Pete Hegseth, Me, and Meeting with Important Jews

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Introduction

This, my friends, is what I voted for. https://t.co/FpOkWwdIUx

— Ben Zornes 🌷🔥 (@benzornes) May 22, 2025

So we are in the middle of a flurry of news stories about our doings here in Moscow. For example, Vox just dropped a story on empathy about our own Joe Rigney, managing in the process to drop it on their foot. There was also NPR. And The New Yorker. And The Guardian. And New York magazine. Empathy must really be somebody’s sibilant preciousssess.

And then last Friday, Politico did a big profile/background piece on me, which you can read here. Don’t leave out the Talking Points Memo, which broke the story that I had “met with” Pete Hegseth. That phrasing—met with—was picked up by Right Wing Watch, as you can see off to the right, and which you can read about shortly, after you are done chortling to yourself.

There are no doubt other outlets that are also working on stories (I know of at least one significant one), and we will see how they all go. Once they are all out, and depending on the average quality of the stories, we might need to call them a slurry of news stories.

So before getting to some of my more pointed observations, allow me to explain for you how I got my tentacles into the Pentagon.

Meeting “With” Pete Hegseth

So let me tell you all about this. Let me tell you how it all happened. And keep an eye on that pesky little word with.

I first became aware of Pete Hegseth when he authored a book together with my friend David Goodwin of ACCS. The book was The Battle for the American Mind, and it bounced along the top of the NYT bestseller list for some weeks. It is a great book, and you should go and get it. It was all about America’s departure from the older forms of education, and about the movement in education to restore a classical and Christian approach. Since this is something I have been involved with for a number of decades now, as in, up to my neck, I followed this publishing development with great interest. So I knew Pete Hegseth as a Fox News host who had joined up with our movement for genuine reform in education. And because he had written a book about the resurgence of classical education, he naturally knew about me. But he and I had never met.

So then when Donald Trump nominated him to be the Secretary of Defense, I learned about his military background. I also learned that the prospect of him becoming the Defense Secretary was making progressives of all stripes wake up in the middle of the night with premium-level flop sweats, going reeeeeee. So that was fun. But I still hadn’t met him.

All of this was an item of interest to a number of reporters because he was a member of a Nashville church that is in the same denomination that I am in (CREC), and so inquisitive reporters would routinely ask me if I knew Pete Hegseth. The answer, also routine, was no. I had not. Now sometime last year, I had been invited by Jason Whitlock to speak at his Roll Call conference in Nashville, and I accepted. Since I was going to be in Nashville on a weekend, I was invited to preach at Pilgrim Hill, which was the church that the Hegseths were members of before moving to Washington. Now as it happened, they were back in Nashville that weekend, and so they came to their church, as was their custom.

Now Pilgrim Hill observes communion weekly, as we do in Moscow, but they do it a little differently. They distribute the bread, just as we do, and then everyone partakes together, just like we do. But then, when the wine is distributed, the parishioners receive the wine, drink it, and then stand to visit with those around them—discerning the body in one another. It is a combination of partaking of the cup and the passing of the peace. During that part of the service, I met the Hegseths. I thanked him for his work, and he thanked me for mine, and we had a nice visit.

And that, my friends, is how I took over the Pentagon.

Meeting v. Meeting With

When you “meet with” someone like the Defense Secretary, that conjures up images of mahogany tables, yellow legal pads, my people talking with his people to set it up, plush carpets, very important people coming and going, and hushed whispers in the background. We would then have a very productive meeting, and the Secretary’s office would promise to release a statement shortly. That statement wouldn’t reveal very much, and would be somewhat guarded, but eventually the word would leak out that we were discussing the possible inclusion of the Shorter Catechism in the training of Navy Seals. Just an idea. Exploring the possibilities. I would of course have no further comment, and would try not to look like the cat who had just eaten the canary. That’s what would happen in a meeting with.

But when you just meet someone, you shake their hand and talk the way normal human beings would talk during a communion service at church.

The Jews Who Run the World

You may look at that header and wonder if perhaps I have somehow lost the thread. What does that have to do with what we are talking about? Trust me, it will also swim together in a moment or two.

There are a handful of surly sorts on the right who for some reason have decided to add their voices to the eruption of Jew-hate on the left, and so they look at me and my ilk with astonishment. At the more severe end they think I am being controlled by the Mossad, and at the milder end they believe that I am a boomercon who is the chumpiest of chumps. “Don’t you know,” they say, “that Jews run the world?”

To which I reply, “Of course they do. And I work really hard to stay on the same page with them. In fact, I worship the ringleader.”

The throne over all thrones is the throne of David, that great Israelite king.

If the zeal of the Lord of hosts is establishing this, not only do I desire to not get in the way, I want to be active promoter of it. So who is it that sits on this throne of David? It is the crucified one who, as Pilate put it, was king of the Jews (John 19:19). He was from the tribe of Judah, descended from David himself, and yet David himself bows down and calls Him Lord (Ps. 110:1). This Son of David rose from the dead, and that is why He rules the world. The crucifixion was predicted in Psalm 2: 2, where the kings of earth take their stand against the Lord’s anointed. And then the resurrection is predicted just a few verses later—“The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You” (Psalm 2:7). When Paul preached in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, in that sermon he said that this begetting was the resurrection—the Lord was begotten from the dead (Acts 13:32-33). And what happened to this Jew who rose from the dead? As Psalm 2 goes on to say, He was given all the nations on earth as His inheritance. He rules the world, with truth and grace—and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love.

As if that were not enough, the Lord also established twelve other thrones for the princes of the new covenant, and every last one of those thrones is occupied with a Jew as well.

So the Christian church really is a cabal run by Jews. And I for one am entirely on board with it. I want to see a return to the historic American ethos, where we gave our kids names like Obadiah, Abraham, Hezekiah, and Caleb or, on the other side, Leah, Miriam, Esther, or Abigail. And we gave our towns names like Bethlehem, PA, Shiloh, IL, Hebron, KY, Sinai, SD, Josiah, MA, Bethany, WV, Gilead, ME, Lebanon, PA, Eden, NC, or Jerusalem, NY. Just think of it. The worship of Jehovah, the true God, the Ancient of Days, forgiveness of sins, and bacon.

To which the reply comes, almost a snarl really, “you know what we mean.” Their antisemitic enmity is aimed at the Jews who rejected their Christ, who crucified Him, who vilified Him in the Talmud, and who continue in their obstinate unbelief down to the present day. “They are the ones who crucified the Christ. Do you deny it?”

I have no wish to deny it. If we pose the question whether Jews were uniquely guilty in the execution of Christ, the answer is “yes, they certainly were.” But Scripture annexes this grim truth to one of the most stupefying promises of grace imaginable.

They are the ones who pierced Him, and yet they are the ones who are promised a way of return. And the avenue of that return is the very wound they delivered. The wound they gave Him is the foundation of their eventual forgiveness. Every true Christian yearns for that coming day, and today is one day closer to it than yesterday was. And understanding this causes a certain spirit to suffuse everything, and that spirit is absolutely antithetical to the spirit of Jew-hate. Before Jesus ascended into Heaven, and this was just weeks after His murder, He commissioned His followers to preach repentance and remission of sins, “among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Take this cleansing blood, and offer it to Jerusalem first. Father, forgive them . . .

But having recognized this, we must never forget that the rest of guilty humanity had an ample share in the crime as well. Who killed Him? Well, Pilate did, and the Gentiles and Herod and the people of Israel (Acts 4: 27). We all had a hand in it.

So Who Are You Meeting With?

So what does all this have to do with the larger theme? Well, it all has to do with who we are “meeting with.” This is actually the central point. When I met Pete Hegseth, I was not meeting with him. Together with him, we were both meeting with Someone Else. We were both worshiping God, and neither of us were worshiping political power. And if you are a secularist, that is the kind of meeting to be worried about.

As has been noticed by some, Christ Church in Moscow is initiating a church plant in Washington, DC this summer. Because of how political junkies think, it can be wrongly assumed that this is some sort of ecclesiastical lobbying effort. It is thought that we have grown to a sufficient level of importance that we have now grown ambitious, and want to network with the hotshots. But it is actually something else altogether.

In doing this, in planting this church, who are we seeking to meet with? The answer is not “senators.” The answer is not “movers and shakers.” The answer is not “power couples.”

What we want to do is meet with God. When the opening words of the call to worship are declared, what happens at that point? The New Testament tells us. In the worship of the Christian church, God’s people assemble in the name of Jesus Christ. The minister raises his arms and says, “Let us worship the triune God,” and everyone stands. We are not coming to an earthly mountain, the way the Israelites did at Sinai. We are not coming to a physical Temple on Mount Moriah, the way they did centuries later. We have not come to a mountain that can be touched, but rather we have come to the heavenly Zion, to the church of the firstborn, to the spirits of just men made perfect. It is all in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews.

We are coming to meet with the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the authority of the Holy Spirit. We are doing this in Washington D.C.—but not because we are trying to enlist the authorities there so that they might do something to help out the kingdom of God. Rather, we are doing it there because, of all the places in the world, that is a city that needs to be reminded that there is a God in Heaven, and His eyes behold all the sons of men.

Jehovah God, God Above All

You have heard me say before that if there is no God above the state, then the state is god. We all need to be reminded of this, constantly. This is the twisted but consistent logic of secularism, and the secularists have followed out the logic. And like a cocktail of paint thinner and bourbon, this logic went straight to their heads.

So Washington D.C. is not the place that the church needs to turn to in order “to get things done.” That place is a sink of corruption, and so this really is a mission to Babylon. We are not seeking to get anything done for us. Rather, we are seeking to do something for them. We are not coming, hat in hand, as supplicants of man. We want to worship God in a place where everyone needs to be reminded of every creature’s absolute need to worship God.

If we refuse to honor God as God, and if we refuse to render Him thanks, then we are going to have pride parades. For some decades now, the problem with the efforts of the religious right has been that we have been content to be the janitorial crew, trying to clean up after such events. And perhaps we could introduce some common sense measures that would be adopted to dampen some of the excesses—so we don’t have as much to clean up next time. You want an example of such common sense measures? Let’s move the grotesque porn out of the kids’ section of the library, into another part of the library, and then let’s spend the entire debate defending ourselves against the charge of book burning and censorship. Radical Christians are reviled for their puritanical suggestion that the orgy be moved to another room. This is the kind of thing that happens whenever the summons to worship the God of heaven is left out of it.

We want to try a different approach. We want to worship Yahweh, and we want to invite others to worship the God of Scripture with us. We start in mid-July, and we invite you to join us. We have a meeting scheduled with some very important Jews.