The Freedom From Religion Foundation is launching an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alarming creation of a powerful new Office of Religious Affairs.
Hegseth made the explicitly religious motivation behind this office unmistakable in announcing it on Sept. 30. He invoked Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” proclaimed that Americans had rejected an “earthly king” in favor of a “heavenly king,” and declared that the military was “putting on the full armor of God” because “the real battle is spiritual.” Hegseth then asserted: “God is good. Evil is not. And America’s military must understand the difference.”
FFRF will file a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records surrounding the creation, planned operation and funding of the new office, including communications with outside religious organizations and documents showing how the Pentagon intends to measure the “spiritual fitness” of American service members. The state/church watchdog is warning that Hegseth is using the machinery of the Pentagon to elevate religion and his Christian nationalist agenda within the U.S. military.
“Our military serves a constitutional republic, not a heavenly kingdom,” observes Dan Barker, FFRF co-president. “Our troops swear an oath to defend our godless and entirely secular Constitution. They do not swear an oath to Christianity, the bible or Pete Hegseth’s deity.”
FFRF is inviting military personnel affected by Hegseth’s expanding religious initiatives, such as religious coercion, preferential treatment or “spiritual fitness” requirements to be in contact. Confidentiality is protected.
“Are you a service member affected by the Pentagon’s new religious policies?” asks Barker. “FFRF wants to hear from you. It intends to find out exactly what this office is doing, who is influencing it and how taxpayer money will be spent.”
Hegseth announced the Office of Religious Affairs during his Sept. 30 “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico. His memorandum grants the office sweeping authority over religious policy, funding and programming across the military. Its director will report directly to Hegseth and the deputy secretary, and will serve as their principal adviser on religious affairs.
The office will control the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, issue religious affairs policies on Hegseth’s behalf and represent him in dealings with Congress, government agencies and civilian religious endorsing organizations.
The office isn’t designed to accommodate individual service members’ religious practices, but instead to serve as the Pentagon’s power center for religion. It is specifically charged with securing funding and resources for religious ministry, religious facilities, chaplain-led programs, chapel youth programs, faith-based homeschool support for military families, faith-based initiatives for suicide reduction and contracts with faith-based organizations.
Most disturbingly, Hegseth has ordered the office to sponsor and oversee “research, technology, and analytical tools” to “assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness and spiritual resilience across the Total Force.”
The memo does not indicate what constitutes adequate “spiritual fitness,” how it will be measured, what information the Pentagon will collect about service members’ beliefs or nonbelief, or who will have access to that information. The memo likewise does not assure that participation will be voluntary or that assessments of a service member’s supposed spiritual readiness will have no bearing on evaluations, promotions, assignments or deployments.
And, critically, the memo does not explain how atheists or other nonreligious service members are supposed to demonstrate “spiritual fitness” under a military bureaucracy created by a secretary who publicly attacks nonbelief.
Hegseth, in announcing the office, explicitly blamed “Secular Humanism” for the supposed neglect of religion within the military.
“Political correctness and Secular Humanism got a vote,” Hegseth complained. “Chaplains did not.”
FFRF’s FOIA request will seek answers to these questions, including records defining “spiritual fitness,” “spiritual readiness” and “spiritual resilience”; information about any assessments, technologies or analytical tools under consideration; communications with outside religious organizations; proposed budgets and staffing; records involving faith-based suicide-prevention and homeschool programs; and communications discussing atheists, humanists, nonreligious service members, secular humanism or the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
“Nonreligious Americans are not a defect in our military that Pete Hegseth needs to correct,” adds Barker. “A service member does not need belief in a supernatural being to possess courage, morality, purpose or resilience. It is un-American and unconstitutional to impose a religious test on citizens who want to serve their country.”
Although Hegseth’s memo includes a disclaimer that nothing in it should compel religious participation or diminish the rights of service members “of any faith or no faith,” the disclaimer seems lame in the light of Hegseth’s repeated past attacks on secularism. Hegseth has regularly employed over-the-top Christian nationalist rhetoric and sought to elevate religion throughout the military.
Hegseth has ordered every military department to produce, within 90 days, a comprehensive inventory of its “unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements.” Hegseth’s memo contains no comparable directive demanding an accounting of unmet secular needs.
FFRF contends no new Pentagon bureaucracy is necessary to ensure that service members can freely practice their religion. The armed forces already maintain extensive chaplaincies, chiefs of chaplains and the Armed Forces Chaplains Board.
FFRF is calling on Congress to scrutinize the creation, authority and funding of the Office of Religious Affairs and will use its FOIA investigation to determine whether further legal action is warranted.
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.
