gender considerations
Reduced mandatory training — less PowerPoint, more range time
Drill sergeant authority — “Yes, they can put their hands on recruits”
The “1990 test” is the key. Any policy changed after 1990 must justify itself or be reversed.
What happened after 1990?
1993: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” implemented
2010: DADT repealed — open LGBTQ service
2013: Combat exclusion policy for women lifted
2015: All combat roles opened to women
2016: Transgender service members allowed
2021: First female combatant commanders
The “1990 test” isn’t nostalgia. It’s a systematic rollback framework — restoring the military to a state before women served in combat, before LGBTQ service members could serve openly, before any of the policies that violated Wilson’s doctrine of divinely ordained gender hierarchy.
Hegseth also revealed something else at Quantico: “A few weeks ago at our monthly Pentagon Christian prayer service...”
This isn’t military chaplaincy — the traditional accommodation of individual religious practice. This is an official War Department religious observance, led by the Secretary, with the commander’s prayer recited.
Dominionism with aircraft carriers.
The Aggressive Thread
This is where theology becomes body count.
Wilson teaches that “aggressive traits are gifts from God.” Hegseth demands “aggressive leaders” at Quantico. The same language, absorbed into federal doctrine, produces a new legal category: “aggressive protester.”
Neither violent nor peaceful. A category that justifies force.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche explained it after Alex Pretti was shot — forensic analysis confirmed ten shots fired in approximately five seconds (ABC News timeline) — while backing away with his palms raised:
“He was not protesting peacefully—he was screaming in the face of ICE, he had a phone up right into ICE’s face. You tell me: is that protesting peacefully?”
When asked if Pretti was violent, Blanche said: “I did not say that he was violent. I said that he was not protesting peacefully.”
The doctrine creates the category. The category creates the target. The target increases the body count.
The Sin of Empathy
Joe Rigney — Cities Church founder, New Saint Andrews fellow, Wilson disciple — teaches that empathy is sinful.
In 2018, Wilson and Rigney recorded “The Sin of Empathy.” Rigney later published a book with Canon Press arguing that empathy “often leads to cowardice” and “frequently leads to brazen malice and cruelty.”
Wilson provides the theological foundation:
“When Adam reached for the fruit, he was untethering himself from the sure word of God, and identifying himself completely with his wife and her outrageous behavior. He gave himself over to the sin of empathy, ate the fruit, and that is how the world went dark.”
The logic:
Empathy is sinful
Feeling the suffering of others is a temptation to be resisted
Agents of authority must maintain emotional detachment
This detachment is righteous, not callous
Columbia International University professors challenged the doctrine, arguing that empathy is “a virtue Jesus displayed” and that failing to show it makes someone “come across as hardened, narcissistic, emotionally detached.”
But within Wilson’s network, the teaching holds.
The Organizational Link
David Easterwood is a pastor at Cities Church — Rigney’s congregation. He preaches there on Sundays. During the week, he serves as the acting field director for ICE in Minnesota.
He absorbs the anti-empathy doctrine on Sunday.
He directs the deportation operations on Monday.
The doctrine that empathy is sin produces agents who feel nothing when citizens are shot.
The Network
Wilson built institutions.
From Moscow, Idaho, population 25,000, Christ Church now has approximately 3,000 members. Wilson also founded:
Canon Press — publishing arm
New Saint Andrews College — higher education
Greyfriars Hall — ministerial training
Logos School — the flagship of what became the Association of Classical Christian Schools
The scale today:
ACCS: Over 500 member schools across the country
CREC (Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches): 160+ churches and parishes worldwide
Christ Church DC: Opened 2025, blocks from the U.S. Capitol
NPR’s Heath Druzin, after interviewing Wilson, characterized his approach: Wilson “sees his educational enterprises as munitions factories. Students are munitions.”
The Assessment
Wilson was candid about what the 2024 election meant. He told the Idaho Capital Sun:
“I was grateful for Trump’s win, and believe that it is much more likely that Christians with views similar to mine will receive positions in the new administration.”
After the election:
“This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now.”
The Pentagon confirmed his assessment.
At the 2025 National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C., three figures were featured speakers at the same event:
Doug Wilson — speaking on “The American Founding and the Lessons of the Golden Calf”
Pete Hegseth — Secretary of Defense
Tom Homan — Border Czar
Robert Lewis Dabney died in 1898.
His theology now runs the War Department.
Related Coverage
Tom Homan: The Commander — The 40-year mission, the NatCon connection, and the FBI investigation
The ICE Director Who Preaches on Sundays — Easterwood, Cities Church, and the Wilson network in Minneapolis
An Ordained Minister Was Arrested for Asking Questions in Church — Nekima Levy Armstrong’s confrontation with Easterwood
After Anthony Burns: No Fugitive Was Ever Returned — Federal power versus local resistance, then and now
Here Am I, Send Me — DHS recruitment and the Isaiah 6:8 video Bovino posted
One of Ours, All of Yours — Collective punishment doctrine and Klan origins
Sources
Antebellum Theology
Robert Lewis Dabney, A Defense of Virginia, and Through Her, of the South (1867)
Christian Reconstructionism
R.J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law (1973)
Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Ed Dobson, quoted in Randall Balmer, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right” (Politico, 2014)
Doug Wilson and CREC
Doug Wilson, Black & Tan (Canon Press, 2005)
Doug Wilson, Fidelity: What It Means to Be a One-Woman Man (Canon Press, 1999)
Doug Wilson, Federal Husband (Canon Press)
Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant, It’s Good to Be a Man (Canon Press, 2021)
Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy (Canon Press, 2024)
Historical Analysis
Sean M. Quinlan and William L. Ramsey, “Southern Slavery as it Wasn’t: Professional Historians Respond to Neo-Confederate Misinformation” (University of Idaho, 2003)
Mark Potok (SPLC): “Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins have essentially constructed the ruling theology of the neo-Confederate movement.”
Wilson-Hegseth Connection
Idaho Capital Sun: “Trump’s Defense secretary nominee has close ties to Idaho Christian nationalists” (November 2024)
PBS News: “What to know about the archconservative church Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends” (August 2025)
NPR: “Inside the conservative Idaho church with ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth” (August 9, 2025) — includes Sean Parnell confirmation and Heath Druzin’s characterization: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/09/nx-s1-5099282/pete-hegseth-church-doug-wilson
War Department: “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Addresses General and Flag Officers at Quantico” (September 30, 2025) — full transcript with ten directives
Quantico Directives and “1990 Test”
Defense One: “SecDef uses unprecedented meeting to unveil 10 personnel, due-process reviews” (September 2025)
The Hill: “5 takeaways: Pete Hegseth announces new policies at massive military meeting” (September 2025)
USNI News: “Pentagon Issues New Guidance on Physical Fitness, Grooming Standards Following Quantico Speech” (September 30, 2025)
War.gov: Official Transcript
Pentagon Christian Prayer Services
CNN: “Hegseth hosts first meeting of what he says will be a monthly Christian prayer service at Pentagon” (May 21, 2025)
Military.com: “Hegseth Starts Evangelical Prayer Services at Pentagon with His Tennessee Church Pastor” (May 21, 2025)
Stars and Stripes: “Pentagon holds first Christmas worship service with Reverend Franklin Graham” (December 17, 2025)
“Deus Vult” Tattoo
Retired Master Sgt. DeRicko Gaither, email to D.C. National Guard (January 14, 2021)
Department of War Name Change
White House: Executive Order 14347, “Restoring the United States Department of War” (September 5, 2025)
Military.com: “The Department of War? Not Legally: What Trump’s Executive Order Really Does”
Alex Pretti Shooting
ABC News: “A minute-by-minute timeline of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti”
Hennepin County Medical Examiner: Ruled homicide from multiple gunshot wounds
Forensic audio/video analysis: Ten shots fired in approximately five seconds
National Conservatism Conference 2025
National Conservatism Conference program (September 2-4, 2025, Washington D.C.)
NPR: “A DC conference brings together a group of conservative political and religious leaders” (September 2025)
“Sin of Empathy”
Doug Wilson, “Empathy, Effeminacy, and the Fall of Man” (Blog & Mablog)
Julie Roys: “Columbia Int’l Professors Confront Notion that Empathy is Sin”
This article is part of ongoing coverage of the theological networks behind federal enforcement policy. For the full series, see The Gamergate Army Gets Badges and Guns.
This piece traces a theological genealogy from a Confederate chaplain to the current Secretary of Defense.
I’ve tried to let the sources and the parallel language speak for themselves, but I want to hear from readers:
What’s landing? What needs more evidence? What connections am I missing?
If you have expertise in Reformed theology, Christian Reconstructionism, or military policy — or if you’ve had direct experience with Wilson’s network — I especially want to hear from you.
Sean Parnell is he related to pastor Jonathan Parnell??