Faith, Power and Chains - Joshua Haymes, Pete Hegseth and the Return to Slavery

Joshua Haymes’ words recall the darkness of past centuries. In his latest podcast, the Christian nationalist commentator said that Christians should defend the institution of slavery because the Bible “makes it clear that it is not inherently evil to own another human being.” A sentence that shakes the very foundations of moral civilization - and yet comes from the heart of a movement that today holds influence within the American government.

Haymes is not a lone figure. He is closely connected to Pete Hegseth, the current U.S. Secretary of War - a man who fuses religion, patriotism, and military power into a dangerous synthesis. Both belong to the same Christian nationalist community, both proclaim the return of “divine order,” and both see democracy less as a duty than as an obstacle. Hegseth, once a Fox News commentator who praised the “moral backbone of America,” has turned the Department of Defense into a stage for religious symbolism. Pete Hegseth, a member of the ultra-conservative Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, embodies the fusion of faith and power in its most radical form. His church preaches the subordination of women, the return to “divine gender roles,” and a political order explicitly grounded in biblical authority. Hegseth himself stages this faith like a crusade: he wears the motto Deus vult on his skin, shares videos of preachers who deny women the right to vote, and in his book American Crusade calls for a fight against globalism and liberalism - a creed written in the language of war.

The speeches of both Hegseth and Haymes are steeped in dehumanizing rhetoric that portrays war as divine trial, obedience as virtue, and doubt as weakness. Under his leadership, piety becomes the prerequisite for loyalty, and loyalty the currency of political power. That voices from the same circle now justify slavery is no coincidence - it is the logical outcome of an ideology that sanctifies submission. Haymes provides the theology, Hegseth the power. One formulates the dogma, the other enforces it within structures that once served democracy. It is a choreography of pulpit and command post, of cross and command center. The moral explosive force of this alliance lies in the way it transforms religious faith into political hierarchy - and the freedom it claims to defend into spiritual captivity.

One must ask how long international politics will go on staining its hands by shaking this minister’s hand. How long Western leaders who speak of human rights and equality will continue to ignore that at the heart of the American power apparatus sits a man who declares authority to be divine and interprets the hierarchies of the Bible literally. When a Secretary of War in Washington provides a stage for those who justify slavery as divine order, it is no longer a theological faux pas - it is a political abyss. And those in the capitals of Europe or Asia who greet this man with diplomatic smiles must ask themselves whether silence has not already become complicity.