Pete Hegseth As a Problem for The Church Visible and Invisible: What Should His Pastor Do?

[I sent an earlier draft of this to Pastor Potteiger, without reply. I think it would be useful for all pastors, and churchmen, to ponder what should be done if the public discovers a church member has a scandalous past of which he shows no sign of repentance.

This letter is not about the Peter Hegseth nomination (which I’ve written about before and here); it is about how his church should respond to the revelations about his past. In reading it, suppose that Mr. Hegseth is the most qualified nominee for Secretary of Defense since George C. Marshall, has committed no crimes, and has never held an incorrect opinion. I believe he still is a disgrace to his church and to the Church to which he claims to belong, because of his unrepentant adultery, his dishonesty, his lack of concern for the church’s mission and reputation, and his hypocrisy. ]

Dear Pastor Potteiger,

I am writing to you about Pete Hegseth. I was initially enthusiastic about Mr Hegseth as nominee for Secretary of Defence, since I, too, am conservative. Until I looked into it, I shrugged off his past marriages, knowing from personal experience that many people are vilified even if they have done nothing wrong. My own university provost and dean issued statements to thousands of people calling me sexist, racist, homophobic, vile, stupid, bigoted, reprehensible, and loathsome. So I know what it’s like to be treated unfairly. And I agree with Pete (as I will call him, meaning no disrespect) that women should not be in combat. But then I read a little more, and discovered that even under the facts he does not dispute, Pete should not be Secretary of Defense. Moreover— the reason for this letter— his actions in trying to achieve that ambition are hurting the Church. He makes Christians look grossly hypocritical. He hurts our witness, and that of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, and the bible-believing church generally. It is not just an affair for your church. My church is also hurt by his example, and by the bad example of your church in refusing to criticize unrepentant adultery.

Mr Hegseth is publicly known to have been a grossly immoral man up until 2017. He was a drunkard who was divorced twice for adultery and cheated on his third and present wife too. We have been shown no evidence that he has changed. It appears that for his entire adult life he declared himself a born-again Christian, saved as a teenager, so he is a self-confessed hypocrite. He says he’s changed, but he says this vaguely. He has not even admitted his sin. All he’s done is say that he did not really know Jesus before 2018. If Pete were truly repentant, I’d expect him to talk about his publicly known sins-- the many adulteries, and the drunkenness-- and about what he has done to make them right, say, by offering public apologies to his ex-wives and asking them what they’d like him to do to show his repentance. Alcoholics Anonymous would have told him to do that, if he’d gone to their meetings. Instead, he says,

“About 2018 I entered the Colts Neck Community Church with my wife (who was wary of what evangelical Baptists were like¹), and faith became real. Within 20 minutes we felt at home. The pastor spoke about his broken family past—I’m broken, you’re broken, we’re all broken and careening around not living our faith and not being deeply rooted. I thought I had to be perfect. Let’s be candid about it: Seek Christ, fully submit to Him, and allow Him Kingship in life! God’s perfect law of liberty that sets me free is Jesus—not perfection, legalism, or anything else.

Pete’s problem in 2018 wasn’t legalism. It wasn’t that he was so pious that he would never ever enter a bar, or that he would be wracked with guilt because his gaze lingered on a pretty girl at the grocery two months ago. He was not a Holiness Wesleyan, striving in every detail of his life to be perfect and thinking he was almost there.² No: he was a shameless scoundrel, as bad as any 20-year-old sailor out on a spree. Worse, really: he was cheating on his wife and children, risking the reputation of the nonprofit organizations that employed him, and risking the success of the political movement in which he claimed to believe. When Pete addressed the accusation that he’d slipped a date-rape drug into a married woman’s drink so he could use her for casual sex, his defense was fine for avoiding criminal charges, but it didnt leave him looking all that much better as a person. As Dilan Esper put it on X,

It's worth noting Hegseth's version of the story is a couple of months after his new wife had a baby, he went to a conservative political conference, got really drunk, hit on many women who found him revolting, had an argument with this woman, then had consensual sex with her.

You might say this is a matter for Pete and his church, not for outsiders. No. Maybe Pete has confessed his sins to the Pilgrim Hill leadership, maybe not. All churches are against sin in general, but when it comes to the specific sins of their members, they usually close their eyes tight shut if they’re afraid they might actually see some sin. That is true both of false churches and the great majority of Bible-believing churches. Your denomination, CREC, is a good one, so I hope Pilgrim Hill actually does require its members to repent of sin, but Man is sinful, and you can’t expect us to believe Pilgrim Hill is not. We are all touched by sin. If your church did know about Pete’s past sins, and you have heard him repent of them, and you have reason to believe he has truly repented— say, by no longer going to conferences overnight without his wife— then let us know.

You said on X,

I’m his pastor. He is a member in good standing. My encouragement: worry more about confessing your own sins than the sins of another man. (1 Timothy 1:15) “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

It’s good to worry about confessing one’s own sins, but we should worry about our fellow man also. I’m sure you worry about your own sins, Pastor Potteinger, but as a pastor it is your duty to worry about other men’s sins too, and perhaps even to put worry about their confessions as higher priority than worry about your own. In that letter to Timothy, Paul confessed his own sin, but he talked about the sins of other people too, and he did so publicly, in very strong terms, and told churches to expel unrepentant sinners. Has your church ever done this?

We don’t ask Pete to confess his past private sins, thogh, or even his current secret sins. He doesn’t even have to confess his past public sins, because we know them already. What he needs to do is repent of those sins. He needs to say what he did, whether he thinks what he did was wrong, and to say he’s sorry. We haven’t heard any of that yet, and his attitude is defiant, full of excuses about why none of it’s his fault.

Pete should publicly repudiate his sin, which means talking specifically about what he did, condemning his old self, and explaining what happened in his soul that made him change. If he won’t do that, why should anybody believe he has changed since then? Moreover, if he won’t do that, he is also giving up a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel by showing that even a despicable low-life like himself can escape from his sins through the blood of Jesus and have his life revolutionized. If Pete were a real Christian, he would be taking that opportunity. Since he is not, it appears he is just someone who likes belonging to a church, perhaps because he thinks it’s good for his kids even though he doesn’t believe any of it himself.

What should Pilgrim Hill do? Pete has dug in his heels. I have not seen any repentance in his public statements this past two months. All he’s done is admit that he was drunk and committed adultery, while denying that he committed rape. So our question is what a church should do if one of its members is credibly accused of gross sin, then admits to the accusations, but refuses to say he did anything wrong. Such a church has some explaining to do, public explaining.

“Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God on the day of visitation” (I Peter).

You had better get ready. The Senate will hold confirmation hearings for Pete soon. The Democrats will not be gentle. Think about the questions they can ask.³

Mr. Hegseth, you are a devout Christian, a member of Pilgrim Hill church, a church in the CREC denomination. I’m not very familiar with that denomination, but people says it is somewhat eccentric. In the opinion of CREC, is ejaculating on a married woman’s bare belly a sin, or is that normal behavior for Christians?

As a follow-up, if the church member gets drunk first, does that make it better or worse for him to ejaculate on a married woman’s bare belly?

or

Mr. Hegseth, I’m Jewish, so I’m no expert on Christianity, but from what my Christian friends tell me, your behavior is unusual for a pious man with six children. Maybe it’s your denomination. But in your church, is it normal behavior for the male members to get drunk at parties while their pregnant wives stay home, and then take married women up to their hotel rooms for the night?

You are in a bind. Your most prominent member is a liar and a libertine. Your other members are very conservative, no doubt, and my guess is that they are rushing to say that it was several years ago, and it’s never-Trumpers that are criticizing him, and unlike them they know Tim personally and he’s a very nice guy, completely without sin— the perfect sacrifice. It’s a tough situation, but don’t think it’s uncommon. It’s pretty much the old story about when someone catches the longtime pastor in bed with the choir director. Do you cover it up for the sake of the church, or do you tell everyone and risk busting up the entire congregation? Almost everyone will be on the side of the pastor and the choir director, denying they did it or saying it was just a one-time lapse, and not so bad because they’re such incredibly attractive people, and they must really be very sorry about it even though it went on for five years. Even if the members don’t hate whoever is so rude as to bring up such unpleasantness, they will feel sour, and they will drift away to other churches. Some members will even repudiate Christ, saying, “Now that I see how bad my pastor was, I see all Christians are hypocrites.” What will happen is that the church members will really start to believe that all Christians are sinners instead of just saying so every week without really believing it, and they might even start to think Christians are so bad that some drastic remedy is needed such as human sacrifice. Maybe even the sacrifice of God Himself.

I came across this quote recently from a sermon on the Samaritan woman with five husbands.⁴ It seems a good way to close.

“There are things too hot to touch with your finger but you can drink them all right. Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Footnotes

1. Reading about Pete Hegseth, a lifelong church member, makes even me “wary of what evangelical Baptists are like,” and I’m basically in that group myself.

2. The Wesleyans thinks you can reach “Christian perfection”, as this Asbury University passage tells us.

Whereas Luther and Calvin tended to view perfection in the absolute sense (i.e., perfect performance), Wesley understood it in the theological sense as having to do with maturity of character and ever-increasing love for God. The New Testament word “perfection” translates from a Greek term that means maturity or completion: it does not mean flawlessness. Therefore, whenever Wesley discussed holiness, sanctification or perfection (all theologically synonymous), he preferred the expression “Christian perfection.” By appending the adjective Christian, he sought to avoid comparisons with the Reformers whose idealistic notions of perfection led them to believe that holiness or personal sanctity is not possible in this life.

That quotation is from a Methodist college. Kim Riddlebarger views the Holiness Wesleyan theology less kindly:

On occasion, when I mention his perfectionism, people will often challenge me, saying something like, “it can’t be that bad.” No, in fact, it is worse. When I tell them what Wesley actually taught in A Plain Account they simply can’t believe it. So, I keep my Kindle close by to show the quotations replicated below.

John Wesley says in his 1777 “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection,”

A Christian is so far perfect, as not to commit sin. This is the glorious privilege of every Christian, yea, though he be but a babe in Christ. But it is only of grown Christians it can be affirmed, they are in such a sense perfect, as, Secondly, to be freed from evil thoughts and evil tempers. First, from evil or sinful thoughts. Indeed, whence should they spring? ‘Out of the heart of man,’ if at all, ‘proceed evil thoughts.’ If, therefore, the heart be no longer evil, then evil thoughts no longer proceed out of it: For ‘a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.’

And as they are freed from evil thoughts, so likewise from evil tempers. Every one of these can say, with St. Paul, ‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me;’—words that manifestly describe a deliverance from inward as well as from outward sin.

3. Is it unseemly that I, myself, ask these same questions about Pilgrim Hill church? And about the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches? It pains me greatly. My own church considered joining that denomination, and it does many admirable things. But it is those we care about most who most need our care.

4. The Wikipedia article on the Samaritan woman is good. It notes how the scene of Jesus approaching a woman at a well to get a drink parallels the Old Testament story of Jacob approaching Rachel. Jesus is approaching a notorious slut fom a cursed nation, not a pure virgin of his own people, and He knows it. Yet like Jacob, he is seeking a wife. The point is that the Bride of Christ, the Church, is filthy in sin, but Jesus knows that, and marries her for that very reason. As Luther says, “For now since my sin, my filth is taken away, He must adorn me and clothe me with His eternal righteousness and with all His grace until I become beautiful; for I am His Bride.”