Anastasia Brown
The second-floor meeting room on Pennsylvania Avenue is unassuming, but it’s filling up fast when I walk in on Sunday morning. Young mothers in long floral dresses are assembling well-scrubbed toddlers on the rows of seats, men (in suit and tie) chat near the doorway, coffee cups in hand. I am seated next to a couple of other reporters, who take notes throughout the service.
It involves the sequence of a traditional Presbyterian liturgy: the Lord’s Prayer, hymns accompanied by piano and a scripture reading. What is out of the ordinary – and why there is a standard procedure for media showing up on Sunday – is that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and family are regular attendees, and the congregation is under the authority of a pastor who openly refers to himself as a Christian nationalist. He has recently drawn media attention to himself by reiterating his belief that the 19th Amendment should be repealed.
This particular political stance is consistent with his theology of gender and the way that his small denomination (the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches) is structured. Midway through the service a young couple comes to the front of the room to take vows of membership. Only the husband speaks the “I do’s.” His wife nods along beside him. She gives an extra emphatic nod when he vows that he speaks on behalf of his “household.” For the uninitiated, this “household” language comes from New Testament accounts of whole households being baptized after receiving the gospel. It is also the foundation of Doug Wilson’s belief that women should not vote on an individual basis. They would, in theory, have a vote, as long as they are married. In marriage, the two become one flesh, after all.
