Bulwark Takes - Rep. Jared Huffman: Pete Hegseth Is Preparing for a Religious War

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Congressman Jared Huffman joins Joe Perticone for his take on the rise of Christian nationalism and the religious movements reshaping the American right. Huffman, the author of "No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism," explains how he believes Christian nationalism has become increasingly powerful and entrenched in American politics, from the events of January 6 to the highest levels of government. They also discuss JD Vance, “just war” theory, the rise of the “Rad Trad” movement, Pete Hegseth’s crusade rhetoric, and the religious factions influencing MAGA.Read more from Joe: https://www.thebulwark.com/s/presspassSleep cooler this summer with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at BollAndBranch.com/bulwarktakes with code bulwarktakes.

Hey all, welcome to The Bullwork. This is another episode of Bullwork Takes. I'm Joe Perdicke, and the author of The Press Pass Newsletter, which covers Congress and the way it works and sometimes doesn't work. And I'm joined by Congressman Jared Huffman, who is the representative for California 2nd District, which is where I'm from, and he's the author of No Profits, The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism, and it's out now. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Joe. So this book, I read it over the past month or so, and I kind of went into it with an open mind. It's very interesting because you are the first congressman to publicly declare he does not believe in God,

which is very unique in the history of the United States Congress. And you really unpack the ways in which Christianity or at least, you know, the popular idea of Christianity has been captured as this vessel in modern politics. And you opened with a very grim but familiar a picture of January 6th and how it played a role in that. And I'd love to hear your take on how you, you know, how you were inspired to write this book? Was it January 6th or how did this come about? Thank you very much for reading the book and for having me on to talk about it. So January 6th is where we begin, because it's a real crucible, I think, for this story, a big part of why I wrote the book. I'd been watching this Christian nationalist movement grow in militancy and power my whole

time in Congress, and then it really erupted for everybody to see on January 6th, except a lot of people didn't see it. They looked past the religious elements of the insurrection, and the country kind of went back to sleep. And many of my own colleagues, who the mob was targeting that day, went back to sleep. So I began really following all of these trails to try to understand the theology and the radical faith leaders and others who were so centrally involved in the insurrection. And I share a lot of that in the book. I also try to take folks behind the scenes at the Capitol and show you what I see to provide something of a wake-up call because is this movement is so much further along and so much more entrenched at the highest levels of government

than most people understand. Yeah, and right before reading this, I read for fun, a historical account of the Templar Order. And so it was kind of interesting to go from that to this contextualizing book for the modern political movement and how the same kinds of rhetorics that turned, you know, an order that was essentially like a red cross. order, you know, back in, you know, 1100 into this just war theory where you're warriors for Christianity. And now it's this kind of thing where we've seen various Christian groups. You've seen historically Catholics are very progressive in many cases. But there's these now. You call them rad trads, which are very right-wing-coded. And it was very timely when your book came out,

because you mentioned the Society of St. Pius the 10th. And right before your book came out, Pope Leo excommunicated a bunch of them because of their, what they described as heretical behavior against the church. And this isn't just a group isolated in Switzerland where, you know, their last act to get excommunicated took place. These people behave and act in the United States. And so I was very interested in that part. Could you kind of go into the detail of how groups like the Radtrads, evangelical groups, kind of became a part of the modern political movement? on the right. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm so glad you're versed all the way back to the Knights Templar. There's a little bit of a straight line from them to another power player in this story,

Pete Hegeseth, who of course is a Protestant. There was no Protestant church at the time of the Crusades, but he is saying all the time, he even wrote a book about the fact that he feels like we're living in a modern-day crusade and that our duty, just like the crusaders, is to vanquish Islamic culture and civilization to save the Western world. So this is kind of one faction of the religious, the three-part religious subculture that drives Maga Christian nationalism. And Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of this group called the Theobros, that is a non-charismatic, kind of reformed evangelical religious faction. The other is the most dangerous and the biggest, which is the charismatic evangelicals.

They're really led by this network called the New Apostolic Reformation that is big and super militant and very, very dangerous, very centrally involved in the January 6th insurrection. And then you asked about the Radtrads. Now, with all of these movements, most Christians in America reject the extreme belief system, this dominionist theology that requires them as their religious duty to conquer society and to control government and push their theocratic vision into our lives.

The rad trads, of course, kind of trace all the way back to folks like Father Koflin, who was a Catholic priest in the 1930s that had a huge radio audience, you know, 20 million people or more every week. And he was openly pro-Hitler and fascist and ridiculed democracy, saying that the choice now is between communism and fascism and he chooses fascism. Very anti-Semitic, very bigoted, very theocratic and authoritarian. So these are the sort of three ascendant religious subcultures. And what I do in the book, I'm not a theologian, of course,

but I call on some of the top religion scholars in America to help me unpack that theology. Because one of the important things I'm trying to get across in this book is it's not just a political movement. There's genuine religious belief animating many of these power players, and we need to take a moment to understand that. Have you seen that play out as the war in Iran has gone on? Because you've seen people like J.D. Vant, who's a convert to Catholicism, use things like just war theory. And at the same time, Pope Leo says, this isn't a just war, and the just war theory is outdated. But it's kind of the same thing where you have these more traditional, or they like to say it as traditional, where they say that it's valid because we have this historical account

of just war. For example, where I grew up in your district, home to the second most northern California mission, the priest who baptized my daughter this summer, you know, he's a DACA immigrant. So it's a very different type of Catholicism than I'm used to, which is why this book was so fascinating, because there are these groups of people that are very active in politics. You look at, you know, traditionally Catholics can be very active in labor movements. You look at the 70s. You know, if you went to a Catholic school in the 70s in California, you didn't eat grapes because of the labor disputes. Yeah, and now if you look at it, you see that there are Catholics like Vice President Vance. using just war theory. How have you seen it play out? A lot of this focuses on, you know,

how it came about with January 6th, but seeing it now even as this war rages on. What's been your impression so far of that? Well, I think you ask an interesting question that gets at this schism, if you will, within American Christianity. There's a huge debate going on right now between the Christians who are more traditional, if you will, and think that they're faith is about the gospel and about, you know, all of these acts of radical social justice and peace and, and then this militant Christianity. And it exists certainly in the Catholic faith network as well. You mentioned SSPX and good for Pope Leo, excommunicating these radicals. They are hateful. They are violent. They are a dangerous group, a breeding ground for extremism.

And, you know, J.D. Vance, I don't think of generally as a radtrad. I don't know that he's into like Latin Mass and female veiling. And, you know, the... He attended a Latin Mass this weekend. Did he really? Oh, well, I may have to take that back, Joe. But certainly he's fascinated by it and he's sort of adjacent to, you know, the full rad tread experience.

And when he talks about just war, he is trafficking in rad tread rhetoric right there. This message is sponsored by Bull and Branch. There is nothing worse than getting into bed on a hot summer night and realizing you're not actually going to cool down. You toss the covers off, flip the pillow over, looking for the cool side, somehow five minutes later, you're sweaty again. At that point, you start wondering if you need to crank up the AC even more to get a good night's sleep. But I've realized that sometimes the problem isn't the room. It's what's on the bed. That's why I've been using bowl and branch.

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takes. Exclusions apply. And so one of the things that I noticed early on, on is oftentimes when a member of Congress writes a book, it can be jockeying for a higher office. I knew that wasn't the case because you immediately admit to being a chiefs fan, which won't fare well in the Bay Area. Career limiting, for sure. I was like, right when I read that, I was like, okay, we're starting off with honesty.

That's good. Why this particular subject? I mean, I know that you've said that it's either look the other way or some of your colleagues in Congress aren't fully aware. of it, do you think that, you know, outside of, you know, a place like where we're from in California where you can be a little more outspoken about this, but you have a lot of colleagues who are in the South where religion and politics are heavily intertwined. Do you think that there's, you know, they try to avoid the issue because of, you know, the political damage that it can do by speaking

out on this thing because sometimes when you say, well, this Christian nationalism, people can interpret that as an attack on Christianity writ large. We saw that in the leaked memo where the Biden Justice Department was talking about these trad groups. How do you see that playing out broadly across Congress right now? Well, first, thanks for pointing out that this is not your typical politician book. If I were running for higher office or running for president, This is the last book I would write because we are waiting into some very complex and for some people provocative subject matter. It shouldn't be. I think the reason it still is a little bit taboo and untouchable for many people is that we have a cultural blind spot for Christianity.

I call it Christian privilege. I have an entire chapter that talks about this challenge, this reflex to presume anything that represents itself as Christian is good. and we should just not mess with it. It's going to be a huge part of our challenge in confronting this movement, which represents itself as Christian, but is on a total collision course with democracy, is trying to eliminate church-state separation outright, is trying to take away many of our freedoms and threatens our security and safety. So that's the problem in our politics right now, is that many of my own colleagues won't

talk about it. There are some refreshing exceptions, mostly from a faith perspective. So, you know, I'm hearing Tala Rico and I'm hearing Warnock and a few others take on Christian nationalism and call it out, really take it to the moral woodshed, if you will. But from a faith perspective, pointing out the hypocrisy and the contradictions with the gospel, I'm rooting for all of them. But this is bigger than that. This is really about our democracy and our fundamental rights. And whether you're a Christian or not, you've got a huge stake in being part of this conversation. So what does this look like, you know, fast forward a few months? You could be a committee chairman once again, obviously different jurisdictions, but what does this look like from a member

of Congress's perspective? How is this combated? How do you walk that line? Or do you think, you know, various right-wing outlets will pick up on it like they did on that Biden memo, where it just kind of mentions things like that. How do you remain vigilant about this? How does someone maybe who's not in office and is just kind of hearing this rhetoric on Sunday be vigilant about this rhetoric? Yeah.

So this is important. I'm glad you brought up the Biden memo. And for folks that are not familiar with this, during the Biden presidency, some folks in the FBI were picking up signals that these hate groups that are concentrated in SSPX congregations, Latin Mass, Rad-Trad Catholic congregations, folks that the Southern Poverty Law Center tracks as part of a complex of Rad-Trad hate groups, that there were some

dangerous and concerning threats and plans coming out of that. And the suggestion by one FBI operative and an internal memo was to maybe kind of do what we've done with some Muslim threats in this country. Do a little surveillance, find out what's going on. We've done that many, many times in mosques. But word got out that this was being considered within the FBI at a radical traditionalist Catholic congregation and a full-on moral panic erupted from really many quarters of the Catholic community.

And this is part of the hyper-reactive immune system that the Christian nationalist movement uses to insulate itself from scrutiny and criticism. And it's why so many people would prefer to just not touch it, not talk about it. It's a huge challenge I face in getting my colleagues in Congress interested in protecting church-state separation against this movement. And we are going to have to overcome that. It is why I do welcome all of these Christian critics of Christian nationalism, because they can maybe help break some of that down and open up the conversation, maybe normalize questioning this movement. But we get a long way to go, because for most people, it's still just a little too hot to touch. Great. Well, I was very fascinated by the book.

I would recommend, you know, everyone read it if this is a subject that interests you. And you can pick it up now. Local bookstore, probably preferred, but you can get it on Amazon. You can get it anywhere. No profits. Thank you for coming on, Congressman. Thanks for having me, Joe. Let's be clear about what we're doing here. The bulwark exists to fight authoritarianism and defend American democracy. We do that with reporting, analysis, accountability, and by building a community of people who refuse to look away and pretend that all of this is normal. The next election is coming,

and this is the moment to make that community even bigger and stronger. If you believe this fight matters, join Bullwork Plus, subscribe, like, help us do the work. We're counting on you.