Pete Hegseth to headline DC faith rally with far-right and Christian nationalist speakers

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth , will this weekend headline a faith rally on the National Mall in Washington DC hosted by a private foundation operating in partnership with the White House, which includes some speakers that experts have characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist. Rededicate 250 , billed as the faith-based component of America’s semiquincentennial, features speakers including a Detroit pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic” and launched his own memecoin after praying at Trump’s second inauguration; a rabbi who has defended the use of torture and authored an essay titled “The Virtue of Hate”; and a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims. Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House speaker Mike Johnson are also scheduled to appear. The lineup includes no Muslims, no representatives of historically Black churches, no Indigenous faith leaders and no mainline Protestants. Hegseth’s own writings foreground anti-Muslim rhetoric and envisage a US military “taking sides” in a coming American civil war, as previously reported in the Guardian . His 2020 book American Crusade depicts Islam as a historic enemy of the west, calls for an “American crusade” against “domestic enemies” as well as the enemies of Israel, and idolises medieval crusaders. …