How Many Horrifying Christian Nationalist Pastors Can Pete Hegseth Have?!
A few months after one of Hegseth's pastors said women shouldn't vote, another one is now openly praying for James Talarico's death—on a podcast.
Photo: Youtube/Joshua Haymes [RRP] Politics
Few souls on this flaming Earth need saving quite as urgently as Secretary of War Defense Pete Hegseth, and perhaps it’s because he’s got an overflowing bucket of sins that he needs more than one pastor. Or rather, maybe it’s because when you’re that much of an evildoer, one morally bankrupt pastor isn’t going to cut it.
Yes, yet another one of Hegseth’s pastors is making headlines for saying some grim shit. Brooks Potteiger, who the Guardian once described as Hegseth’s “closest spiritual advisor,” recently appeared on the podcast, Reformation Red Pill, and said he wants James Talarico, a Texas state rep. currently running for Senate, to be “crucified with Christ.”
Potteiger leads the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship church outside of Nashville, which Hegseth started attending in 2021 and which is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches—co-founded by the self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, another one of Hegseth’s pastors who has said he wants to ban gay sex and doesn’t think women should vote. Love some good old Christian values.
The podcast, which Hegseth has made four guest appearances on, is hosted by Christian nationalist Joshua Haymes (a former pastoral intern at Hegseth’s home church who believes in the death penalty for abortion-seekers), who himself openly prayed for Talarico’s death.
“First and foremost, we pray that a man like this would be cut to the heart,” Haymes said to Potteiger. “I pray that God kills him…And if it would not be within God’s will to do so, stop him by any means necessary.” Potteiger nodded along before sharing his own crucification fantasy. If I had a coin every time some MAGA freak drooled with bloodlust…
On Tuesday, HuffPost reported on the clip, with the headline, “Pete Hegseth’s Pastor Says He Wants James Talarico To Die,” which Potteiger was not happy about. “This headline is excellent clickbait,” he began his nearly 400-word anti-abortion tweet, before saying Talarico “joyfully advocates for the right for babies to be murdered in the womb,” and that he and Haymes weren’t actually praying for his death as much as his “conversion.” Sure.
In response, Talarico tweeted, “Jesus loves. Christian Nationalism kills. You may pray for my death, Pastor, but I still love you. I love you more than you could ever hate me.” Hegseth has not (yet) commented, probably because he’s busy with his own war crimes fantasies.
Talarico, a seminary student (and so obviously a Presbyterian one), employs a progressive theology and has called out the right for being “religion at its worst,” or “trying to control people and what they do.” Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience in July, he said, “The idea that there is a set Christian orthodoxy on the issue of abortion is just not rooted in Scripture.”
Which feels refreshing compared to the full-blown theocracy we seem to find ourselves in these days, in which hearings about anti-abortion legislation begin with lawmakers bowing their head in prayer, the vice president tells crowds he wants to save his wife’s soul, and the U.S. military gets hundreds of complaints about an abundance of religious rhetoric echoing among troops because of Trump’s war in Israel. God fucking help us all.
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