The Freedom From Religion Foundation is blasting a social media post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has sent out scapegoating non-Christians and atheists.
The intemperate post arose from a dispute over repeated religious greetings by gate guards at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation reported receiving complaints about the guards there repeatedly greeting personnel entering the base with “God bless you.” One service member said they heard the greeting consistently over multiple days and viewed the repetition as an officially sanctioned religious message. The practice reportedly stopped after the complaint was received.
Hegseth, a Christian nationalist, responded via social media, savaging the advocacy group as a “radical anti-Christian, pro-atheist group” and stating that the Pentagon would “never cave” to the organization and that the Air Force would “confront this.”
Making Hegseth’s comments particularly hateful is the reality that, as FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor points out, 18 percent of active military members are atheist/agnostic, and another 32 percent have no religious affiliation, according to research, putting the “Nones” overall at half of current military members!
“Whatever the facts of the matter are, the secretary’s vituperative and prejudiced language against non-Christians and atheists is deeply dismaying, disrespectful and unacceptable,” she says. “Our military represents Americans of every faith and no faith, and those who serve our country should never be made to feel like their government considers one set of religious believers as favored and the others deserving of public calumny.”
The military must distinguish between the private religious expression of individual service members and religious messages delivered as part of an official government interaction. The Air Force’s own standards recognize precisely this distinction. Air Force Instruction 1-1 requires leaders to balance constitutional protections for the free exercise of religion with the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion: “Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for free exercise of religion and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions do not discriminate against any individual or group because of their faith, belief, or absence of belief, or extend preferential treatment for the same. Leaders must ensure that their personal expression is not reasonably associated with their government role, but may engage in such expression per DAFI 52-201, Religious Freedom in the Department of the Air Force.”
Air Force guidance has stated that its constitutional responsibilities prohibit officially endorsing a particular religion or “the idea of religion over nonreligion.” The Air Force has likewise explained that personnel are free to practice their own beliefs while respecting differing viewpoints and that leaders must avoid using their positions to promote personal religious beliefs or give preferential treatment for any religion. The Air Force itself has described pluralism as a source of strength. Its longstanding guidance emphasizes the importance of Americans representing many religions serving “shoulder-to-shoulder with those who claim no religion.”
That is the principle that should be guiding Hegseth.
Members of the U.S. military swear an oath to support and defend America’s godless and entirely secular Constitution. Maintaining governmental neutrality toward religion honors that oath while preserving the individual religious freedom of every service member.
Hegseth’s shameless tirade undermines military regulations, signals that he considers non-Christians and freethinkers alike to be second-class citizens, and undermines the religious freedom protected by the U.S. Constitution itself.
Gaylor notes that if Hegseth cannot carry out his professional obligations to uphold equal protection under the law, he should resign.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
