Hegseth’s nomination fits the TheoBro pattern creating abuse culture

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 26, 2024.

Given the state of their churches, it makes total sense that conservative evangelicals would elect a president who has a history of bragging about sexual assault. And it also makes sense that this sexually abusive president would nominate five people to his cabinet who have been accused of sexual abuse: Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Linda McMahon.

Thankfully, Gaetz has withdrawn his nomination after even Trump realized the votes for confirmation were not to be found in the Senate.

In the case of Hegseth, the accusations stem from a 2017 incident where a woman who ended up in his hotel room claimed he wouldn’t let her leave, took her phone away and sexually assaulted her. Video surveillance showed Hegseth and the alleged victim together at the hotel pool around 1:30 a.m., when hotel employees confronted him for being loud and disorderly. Upon being confronted, Hegseth began yelling about having freedom of speech. So the victim apologized for him and walked him toward his room. Hotel employees said Hegseth appeared “very intoxicated,” while the victim was “very coherent.”

While the woman still insists she was raped, Hegseth declares their extramarital sexual activity was consensual.

While five of Trump’s nominees have been accused of some form of sexual abuse, Hegseth is unique because he reportedly attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is part of the Reformed Reconstructionist “New Christendom” movement led by Doug Wilson, the pastor who famously tells women to call their husbands “lord” and says, “Men dream of being rapists.”

Even though sexual assault involving intoxication may be an unfortunately common human story, there is a unique culture among these conservative Calvinist men that mixes entitlement, misogyny and alcohol. And since Trump is attempting to fill his cabinet with these men, we need to start exposing the culture these men build behind closed doors when they’re not dressed up in suits and ties and posing for their congregations.

As I reflect on my time in these churches, it’s easy to see how men like Hegseth would thrive and increase their power to the point of harming women and belittling men who they think are too much like women.

Complementarian Calvinist power

When I was fresh out of fundamentalism in 2004, I joined the “Young, Restless and Reformed” movement that compensated for insecurity with Calvinism, church planting, male headship and beer. I moved across the country to Denver to start a church with a 27-year-old TheoBro who thought he was qualified to start a church with zero experience and a master’s degree.

In these conservative complementarian Calvinist churches, only men are in charge. And church elders hold absolute authority. So men are taught to embrace their authority in the church, home and society.

Seven years of spiritual abuse later, our pastor’s wife divorced him and the leaders of the church asked him to step down. But he spent the next six months threatening us if we didn’t call him back he’d start another church in the neighborhood. We were young. And he wore us down and isolated us from the congregation until we all decided to leave. Then he had a few of his buddies appoint themselves as elders and call him back to be the pastor.

What resulted was multiple additional church splits and brand new names spanning two decades with the same few TheoBros in charge.

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