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The October 3, 2026, edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press carried an Associated Press article by Tiffany Stanley entitled “Hegseth creates Office of Religious Affairs.”  Pete Hegseth, our current Secretary of Defense/War, “has infused his evangelical Christianity into his leadership of the Pentagon, hosting Christian worship services for employees and often speaking of the United States as a Christian nation.  The Office of Religious Affairs, or ORA, will advocate for military chaplains and religious support ‘at the highest level of the Department,’” the article goes on to say.

 

The article further reminds the reader that “the Defense Department also slashed the number of religious affiliations it officially recognizes, down to 31 from more than 200 previously recognized traditions.  The list no longer includes atheists, Unitarian Universalists, pagans and Wiccans.”  Most of the 31 remaining affiliations are Christian in nature.

 

And as he often does, Hegseth quoted Biblical scripture, saying, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do unto me?”

 

In 2025 President Trump created a Religious Liberty Commission, which in part began with the premise that Christianity has been discriminated against.  The Commission was comprised of all Christian adherents, with the exception of one Jewish rabbi.  There was no representation of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, or Unitarian Universalism, for that matter. Its findings, presented in June of 2026, strongly encouraged the Department of Justice to work to redefine the separation of church and state, and that the nation should repeal the Johnson amendment to allow political endorsements from church pulpits among other recommendations.  It’s basic premise was that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and should be a Christian nation.

 

Here’s a short reminder of why separation of church and state has been such a fundamental position in most of our first 250 years.  This quote is taken from a Bridgewater (CT) State University website:

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In 1802 Thomas Jefferson (fairly newly inaugurated as President) wrote a letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Convention in which he presented his views on the relationship between religion and the role of the state in the new nation. Basing his views on the establishment clause of the First Amendment which said that there should be “no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” Jefferson stated that there must be a “wall of separation” that clearly limited the involvement of religious denominations and religious leaders in matters related to national governance.

 

Founding Fathers like Jefferson were concerned that allowing religion and religious denominations to cross over the wall and introduce beliefs and practices into the governing realm would create a polarizing environment that could make policy decisions and national leadership a difficult and contentious process. There was concern in the early years of our nation and certainly today that religion could be used to pressure citizens who held different views or had no religious conviction to conform to the beliefs and practices of a particular religion. Jefferson, like many other of the early leaders of the United States, were committed to what is commonly called at secular state, in which citizens can openly hold religious beliefs and participate in religious services, but not seek to influence the direction of the state on matters of national policy. It is important to note that the words, God, Jesus and Christianity are not mentioned in the Constitution as evidence that the writers of this basic governing document wanted to put up a strong wall of separation.

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Opinion columnist George Will is almost always on the conservative side of an issue, but offered an interesting take on the Christian nation idea in a column printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on October 1, 2026.  It was titled “Religious ‘Integralists’ on the right, meet your socialist soulmates.”  Will’s concluding paragraph reads:

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“Integralists who speak, as Vance does, of “the Christian foundation of this country” are baptizing the Founders without their permission.  The six most important—Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton—held, tepidly, various flavors of deism, which says a clockmaker deity got the universe going, then His attention wandered.  The six tended toward unitarianism, the watery belief that there is at most one God.  Integralists, like socialists, promise political transformations that will achieve salvation for our fallen world.  Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).  Integralists, like socialists, are more ambitious.”

 

Hegseth ignores us Unitarian Universalists, Will calls our belief “watery,” — what’s a liberal religious thinker to make of all this discussion of what kind of nation we inhabit?