Where Pete Hegseth Gets His Regressive Ideas About Women

Pete Hegseth’s church is just as bigoted and extremist as he is.

The latest scandal facing President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Defense Department—who has already been accused of sexual assault, predatory workplace behavior, and showing up to work drunk—revolves around the church that the warmongering, Christian nationalist belongs to.

Salon reports that Hegseth made a dramatic, spiritual about-face after his 2017 rape allegation, as faith conveniently became “real” to him during that time. He moved to Tennessee and saddled up with Christ Church and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and sent his children to its affiliated schools, the Association of Classical Christian Schools, or ACCS. This group is led by pastor Doug Wilson, an unordained minister who preaches right-wing extremism from the pulpit.

Wilson believes men have a sexual right to women, and has written that unsubmissive women are at fault for sexual violence committed against them. “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party … a man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” Wilson also believes that God created women “to make the sandwiches” and thinks that giving women the right to vote led to “a long, sustained war on the family.”

“Wilson holds the most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida, told Salon. “Women are taught that submission to their husbands (and other male authorities) is submission to God. Independence of any kind is cast as sin.”

Hegseth isn’t just an Easter-Christmas member of Wilson’s church: He’s a staunch public advocate. He posted in support of its schools, commended Wilson for not masking during the pandemic, and went on the ACCS affiliated CrossPolitic podcast shortly after his nomination for Defense Secretary. It makes sense that a man with multiple allegations of mistreating women would feel right at home in Doug Wilson’s Christ Church. And if confirmed, Hegseth will be sure not to leave a single degree of separation between his fanatical church and our state.