Dominionism is a Franchise: What it means that Hegseth Incanted King Jesus
What an evangelical homeschool graduation service reminded me about the church-militant and healing from religious trauma
Deconstructing Now: Why did an Alabama pastor at a homeschool graduation ceremony sound and look just like Pete Hegseth praying to King Jesus in the Pentagon?
The Soul of Healing in real time: Navigating active triggers at family gatherings
Last week, I sat in a church auditorium, decked out like a concert arena, large enough to seat around 3,000. The black ceiling outfitted with spotlights and large screens on stage guaranteed a thumpin’ time on Sundays, but my family and I were there on a Thursday evening for my niece’s graduation.
Emotionally, my insides were a tangled ball of yarn. She is my first niece, and I was there when she was born, the third person to hold her. She’s the one who taught me the strange tension between protection and detachment that an Auntie must balance. My pride in her is conjoined with guarded worry, my shields up to avoid projecting my story onto hers. She is 18, college-bound, and evangelical. I knew she felt happy and nervous; as an empath, my stomach fluttered with her butterflies.
I kept refolding my hands and recrossing my legs, unable to sit still. Attending church requires fortitude, compartmentalization, and permission for a particular part of me to express her longing while the rest of me resists the urge to surrender for acceptance. I know I’d make many who love me happy, just by rejoining a church. The hunger to please has never left me, even when my brain knows we’re choosing Tia, not people-pleasing, every time.
This factored into the debate over what to wear. I packed two dresses. One, a pink, green, and blue floral “trad” maxi dress, my friend Hannah suggested I try while we were shopping in Nordstrom Rack one day. It’s not my style and never has been, even when I was a Southern evangelical trad wife, but it had an undeniable energy to it. Curious, I tried it on three times before I decided to buy it, thinking I’d wear it to this graduation and a book event for Jo Piazza’s upcoming trad wife murder mystery release. The second dress was a classic navy impulse buy from social media, with short sleeves, pockets, and a full skirt —the kind that never goes wrong.
I could’ve worn pants and been just fine, but I’m working through the nervous system activation I feel in dresses. I like them and want to wear them occasionally again, and I also want to overcome the stories I tell myself about femininity, dresses, who can wear them, and to what end. Wearing one to church was an admittedly huge ask of my nerves. Trying on the maxi dress lasted less than 30 seconds.
I think the dress simply wanted to be Alabama. As soon as I pulled it on, I knew it was a better fit for my church-going sister than me. Every cell of my body raged for me to take that blast-from-the-past off. Hannah laughed at my text when I sent her a pic of a very delighted Monica getting a new dress.
So, wearing the classic navy and squirming in theater seats designed for people who spend the service standing while they rock out for Christ, I tried to sit still, practicing breathing and grounding exercises while waiting for graduation to start, at Church of the Highlands, in Montgomery, Alabama.
This was the day after Pete Hegseth prayed to King Jesus in the Pentagon. As if the Department of Defense needs a backyard Bible club and a See You at the Pole service, he pulled out top-knotch Christian buzz phrases like, “Knowing that there’s an author in heaven overseeing all of this, who’s underwritten all of it, for us, on the cross, gives me the strength to proceed.” After a prayer asking that sinners saved by grace be granted wisdom to know what’s right in every circumstance, he closed with a very familiar evangelical salutation: “And all God’s people say…” and the congregation answers, “Amen.”
Petey should know that what’s right in the circumstance of leading the Department of Defense for a country with constitutionally protected rights against a state religion is to keep his public prayer services off campus and outside work hours. He doesn’t need King Jesus to tell him that.
But Hegseth comes from a religious tradition without boundaries, and his denominational leader, Doug Wilson, who teaches wives should be led by a firm hand, is establishing a church in D.C. If you’ve read my book, you're familiar with my history regarding Wilson’s influence and teachings. A Wilson/Hegseth initiative is a church-militant signal, as is the verbiage calling Jesus “King,” a status that doesn’t occur in the Bible until dominion is gained after Armageddon. They’re ahead of themselves in harkening to King Jesus, rather than the soft-hearted servant-hearted liberal Jesus, but that’s not out of character for either of them.
I sat up straighter when the pastor of Church of the Highlands assumed the stage for the opening prayer of the graduation ceremony, because Chris Erwin is styled like Hegseth (pomade, tailored suits, chest out) but also because he too called on King Jesus, asked that sinners saved by grace be granted wisdom to know what’s right in every circumstance, and closed with that very familiar evangelical salutation that calls who’s in and who’s out: “And all God’s people said…” and the congregation answers, “Amen.”
For a faith group that emphasizes uniformity among believers, there’s no reason to doubt that if you’ve seen one Christian Nationalist, you’ve seen them all. They’ll “lead” the same way, too, just as sure as their wives see the same plastic surgeons and aestheticians, just as sure as they smile and say, “Praise the Lord,” as they strategize. They look alike, talk alike, and pray alike, and if you trust that pattern repetition holds, like I do, they lust for power alike, too. It matters that dominionism has been franchised.
This ceremony was not the homeschool graduation of the 1990s, complete with Mom, Dad, a boxed cake, and a diploma printed from an internet template.
There were over 80 graduates of this “homeschool cover.” Each child had their name and accomplishments read, received an Academy diploma, and stood as their parents read their “life verse.” The kids had a valedictorian, a salutatorian, class officers, and sports teams. They sat in a group and threw their caps, just like any mid-sized private school. Homeschool has evolved a lot in the years since I had a kitchen table stacked with books and math toys.
Even though life verses are typically inspirational, about love and wings on eagles and such, the first 30 or so life verses were combative, focused on vanquishing enemies and staying faithful when “others” hate you. It was also that long before I heard a home church repeated, because there are so many churches in Montgomery.
As I sat there wondering how many children had been switched Michael Pearl-style, and how many were in the closet, afraid to say they’re gay; how many understood there’s a world outside of MAGA, and how many accomplished young women would be married within a year, I was also breathing through an unsolvable, phantom regret.
This scenario was not what my children had or would have had, but it did represent (perhaps) what they could have had, without abuse and divorce, without a transition to “godless” public schools and the disruption of Covid. Two parents smiling on stage, a peer group of fellow homeschoolers, and a life verse of hope for their future. There is an air of this phantom at family gatherings—the spoiled expectation that, had a few details gone differently, this could have been my outcome, too, assuming I wanted it.
Like a lot of Christians, I think my family struggles to accept that what happened to me is systemic. Mileage varies when husbands are nicer, or healthier, or apparently, when the prayers are more sincere. No one in my family believes what happened to me could happen to my niece. This is one of the burdens I carry anytime I engage with their faith; they cling to an individuality I neither experienced nor see in other survivors. Religious trauma stories are achingly similar. They aren’t wrong on a few points—what happened to me was also a product of the period, the players, and choices, even when the choices didn’t feel like choices. But that context didn’t exist outside of the system.
It’s hindsight that reflects, revealing the observable wisdom we not only carry with us but also use to discern the circumstances life brings. Every parent wants the next generation to do better than we did; it’s a universal hope. So, when I hear Christians pray for wisdom, I beg them to look at the past. The patterns are there. We know how the trad life pans out, how an authoritarian country with a state religion pans out, how raising kids in bubbles only to release them into slightly larger bubbles pans out. We’ve been here and there before. Repetition is a choice.
The wave of relief that washed over me as my family and I burst through the metal and glass doors into the calm, cotton-candy skies of sunset is a security I know to my bones. It’s the “that’s done, let’s go get ice cream” energy of having checked church off the list. I felt it every week growing up, and probably throughout my whole lifetime, a shedding of stress, shame, and sin.
What I know about myself is that an hour at church in a dress was always the price I was willing to pay for inclusion, allowing me to relax and enjoy sweet memories with my family. And sometimes, especially for a beloved niece, it still is. I don’t know if that will ever change.
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I grew up Pentecostal. Dressed always for church and I hated it. I was a tomboy and didn’t like the restrictions of a dress. I began my deconstruction many years ago even thought it didn’t have a name. I took back the dresses and enjoy wearing them because I LIKE THEM sometimes. I am proud to have raised my daughters to be who they want and they both are! My oldest son is engaged to a woman who is the antithesis of how I was raised. I love her to death! I’m so glad I was able to break the cycle of fundamentalist ideology.
I grew up in a fundamentalist cult.
thank you for making those comments about dresses because I have never heard anyone say it before .
I also am activated by wearing dresses or skirts, because I was forced to wear them as a child and shamed when I wore pants. To this day, wearing a dress is difficult ——it signals back and connects with every sermon, comment, and shaming event I encountered as a child and young woman.