Pete Hegseth
The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, directed a Christian service in the Pentagon on Wednesday, an event that a former lawyer of the Department of Defense called “incredibly problematic.”
The Hegseth Prayer Meeting at the Auditorium during the work hours “seemed to be the first for a Pentagon Chief,” Reuters wrote.
“Here it is precisely where I need to be, and I think that exactly where we need to be as a nation, at this time,” Hegseth said, according to the New York Times. “In prayer, on the folded knee recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Hegseth said the meeting was voluntary and could become a monthly event, said The Times. But critics questioned the legality of it.
A brochure entitled “Secretary of Defense of the Christian Prayer and Adoration Service” presented the seal of the Department of Defense, suggesting that Hegseth and the Government sponsored him, he told CNN, a lieutenant retired from the Rachel Vanlandham Air Force, now a law teacher. That could be a violation of the prohibition of the first amendment to the government that promotes a religion.
“I think it is sponsorship in the true meaning of the word, outside the financing: he is advocating this, he is putting his weight from the official office of the Secretary of Defense behind a particular religious event and invites someone to the Pentagon to carry it out,” he said, pointing out the appearance of Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of the Hegseth Church in Tennessee. “That’s wrong.”
A former Pentagon lawyer who left the job last month told CNN that the meeting was “incredibly problematic.”
By pointing out that the establishment of the first amendment causes the Government to support a religion, the lawyer said: “Having a transmission event is obviously support even if they do not officially say: ‘This is an event of the Pentagon.”
The service seems to be reinforcing the efforts of the Trump administration to connect to the Government with evangelical Christianity.
The president received a thanks from the pastor.
“We pray for our leaders who have sovereignly designated, by President Trump, thanks for the way he has used it to provide stability and moral clarity to our land,” Potteiger said, according to the Times. “And we pray to continue protecting it, bless it, give it great wisdom.”
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