Pete Hegseth’s New Religious Affairs Office Sparks a Legal Church-State Fight

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood on stage this week in front of thousands of U.S. military personnel, quoting Bible scripture while attacking the “woke” and the “weirdos.” His religiosity is now extending to all service members, prompting a new battle involving the government, free speech, and the Constitution.

The secretary on Sept. 30 at Quantico announced a new Pentagon Office of Religious Affairs. He justified the new endeavor in religious terms, telling the gathered attendees that the military was putting on “the full armor of God.”

Hegseth quoted Psalm 33:12, explaining that “the real battle is spiritual.” He told troops that because fewer than 5% of service members identify as nonreligious, 95% therefore recognize “an Almighty God.”

According to Military Times, demographic profiles show that roughly 70% of service members identify as Christian, while about a quarter are listed as unknown or unclassified.

The office, created by a memorandum signed by Hegseth, will report directly to the defense secretary.

A director will head the office and serve as the senior adviser. The senior adviser role is an additional title given to the director, rather than an independent person leading the effort.It will be led by a senior adviser on religious affairs, though it presently remains unknown who that individual is or may be.

According to the memorandum, the office is tasked with aligning religious-affairs policy, overseeing the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, representing the department to civilian religious endorsing organizations, and sponsoring research and tools to “support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.”

Within 90 days, the military services are to submit a report identifying unfunded and underfunded religious affairs needs, from chaplain programs to facilities.

The memo also contains a safety net. It states that nothing in it “shall be construed to compel religious participation or to diminish the free exercise rights of any service member, civilian employee, or family member of any faith or no faith.”

Military.com reached out to the Defense Department for comment on how the office will operate and guard against favoring one faith.No response was received prior to publication.

The Office Might Be Lawful

Legal precedent has shown that cases involving religion have mixed results and have been judged by different constitutional scrutiny, based on arguments involving the Establishment Clause and the so-called Lemon test established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 to determine if that clause is violated.

The military has had chaplains since the nation’s founding, and courts have upheld the practice because the government—when it sends troops to places it cannot reach with civilian clergy—must enable their free exercise of religion.

A federal appeals court upheld the Army chaplaincy on that reasoning, noting that military chaplaincies existed when the First Amendment was adopted.

The Supreme Court currently reinforces this. In its 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court moved away from older tests and said the Establishment Clause should be read against historical practice, and that the government need not scrub religion from public life to stay neutral.

Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, told HuffPost that Hegseth likely has the authority to create the office.

“As a matter of bureaucracy, he can probably do this,” Fidell said. “That’s not the problem. The problem is the First Amendment.”

Richard Garnett, who directs the Notre Dame Program on Church, State and Society, told the outlet the memo is not necessarily unconstitutional as written.

Questions About the Legal Line

For those same experts, the constitutional risk lies not in the office’s existence but in how it is run.

Under long-standing Supreme Court precedent, the First Amendment requires the government to remain neutral between religions.

Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement shared with Military.com that the plan elevates Christianity “to an even higher role in shaping U.S. military policy” and advances what she described as a “Christian Nationalist agenda.”

Douglas Laycock, one of the country’s most prominent religious-liberty scholars, told HuffPost that an office supporting chaplains would be constitutional if administered correctly.

“But given what we know about Hegseth,” he said, “it is not likely to be done right.”

The office is directed to support tools that assess “spiritual fitness,” invoking a term the military has used before in other wellness programs.

Advocacy groups cast the office as a step toward elevating Christianity in the military.

Both the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) and Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) called it a First Amendment violation, pointing to Hegseth’s record and continued practices, including monthly Christian prayer services at the Pentagon.

MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein, in a statement shared with Military.com, said the organization “condemns in the strongest terms extant in the English language the disgusting, immoral, unethical and unconstitutional actions” of Hegseth and vows to fight the secretary’s “Christian nationalist bigotry, hatred and prejudice.”

Any legal challenge to the office as written could face obstacles, including standing, which is the requirement that a plaintiff show concrete personal harm rather than general offense.

The potentially more consequential litigation, if it comes, will likely target how the office operates—whether that’s a specific funding decision, a coerced prayer, or a military career consequence.