Dividing Lines

Pentagon-sponsored Christian Worship

Service Called An Egregious  

Abuse of Power

FFRF: Sectarian Takeover at Pentagon Must Be Stopped

    (FFRF) -- 5/27/25 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation is renewing its urgent call to the Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to halt sectarian religious services in official Pentagon spaces, following troubling details about the inaugural event.

    Despite advance warnings from FFRF about the clear constitutional violations such an event would pose, Hegseth and the Pentagon invited all staff to attend a Pentagon-sponsored Christian worship service on government property during official working hours. The event, reportedly attended by hundreds of Department of Defense employees and broadcast across military channels, was organized by Hegseth and featured his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger — a minister known for promoting Christian nationalism and political partisanship — who delivered a sermon declaring President Trump a “divinely appointed” leader.

    Potteiger opened the service by thanking God for Trump and other officials who were “sovereignly appointed,” praising Trump for bringing “stability and moral clarity to our lands.” The service included sectarian preaching, worship songs, bible readings, and the Lord’s Prayer — all conducted from the Pentagon’s main auditorium, a symbolically significant site of U.S. government power.

    Hegseth himself offered a prayer to “King Jesus,” stating: “We come as sinners saved only by that grace, seeking your providence in our lives and in our nation. Lord God, we ask for the wisdom to see what is right and in each and every day, in each and every circumstance, the courage to do what is right in obedience to your will. It is in the name of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, that we pray. And all God’s people say amen.”

    Potteiger closed the service by calling on God to spread the influence of the prayer meeting beyond the Pentagon: “May this become a place where Christians come together to do just this, and we see you move in power, not just through the Pentagon, but through our nation’s capital and down throughout this great nation.”

    FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor: “This was a desecration of the secular principles embodied in the Constitution Hegseth is tasked with upholding. The Founders threw the king out, and deliberately gave sovereignty not to a monarch or a divinity but to ‘We the People.’ Hegseth’s comments are an embarrassment and a disgrace to his office.”

    Hegseth has described the prayer event as the first of a planned monthly series — raising serious alarm that the Pentagon is now hosting an institutionalized Christian worship program sanctioned by top federal officials.

    “This is an egregious abuse of government power,” FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott said. “If the Pentagon, a command center of global military operations, can be converted into a venue for Christian worship and political messaging, then the wall between church and state is not just being breached, it’s under siege.”

    In response, FFRF has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all planning materials, internal communications, legal reviews, and records concerning the use of Pentagon resources for the event. The request also seeks clarity on whether personnel were pressured or incentivized to attend, whether attendance was recorded, and how the event was promoted internally.

    “This is a wake-up call,” Gaylor said. “Theocrats are embedding Christian nationalism into the highest levels of government — and if we don’t push back now, the damage to our democracy could be lasting.”

    FFRF is demanding that the Department of Defense immediately cancel any future “Secretary’s Prayer Meetings” and recommit to its constitutional obligation to religious neutrality. The Pentagon must represent all Americans — not function as a megachurch for one religion or political agenda.

    The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights. For more information, visit ffrf.org. (original publication date: 5/22/25

Christian Nationalism

Americans United Vows to Fight

Christian Nationalist Agenda

    (AU) - 11/8/2024 - Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization dedicated solely to defending church-state separation as the way to protect religious freedom for all, issued the following statement in response to The Associated Press declaring Donald Trump the winner of the presidential election:

    “We are deeply dismayed, but undeterred. Christian Nationalism has seized power in a way it could not on Jan. 6, 2021, and we have a serious fight ahead,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United. “Trump and his Christian Nationalist inner circle will try to abuse their power to privilege a chosen few at the expense of our most marginalized communities.

    “We’ve been warning of the dangers of Project 2025 and white Christian Nationalism and we know that the majority of Americans are against their agenda. ‘We the People’ are with us. That is our path to victory. For nearly 80 years Americans United has defended church-state separation and repelled previous waves of white Christian Nationalism. We’ve been through a Trump administration before. It was a hard four years, but we fought back and ultimately defeated many of the harmful policies he enacted, either through the 10 lawsuits AU brought challenging Trump administration policies or by working with the Biden administration and Congress to reverse his policies and block his agenda. We’re not giving up now.

    “We know people are scared for their family and friends and themselves. But we are building a movement that will be a bulwark against this rising tide of white Christian Nationalism. We’re organizing and fighting in every community, county, city, and state – everywhere. Church-state separation is the cure for white Christian Nationalism, and it’s also the foundation of our democracy. Americans United is ready. We were made for moments like this.”

 Further reference: 

White Christian Nationalism

Recommended Resources

 

The Authoritarian Playbook

Source: Protect Democracy

    (Protect Democracy) - 6/15/2022 - Before the 1990s, authoritarian leaders bent on upending democracy typically came to power forcefully and swiftly, often by means of a military coup d’etat. The moment democracy ceased to exist could be time-stamped and reported on with a block headline.

    Yet for at least the last thirty years, the threats to democracy have evolved. Today, democracy more often dies gradually, as the institutional, legal, and political constraints on authoritarian leaders are chipped away, one by one. This has happened – or is happening – in, among others, Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, Nicaragua, India, Turkey — and the United States. . . .   

 

    By using “salami tactics,” slicing away at democracy a sliver at a time, modern authoritarians still cement themselves in power, but they do so incrementally and gradually. Sometimes their actions are deliberate and calculated, but sometimes they are opportunistic, myopic, or even bumbling. There is no longer a singular bright line that countries cross between democracy and authoritarianism. But the outcome is still the same . . .  see full store HERE

 

 

Wake Up to the Growing Dangers of Christian Nationalism

 Source: Freedom From Religion Foundation, by Co-president Annie Lauie Gayler

     (FFRF) - 2/12/2024 - Almost 20 years ago, the Freedom From Religion Foundation inaugurated a campaign “to wake up the nation to the growing dangers of theocracy.” We ran commercials using that terminology over Air America Radio, recited by talents like Rachel Maddow and Ron Reagan, published a “Theocracy Watch” column in Freethought Today and included a special segment called “Theocracy Watch” when we first launched Freethought Radio in 2006.

     Among the few individuals calling attention back then to that particular iteration of Christian nationalism under George W. Bush was Michelle Goldberg, who wrote an early-bird warning, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, in 2006. When we invited Michelle Goldberg to address our national convention that year, she explained about Christian nationalism: “Their idea from the beginning has been to undermine the Enlightenment.”  . . . .  see full store HERE

 

 

The Darvo Strategy - Deny, Attack, Reverse

Source: The Guardian, by Sidney Blumenthal

     

   (Guardian/Exerpt) - 2/1/2024 -  Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused. But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim . . . . Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender..  . . see full story HERE