The Conversation

In 2023, Hegseth moved from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church and school community that arises from a 20th-century movement, called Christian Reconstruction. It holds deeply conservative views about the family, roles for women, and how religion and politics are related.

The followers of the movement seek to make America a Christian nation, by which they mean a nation built on biblical law, including its prohibitions and punishments.

Senators at Hegseth’s confirmation hearings will likely be reluctant to engage in questions about religion, yet in the religious community with which Hegseth has associated himself, there is no distinction between religious issues and political ones; there is no separation of church and state. Every area of life is to be governed by the Bible, and there is no secular sphere of authority that exists apart from religion.