Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks at the Association of the United States Army 2026 Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Washington, DC, October 14.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
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Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
It’s unclear whether the public execution of the man behind the Fort Hood attack will be broadcast live, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it would be late last week. Asked about it Tuesday, President Trump said, “We’re looking at it,” and Vice President JD Vance said he wouldn’t look at it, raising doubts about whether it would happen. But whether the public execution takes place or not, some religious scholars fear the damage has already been done.
“I think one of the most disturbing aspects of this development is that it pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable,” said Julie Ingersoll, a religion professor at the University of North Florida who specializes in religious law and Christian Reconstructionism. “Just saying it out loud pushes the boundaries.”
The last time the U.S. government carried out a large-scale public execution was 90 years ago. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that live streaming of Nidal Hasan’s death by firing squad would deter future similar attacks. Hasan, a former U.S. Army major and violent Islamist extremist, killed 13 people and injured 32 others in a 2009 attack at Fort Hood. His execution is scheduled for December 3.
“We’ll make sure that people can…watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that…these kinds of things have serious consequences,” Hegseth said in an interview with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming network.
For Ingersoll and other religious scholars, Hegseth’s promotion of an idea that has largely fallen out of favor with the American public is closely tied to its religious origins. Hegseth is affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, whose leader identifies as a Christian nationalist, envisions a theonomic America where women are denied the right to vote, and has defended the institution of slavery.
“These are extreme ideas and these are extreme leaders, and I have no better way to phrase them than to just point out that Pete Hegseth is a religious extremist,” said Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. “He advocates ideas that are far removed from the mainstream. He tries to implement these ideas within the American military structure, within the Pentagon.”
Almost “unanimous” in favor of the death penalty within the CREC
Hegseth’s announcement of a live-streamed execution sparked reactions of disgust and condemnation from some religious leaders and politicians. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who serves Catholics in the U.S. military, issued a statement of disapproval of the proposal and asked all Catholics facing shooting to request an apology. Taylor said he thought Hegseth’s idea represented “an aberrant position within American Christianity,” including, he said, within right-wing Christianity.
But Ingersoll said that within the Church of Hegseth, this was not an exception.
“The religious community that Hegseth comes from is very comfortable, shall we say, with the death penalty. It has almost unanimous support,” Ingersoll said. “They consider crimes that are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament and which were punishable by death to still be punishable by death. So execution, and even public execution, is an integral part of how they view the punishment of crime in general.”
But some also wonder whether Hasan’s religion may partly explain a public proposal that is, for many Americans, abhorrent.
“The question is: why is he being punished differently from all those who came before him?” said Joshua Salaam, president of the Association of Muslim Chaplains. “And the answer that most people in my community will say is that it has something to do with their religious beliefs, their religious identity.”
Indeed, Ingersoll said the CREC’s goal of establishing Christian governance and Hegseth’s apparent animosity toward Islam are key factors in this discussion.
“I think he sees himself engaged in a battle in the name of God against the infidels,” she said.
A new “crusade” from the Pentagon
When Hegseth was named head of the Pentagon, his tattoos attracted national attention. At the time, he had tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase “Deus Vult” on his body. He later also added another tattoo in Arabic script depicting a word that means “unfaithful.” Taylor said all of this, along with the fact that he is the author of a book called American Crusadepoint to a clear worldview.
“Hegseth is, for lack of a better term, obsessed with the Crusades,” Taylor said.
In the context of CREC’s goals, this story of civilizational conflict between Western Christianity and Islam is of particular importance, Ingersoll said.
“There is an idealization of Christianity from the medieval period,” she said. “Because it was a Christian society, that was the type of theocratic world they wanted to build. So a lot of the view that seems medieval actually is.”
Today, Ingersoll said, a term often used to describe this project is “dominionism.” It is a concept that extends beyond the CREC to other currents of the Christian nationalist movement. He argues that Christians have a biblical mandate to assert their version of religious governance over all aspects of society. In the United States, concern over the growth of Christian nationalism over the past decade has largely focused on the fundamental conflict between dominionism and American principles of inclusive democracy.
Perhaps one of the most concerning aspects of the discussion around a live-streamed execution, Taylor said, is the possibility that Hegseth will use the U.S. military in pursuit of his personal religious goals.
“What Hegseth is trying to do is consolidate the military around a particular ideology – an ideology of Christian nationalism, an ideology of Christian supremacy, an ideology of Western supremacy, which also has racial, patriarchal, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ overtones,” he said.
NPR reached out to the Pentagon for comment but did not receive a response before publication deadline.
Normalize an extreme idea
But the idea of restarting public executions has actually been openly discussed in more traditional right-wing circles, beyond the CREC. In a 2024 podcast, the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk spoke in favor of the measure, saying: “It should be public, it should be quick, it should be televised.” » Kirk even suggested that big businesses could finance the televising of executions to raise money for public coffers.
“Part of what’s behind Christian nationalism and the coalitions that Christian nationalists have formed with… the ‘tech bros’ and the ‘podcast bros’ and that whole world is this interest in being transgressive,” Ingersoll explained.
The name of the podcast in which Kirk floated these ideas was “Thoughtcrime.”
Even if Hasan’s live execution doesn’t happen, Taylor said the proposal serves as a warning sign about how someone in a position as powerful as Hegseth’s can reorient government and society toward what he calls extremist goals.
“Someone like Hegseth gives them the opportunity to test some of these ideas, implement them in a shorter time frame and set a precedent within American culture, within the American military, for the ultimate vision that they hope for,” Taylor said.
Amid all the discussion, Salaam said it was also important to think about the potential damage public executions cause to the moral fiber of the country.
“It does something for all of us to have to watch something like this publicly,” he said. “It’s not right that we are promoting something like this for our children, for men, women and members of the community to watch this.”
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