United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quoted a line from the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino, as if it were a biblical passage during the monthly service he usually holds at the Pentagon.
Hegseth believed he was quoting a passage attributed to Ezekiel 25:17. Meanwhile, he reproduced what Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules Winnfield recites before committing murder.
During his speech, last Wednesday, the 15th, Hegseth stated that the text would have been used as a kind of prayer by a pilot linked to the planning of an American military mission in Iran.
“Blessed be he who, in the name of comradeship and duty, guides the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the protector of lost children.”
The excerpt continues: “And I will take vengeance with great fury and wrath on those who seek to capture and destroy my brother, and they will know that my name is the Lord when I bring my vengeance upon them.”
Despite referring to a religious text, the version cited does not correspond to a biblical passage.
Continues after advertising
Messages of a religious nature are part of the secretary’s routine, who has promoted monthly Christian services for Department of Defense employees. The folder’s institutional videos also display biblical verses alongside military images.
In speeches and interviews, the secretary frequently states that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and argues that the military must embrace the faith. Religious rhetoric gained new weight after the start of the conflict involving the United States and Israel against Iran, an Islamic theocracy.
Hegseth has a history of statements in defense of the Crusades, the medieval wars fought between Christians and Muslims. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, he wrote that those who value Western civilization should “thank a crusader.”
The secretary also has tattoos inspired by the iconography of this period, such as the Jerusalem Cross and the expression “Deus Vult”, described by him as “the battle cry of the Christian knights on their march towards Jerusalem”.
*With information from the Associated Press.
