TJ Walker critiques Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s announcement to promote a more explicitly Judeo‑Christian orientation in the U.S. military and to expand the Chaplain Corps. Walker contrasts Hegseth’s proposal with the religious views of several Founding Fathers (Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Monroe), arguing many were deists or supported separation of church and state. He frames Hegseth’s push as politically motivated and rooted in insecurity—arguing government promotion of a particular religion amounts to socializing religion and is inconsistent with the founders’ intent.
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Total 9,400: 6,000 in the Army, 2,300 in the Air Force, 1,100 in the Navy.
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Secretary of War Defense Pete Hegseth announces that the military is now going to be more explicitly pro Christian in its orientation or Judeo Christian. No more of this sissy secular humanism, apparently. No more of this squishy therapy type stuff. He is advocating what he thinks is a return to traditional Judeo Christian values. He says, quote, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists, not ministers. He is specifically endorsing that chaplains favor a Christian religious vision. And he wants to expand the Chaplain Corps. There are apparently 9,400 military members in the Chaplain Corps. 6,000 in the Army, 2,300 in the Air Force, 1,100 in the Navy. And he wants to get rid of those who apparently espouse other worldviews, because in Hegseth view, we should return to the wishes of the Founding Fathers, which sounds great. That sounds like a. Certainly a reasonable point of view. After all, he's a part of administration that was elected on making America great again, as in returning things to the past as they were. Certainly they talk a lot about the Founding Fathers, their love of the Founding Fathers. The administration's judicial picks always like to talk about the original intent of our founders. Okay, I'll bite. Let's take a look at what our Founding Fathers actually thought about religion. Let's go down the list. Thomas Paine. We would not have a United States of America if it had not been for his galvanizing pamphlet, Common Sense. Was Thomas Paine out writing Revolutionary tracks six days a week and the seventh day a week? He was in. In quiet prayer at the local Christian church or Quaker church? No, he was not. He was also the author of the Age of Reason, which directly attacks Christianity and the Bible. It's a great read, by the way. I highly recommend it for anyone who's interested in how our founders actually thought about religion. He rejected Jesus's divinity and organized religion entirely. Okay. You could say, well, he never was president. He wasn't in the Senate or the House. Maybe he shouldn't count. Okay, how about Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson called himself a deist. So back then, among the Founding Fathers, the. The educated el. They. Many of them had this sense, okay, there is kind of this notion of a God that kind of created things and then stepped away. And it's now up to humans to do whatever they want. Not someone sort of overseeing us, sending down sons and all that stuff. It was a very sort of vague, abstract kind of religious belief. So this is what Tom and Thomas Jefferson was. He called himself a deist. He actually Created the Jefferson Bible removing miracles and resurrection. Imagine how that would go over today if Thomas Jefferson were running for office. How dare you. You created your own Bible. That's blasphemy. He would be denounced by the religious right as an apostate, as a blasphemer. But different times, the way our founders intended our country to be was more tolerant of those with varying religious beliefs. Thomas Jefferson wrote his words not mine. He wrote that Christianity was quote, the most perverted system that ever shown on man. Ben Franklin identified as a deist in his autobiography. He rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ. He believed morality mattered more than doctrine. James Madison, strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, by Deism, defended strictly the separation of church and state, opposed religious establishments as harmful to liberty. Okay, but what about George Washington? Surely he was really big on the Jesus fellow, right? Well he never took communion. He avoided Christian language. He didn't really talk about Jesus Christ salvation. He spoke in vague terms of providence. He's widely regarded by historians as a deist or as a religious rationalist. These days he'd be mocked and ridiculed as a evil left wing radical secular humanist. But George Washington seemed to be a man of his times and it worked well at the time. John Adams rejected the Trinity, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, identified as a Unitarian, not a Christian in the orthodox sense. Now the modern Unitarian church certainly lets a lot of people, a lot of people in the Unitarian Church also consider themselves Christians. Some don't, but it certainly not what a lot of Christians to be considered the real Christians. It's not considered the real thing. It's considered really watered down. John Adams wrote that Christianity had been corrupted by superstition. Alexander Hamilton little evidence of orthodox Christian belief during his founding area religious revival late in life does not reflect how he actually felt at the founding. James Monroe, very much a product of the Enlightenment which was kind of hate to say it, very anti religion. He rarely referenced Christianity. He supported religious liberty and secular governance. So here's the bottom line. If Pete Hegseth wants to promote a particular religion, I guess for right now he has a lot of power and he can use some would say abuse his power to, to promote a particular religion. But make no mistake, it has nothing to do with what our founding fathers wanted. Anyone who says this was founded explicitly as a Christian nation, doesn't know anything about history, doesn't know anything about Christianity and certainly doesn't know anything about the founders religious views. The founders of this nation. So here's the other thing about pteg Seth with this new push to try to promote Judeo Christian values on soldiers. It really, I believe, stems from profound insecurity. If you think your religion, your religious values are so inferior to other religious ideas in the marketplace of ideas, then and only then does it make sense to use the hand of big government to ram it down people's throats. If you're so insecure that you can't convince people to buy into your religion, that you need the power of big government, or in this case, the power of your sarge yelling at you, hey, maggot, get on the ground and give me 20 push ups and say hello to Jesus Christ, your personal savior down there. That's kind of what it looks like or sounds like what Pete Hegseth wants. And Pete, why don't you try to persuade people rather than use big government? Because it sure sounds to me like you're so insecure about your own religion that you think it can't compete with, I don't know, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroasterism, secular humanism, people who think that religion is complete bs Seems like you can't compete with them. Why are you so insecure? And why do you essentially want to socialize religion? Because that's what it is when you take taxpayer dollars and give it to your Christian minister to try to then proselytize soldiers who are in a mode where they're told to say, yes, sir, whatever you say, sir, you're socializing religion. And you could call me a conservative if you want. You can say, I'm too conservative, but I still happen to believe that socialism is a bad thing and that most aspects of our economy and our culture should be in the free market. In the private sector, it should not be socialized. So that's why you can put me down as being vehemently against the Pete Hegseth plan to socialize Christianity and ram it down the throats of our American soldiers.
