Hegseth says U.S. must defend freedom of Christians to worship

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the United States must defend persecuted Christians in Nigeria and other parts of the world facing harsh treatment for their beliefs.

“President Trump has made clear that the United States will always defend the right of Christians to freely worship here at home and around the world,” Mr. Hegseth told The Washington Times. “As a Christian, this is also very important to me and my family.”

Mr. Hegseth, a conservative Christian, said in a statement that the Defense Department, under its new name of the Department of War, “condemns the persecution against Christians that has taken place in Nigeria — and numerous other countries — and is fully prepared to act whenever called upon by the commander-in-chief.”

Congress has not confirmed the new name for the Pentagon or Mr. Hegseth’s new title, secretary of war.

The comments come in response to questions posed to the secretary about a growing global crackdown on Christians who are facing severe persecution in Nigeria, China, South Korea and elsewhere.

The defense secretary said he believes it is important to speak out against the persecution of Christians.

Mr. Hegseth said before becoming the top Pentagon leader that his faith and patriotism are intertwined.

“To me, patriotism is not about love of government. It’s about love of our founding ideals that have pursued a more perfect union from the very beginning,” he told the Nashville Christian Family magazine in 2023. “It goes back to basics for me as a Christian: love of God and an understanding that my freedoms come from God — not from government — and that this nation was created as an experiment in self-governance and human freedom that every generation must perpetuate.”

Mr. Trump raised the issue of Christians being killed indiscriminately in Nigeria on Truth Social this month. He threatened to halt all aid and warned that the U.S. military “may very well go into that now disgraced country, ’guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” Mr. Trump stated.

Nigeria has about 200 ethnic groups that practice Christianity, Islam and traditional religions. Recent violence has come from ethnic divisions or conflict over scarce resources.

The extremist Islamist armed group Boko Haram also has terrorized northeast Nigeria, an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people over the past 15 years.

Analysts estimate that more than 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009, with about 7,000 in the first half of 2025. Most have come at the hands of Boko Haram or Muslim Fulani militants.

Mr. Trump said he instructed the Pentagon to prepare for possible military action, noting that “if we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

In China, dozens of pastors and believers recently were arrested by authorities under the officially atheist communist government.

In South Korea, conservative Christians also are facing persecution with several faith leaders forced into severe pre-trial detention.

They include Hak Ja Han Moon, the 82-year-old co-founder and spiritual head of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification who is in failing health and is being held on what appear to be politically motivated financial charges.

The federation, formerly known as the Unification Church, owns multiple businesses, including The Washington Times.

Also being persecuted is South Korean Rev. Son Hyun-bo, 62, founder and head pastor of Segeroh Presbyterian Church, who has faced similar harsh detention for months.

Rev. Son, a former South Korean special forces commando, met with activist youth leader Charlie Kirk days before Kirk’s assassination in Utah.

Kirk said after his visit to South Korea that, under liberal President Lee Jae-myung, “the country is totally under attack” and that the government is using “lawfare” against conservatives.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stated in a recent op-ed that anti-religious persecution in South Korea was so serious that Kirk’s last act there several days before he was assassinated was to call Secretary of State Marco Rubio to warn him of a crisis there.

Mr. Lee “has been moving South Korea toward an anti-religious dictatorial attitude, with his administration locking up a growing number of religious leaders,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Gingrich also has called on Mr. Trump to intervene in seeking the release of Mrs. Han on humanitarian grounds.

The harsh detention of Mrs. Han, Rev. Son and other Christian leaders, large-scale police raids, investigations, and questioning on political matters of other conservative pastors in South Korea have religious freedom advocates and international officials warning that Mr. Lee’s administration appears to be weaponizing the justice system against political opponents.

South Korea remains politically polarized, and widespread legal offensives were unleashed after the power transfer from conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol to liberal Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee won the presidency in June after Mr. Yoon’s impeachment for declaring martial law in December.

Rev. Son is said by his son, Chance, to be in fair health but is suffering from mold in his cell.

“He is someone who does not express his weakness,” Mr. Son said. “Every time I ask him, ’Are you OK?’ he says, ’Why ask? God has got my back.’”

In addition to Rev. Son and Mrs. Han, several other church leaders have faced raids, investigations and questioning on political matters.

They include Protestant Rev. Jeon Kwang-heon, a conservative whose followers massed in the streets in opposition to liberal former President Moon Jae-in and against the current president, Mr. Lee.

Rev. Jeon’s home was ransacked by authorities, said an associate, and he is forbidden from leaving South Korea pending investigations into allegations that he instigated a court invasion.

In China, a crackdown on unofficial Christians was launched Oct. 10 after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that all religions in China must “further adapt” to the communist system.

Chinese police detained dozens of underground church pastors in what is thought to be the largest crackdown on Christians in China since 2018.

The crackdown involved raids by police in 11 cities where about 30 pastors and other church leaders were arrested on questionable charges including “illegal use of information networks.”

The action is viewed by analysts as the beginning of a new nationwide attack on unofficial Christian churches, those that are not registered to the government.

Mr. Rubio said the Trump administration condemned the crackdown and called for all the release of the Christian leaders.

“The United States condemns the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s recent detention of dozens of leaders of the unregistered house Zion Church in China, including prominent pastor Mingri ’Ezra’ Jin,” Mr. Rubio said in a statement.

“This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches,” he said.

China is believed to have a Christian population of between 20 million and 100 million. They flourished under the CCP’s retrenchment from hard-line communism in the 1980s.

Under Mr. Xi, a die-hard Marxist-Leninist, religion is being repressed.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom stated in a report made public last month that China is using imprisonment, forced disappearance and torture in persecuting religious leaders.

Mr. Xi said during a study session of the CCP’s Central Committee Politburo in September that religious groups in China must “adapt to socialist society.”

Since 2012, the officially secular CCP put forward new requirements that religious groups must be “Chinese in orientation,” he stated.

Hudson Institute analysts Bill Drexel and Grace Jin Drexel said the crackdown on unofficial Christians in China reflects CCP fears of religion weakening its near-total power.

“Xi is paranoid that Chinese churches could similarly facilitate organized public unrest, particularly as China faces economic headwinds,” they wrote in a recent report published by Hudson.

“And the CCP is unnerved by the fact that a religious worldview has so much mass appeal, compared with its own flagging official ideology.”

Mr. Gingrich said growing persecution of Christians is a global danger. He noted that in the late 1980s, as Soviet tanks and communist oppression threatened Poland, then-Pope John Paul II spoke three simple words: “Be not afraid.”

“Today, that same spirit is under siege — not in Poland, but in places like Nigeria, Sudan and even South Korea,” Mr. Gingrich told the group Save the Persecuted Christians.

• Andrew Salmon contributed to this story.