QUANTICO, Va. — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has established a new Office of Religious Affairs with broad authority over religious policy, funding, chaplaincy programs, and what the Pentagon describes as the “spiritual readiness” of U.S. military personnel.
Hegseth announced the office during his September 30 “State of the Force” address in Quantico, saying it would “strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters.”
The move follows a series of changes affecting religion in the military under Hegseth. The Wild Hunt previously reported on changes to military religious-affiliation designations and the chaplaincy. The new office represents another significant development: the centralization of religious affairs under a director with direct access to the secretary and deputy secretary.
According to a September 30 memorandum, the director of the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA) will serve as a Principal Staff Assistant and the secretary’s principal adviser on religious affairs throughout the department, reporting directly to the secretary and deputy secretary “without intervening authority.”
US Pentagon [Public Domain
The office will have wide-ranging responsibilities, including advocating for funding for religious ministries, facilities and infrastructure, chaplain training, chapel youth programs, faith-based homeschool support for military families, suicide-reduction initiatives, and contracts with faith-based organizations. It will also oversee research, technology, and analytical tools intended to assess “spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience” across the military.
The memorandum also authorizes the ORA director to align and, when necessary, issue religious-affairs policies on behalf of the secretary. The director will represent Hegseth on religious matters before Congress, government agencies, and civilian religious endorsing organizations. The Armed Forces Chaplains Board and its executive director will also be placed under the ORA director’s authority.
Hegseth said the reorganization would give military chaplains a “direct line” to him without what he called “staff filters” and “bureaucratic dilution.”
“The experts, our chaplains, will finally have an advocate at the highest levels,” he said. “Policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.”
The memorandum explicitly states that the department remains committed to the constitutional free-exercise rights of service members, civilian employees, and their families. It further states that nothing in the directive should be interpreted as compelling religious participation or diminishing the rights of anyone “of any faith or no faith.”
“Accordingly, our department, therefore, has a sacred duty – first-class religious support wherever we send our warriors,” Hegseth said.
His remarks announcing the office, however, were explicitly Christian.
“Our department is, you might say putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual,” Hegseth said. “God is good, evil is not, and America’s military must understand the difference.”
The “armor of God” is a reference to Ephesians 6:11. Hegseth also cited Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” and invoked George Washington and the establishment of the Army Chaplain Corps.
29th Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Official Portrait (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
The juxtaposition between the memo’s protection of those “of any faith or no faith” and Hegseth’s explicitly Christian framing raises questions about how concepts such as “spiritual fitness” and “spiritual readiness” will be defined and measured, particularly for members of minority religions and those who identify with no religion.
Hegseth also directed the military departments to identify all unfunded and underfunded religious-affairs requirements. Within 90 days, military secretaries, working with their chiefs of chaplains, must report needs ranging from ministry and religious facilities to faith-based homeschooling, suicide-reduction programs, training, and spiritual-readiness research.
The new office follows other changes Hegseth has made to the military chaplaincy. In March, he announced that chaplains would retain their military rank but no longer display rank insignia while performing chaplain duties, saying they should “be seen among the highest ranks because of their divine calling.” The following month, Hegseth removed Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. as Army chief of chaplains without publicly explaining the decision.
Hegseth has characterized the broader changes as correcting what he sees as years of neglect of religion within the military.
“Political correctness and secular humanism got a vote, chaplains did not,” Hegseth said September 30. “Budgets were cut, resourcing and manpower needs were ignored, base chapels fell apart.”
Critics responded quickly, arguing that the changes risk privileging Christianity rather than protecting religious liberty equally.
Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), said his organization “condemns in the strongest terms” what he described as Hegseth’s “immoral, unethical and unconstitutional actions.” In a longer statement published by MRFF, Weinstein objected specifically to the use of the word “establishment” in creating the office, arguing that ORA violates both the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the Constitution’s prohibition on religious tests.
“MRFF will fight the odious stench of Hegseth’s Christian nationalist bigotry, hatred, and prejudice every second of every day and night,” Weinstein said, adding that the organization would continue its opposition until what he called “fundamentalist Christian religious extremism” was removed from the military.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), similarly argued that the new office would elevate Christianity within military policy. AU also criticized the earlier reduction of military religious-affiliation identifiers, which eliminated individual identifiers for Wiccans, atheists, humanists, and numerous other religious and nonreligious identities.
“It’s yet another example of Hegseth abusing the power of his government position to impose his beliefs on others – and worse, it puts the needs of America’s service members second to this administration’s Christian Nationalist agenda,” Laser said in a September 30 statement.
The memorandum establishing ORA nevertheless expressly commits the office to constitutional and federal free-exercise protections, including those of service members of minority faiths and no faith. How those protections will be implemented alongside a newly centralized religious-affairs structure, and Hegseth’s explicitly Christian framing of its mission, remains an open question as the office takes shape.
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