For some Christians, Hegseth's plan for public execution fits a biblical mandate

It is not clear if the public execution of the man behind the Fort Hood attack will be livestreamed, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it would be late last week. When asked about it on Tuesday, President Trump said, "We're looking at it," and Vice President JD Vance has stated that he would not watch it, raising doubts about whether it would happen. But whether or not the public execution proceeds, some religious scholars worry that damage has already been done.

"I think one of the most worrisome parts of this development is that … it pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable," said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religion at the University of North Florida who specializes in the religious right and Christian Reconstruction. "Just saying it out loud moves the boundary."

The last time the U.S. government conducted a high-profile public execution was 90 years ago. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that livestreaming 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 in a 2009 attack at Fort Hood. His execution is set for Dec. 3.

"We'll make sure that people are able to … watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that … there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said in an interview with Real America's Voice, a right-wing streaming network.

For Ingersoll and some other religious scholars, Hegseth's promotion of an idea that has largely fallen out of favor with the American public ties in closely with his religious background. Hegseth affiliates with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, whose leader identifies as a Christian Nationalist, envisions a theonomous 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 don't have a better way of phrasing it than to just note that Pete Hegseth is a religious extremist," said Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. "He holds ideas that are far outside the mainstream. He is trying to implement those ideas within the U.S. military structure within the Pentagon."

Near "unanimous endorsement" of the death penalty in the CREC

Hegseth's announcement of a livestreamed execution elicited reactions of disgust and condemnation from some faith leaders and politicians. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who serves Catholics in the U.S. military, issued a statement of disapproval on the proposal and instructed any Catholics who may be assigned to the firing squad to request an excusal. Taylor said he believes Hegseth's idea represents "an outlier position within American Christianity," including, he said, within right-wing Christianity.

But Ingersoll said that within Hegseth's church, it is not an outlier.

"The religious community from which Hegseth comes is very comfortable, shall we say, with the death penalty. There's a pretty much unanimous endorsement of it," Ingersoll said. "The crimes discussed in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament that carried the death penalty are understood by them to still carry the death penalty. So execution, and even public execution, is very much a part of the way they see the punishment for crime in general."

But some are also asking whether Hasan's religion may partly account for a public proposal that is, to many Americans, abhorrent.

"The question is, why is he being punished differently than everyone before him?," said Joshua Salaam, president of the Association of Muslim Chaplains. "And the answer that most people from my community will say is it has something to do with his religious beliefs, his religious identity."

Indeed, Ingersoll said that the CREC goal to enact Christian governance, and Hegseth's own apparent animus toward Islam, are key factors in this discussion.

"I think he sees himself as engaged in a battle on behalf of God against the infidels," she said.

A new "crusade" from the Pentagon

When Hegseth was nominated to head the Pentagon, his tattoos drew national attention. At the time, he had tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross and of the phrase "Deus Vult" on his body. At some point later, he also added another tattoo in Arabic script of a word that means "infidel." Taylor said all this, plus his authorship of a book titled American Crusade, point to a clear worldview.

"Hegseth is, for lack of a better term, obsessed with the Crusades," Taylor said.

Within the context of the CREC's goals, this history of civilizational conflict between Western Christendom and Islam holds particular importance, said Ingersoll.

"There is an idealization of the Christendom of the medieval period," she said. "Because that was a Christian society, it was the theocratic kind of world that they wanted built. So, much of the viewpoint 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 strands within the Christian nationalist movement. It holds that Christians have a Biblical mandate to assert their version of religious governance over every aspect of society. In the U.S., concern over the growth in Christian Nationalism over the last decade has largely centered on the fundamental conflict between dominionism and American principles of inclusive democracy.

Perhaps among the most concerning aspects of the discussion around a livestreamed execution, said Taylor, is the possibility that Hegseth may be instrumentalizing 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, that also has racial undertones and patriarchal and misogynistic undertones and anti-LGBTQ undertones," he said.

NPR reached out to the Pentagon for comment, but did not hear back by the publishing deadline.

Normalizing an extreme idea

But the idea of reviving public executions has, in fact, been openly discussed in more mainstream rightwing circles, beyond the CREC. In a 2024 podcast, the late hard-right activist Charlie Kirk argued in favor of it, saying, "It should be public, it should be quick, it should be televised." Kirk even suggested that large corporations might underwrite the televising of executions to raise money for public coffers.

"Part of what is underneath Christian nationalism and the coalitions that Christian nationalists have made 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 where Kirk floated these ideas was "Thoughtcrime."

Even if a livestreamed execution of Hasan does not take place, Taylor said the proposal serves as a warning sign of how someone in a position as powerful as Hegseth's can reorient government and society toward what he calls extremist goals.

"Somebody like Hegseth presents an opportunity for them to test some of these ideas, to enact them on a more shortened timeline, and to create precedence within American culture, within the U.S. military, for the ultimate vision that they hope for," Taylor said.

Amidst all the discussion, Salaam said it is important also to reflect on the potential damage that public executions do to the moral fiber of the country.

"It does something to all of us to have to watch something like that publicly," he said. "This is not normal for us to promote something like that for our children, for men and women and community members to watch this."