O n 17 April, at a briefing on the Iran war, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth told reporters he had been “sitting in church with my family” the previous Sunday while the minister preached from Mark 3. Hegseth then recast a passage about the Pharisees watching Jesus “so that they might accuse him” as a description of the US press corps, which has long been a target of his ire. “Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said. He accused “the legacy Trump-hating press” of a “politically motivated animus” that blinded it to “the brilliance of our American warriors”. The sermon Hegseth described as attending bears similarities to one delivered only days earlier at Christ Kirk DC , a Washington branch of the openly Christian nationalist Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the denomination to which Hegseth belongs. The 12 April sermon , titled “The Fellowship of Grievance”, also exhorted worshippers to embrace a “biblically informed hatred”.…