Deus Vult: Part of Our Christian Heritage

Pete Hegseth, former Fox & Friends weekend co-host and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, is taking heat over reports that in 2021 he was accused of being an “insider threat” by fellow National Guardsman DeRicko Gaither.

The explanation for this accusation? A tattoo of the Latin phrase “Deus Vult,” which means “God wills it,” on his inner bicep. “White-Supremacist use of #Deus Vult and a return to medieval Catholicism, is to invoke the myth of a white Christian (i.e. Catholic) medieval past that wishes to ignore the actual demographics and theological state of Catholicism today,” then-head of security Gaither wrote in a letter to his superiors. Disgusted, Hegseth chose to leave active duty shortly thereafter.

Cue the liberal pearl-clutching. NPR’s “domestic extremism correspondent” Odette Yousef explained that “Deus Vult,” was “sort of the battle cry to take back the Holy Land and to slaughter Muslims.” Yousef added that “symbols and language tied to the Crusades are very present in some extremist movements” and that scholars had told her that Hegseth belongs to the “very militant end of the Christian nationalist spectrum.” Sherrilyn Ifill, former director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, declared on MSNBC that Hegseth is “known to be a white supremacist” because of his opposition to affirmative action in the military.

Now, I’m not exactly sympathetic to Hegseth and his cries of victimhood at the hands of “anti-Christian bigotry.” Certainly, the father of seven presents as proudly Christian, with a Jerusalem cross prominently tattooed on his chest and having hosted a Fox documentary on the life of Jesus. He’s also on his third marriage—after having engaged in multiple extramarital affairs, including having a child with the woman who is now his wife while he was still married to his second wife. He also paid a (married) woman who accused him of sexual assault in order to prevent her from filing a lawsuit that might damage his career. Now, perhaps Mr. Hegseth has repented of these infidelities and is living with his “wife” as brother and sister…but I doubt it.

Rather, I am interested in defending “Deus Vult.” Its caricature by liberal, secular media, gives the impression that if some random white supremacist appropriates anything conservative or Christian, that thing is immediately tainted and forever associated with bigotry, racism, and murder. For, apart from the fact that such correlative judgments are applied unevenly—the deaths of millions at the hands of socialist, atheist regimes in Russia, China, and Cambodia have done little to tar socialism or atheism as irreparably evil in the eyes of the Left—there’s another concern even more threatening to the Catholic Faith as believed and practiced. And that is the insidious attempt to portray legitimate goods, and even integral elements of our Faith, as unacceptable for polite company or participation in public life.

But first, let’s address the charges against “Deus Vult.” What, one may wonder, was Hegseth’s fellow National Guardsman talking about when he claimed the phrase necessarily invokes “the myth of a white Christian (i.e. Catholic) medieval past that wishes to ignore the actual demographics and theological state of Catholicism today”? Only someone entirely ignorant of the Crusades and medieval Catholicism could utter something so risibly stupid. Only someone entirely ignorant of the Crusades and medieval Catholicism could utter something so risibly stupid. Tweet This

Yes, many crusaders could anachronistically be described as “white,” given the majority came from Christian Europe—but they also fought on behalf of Eastern Christian communities in the Levant and Egypt that were the same “color” as their Muslim adversaries. Indeed, crusader armies were composed not only of Europeans but Armenians, Arabs, and various other Levantine peoples, and there was a great deal of religious tolerance among Christian groups.

Then there’s the NPR reporter’s claim that “Deus Vult” amounts to “sort of the battle cry to take back the Holy Land and to slaughter Muslims.” Putting aside whatever is meant by the sophomoric qualifier “sort of,” Ms. Yousef is at least half-right. Yes, “God wills it” was indeed a rallying cry of the crusaders, who were called by Catholic leaders to sell their possessions and go on a new kind of religious pilgrimage, one that required them to both pray and fight. War, in this case, was necessary: within a hundred years of Islam’s birth, it had conquered three-fifths of the Christian world. Muslim Seljuk Turks in 1071 massacred a Byzantine army and threatened Constantinople, the last obstacle between Islam and Christian Europe.

So yes, Christians sought to take back the Holy Land, which in the eleventh century still had large Christian communities that predated the Muslim conquest. But to describe this as a quest to “slaughter Muslims” is deeply misleading—Christians sought to engage enemy armies who had forcibly taken Christian lands and oppressed Christian peoples across the Middle East and North Africa. These Muslims were no less violent—and plenty of historical evidence indicates they were far more brutal—than their Christian nemeses. But the glory of the Crusades was not in “slaughtering Muslims” as such, but rather, in securing a Christian redoubt in what had been theirs. And, as the history of the Crusades bears out, there was plenty of Muslim slaughtering of Christians, all the way up to the capture of the last Christian stronghold of Acre in 1291. 

Now, white supremacists may indeed have appropriated “Deus Vult” for their own racist designs. As much as they think the term means white Europeans subjugating or excluding other racial groups to create some neo-Nazi fantasy world, they portray just as much historical and theological ignorance as liberal critics of the Crusades. But why, as soon as some idiot skinhead co-opts some Catholic language or imagery, must it immediately and necessarily become associated with degenerate evil? When Latino narcos or gang members wear rosaries and display images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, are these also irrevocably contaminated? 

In truth, what this represents is a diabolical program to undermine parts of our glorious Catholic tradition and doctrine. According to that project, the expression “God wills it,” which is a completely defensible expression of Christian practice—even when applied to just war theory, whose criteria the Crusades certainly satisfied—must be expunged if Christians are to be allowed to participate in republican institutions such as the military. Because a few oddball adherents of the Latin Mass might be white supremacists, Catholics must eschew this ancient, venerable practice, lest they be targeted by federal authorities. Because the Knights of Columbus is a fraternal (gasp!) organization whose very name honors a missionizing European “imperialist” and whose raison d’être includes defense of Catholic teaching on human sexuality, no member of it should be permitted to serve in federally-appointed positions.

No, Catholics must not repudiate our shared heritage of Columbus, the Latin Mass, or the Crusades. We must resist those who aim to erase our own history and tradition because it is erroneously maligned as bigoted or racist. We must defend what is true and good. God wills it.

[Photo Credit: Peter Hegseth Instagram]