The Fortress of Moscow: Pete Hegseth, Abraham Kuyper, and the Theology of Separation

This pamphlet is written from a distinct, deliberate vantage point: that of a theologian who has spent decades navigating the demanding streams of the Reformed tradition, only to find its ultimate fulfillment in a broader, universal spirituality. My early theological convictions were shaped by seven years of rigorous training to become a Dutch Reformed minister, followed by postgraduate research focused on the mid-20th-century Dutch theologian Klaas Schilder. Over nearly thirty years of ministry since 1998, my pastoral journey has taken me from congregations in Southern Africa—including South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia—to diverse cultural and pastoral landscapes across Canada, from British Columbia and Ontario to my current home in Nova Scotia.

Today, I serve as an ordained reverend within the United Church of Canada (UCC). If you look at the life of our congregation, you will quickly see that I am not a confessional Calvinist. I do not subscribe to rigid dogmatic borders or exclusive doctrinal tests. However, deep in my heart remains an unmovable understanding that I first discovered through the heart of Calvinism: the absolute priority of the Spirit.

I have come to understand Calvin not as the architect of a rigid legal system, but as a theologian of a boundless, borderless spiritual reality. I hold a deep conviction that all true spirituality and religion flow from a mystical, profound encounter with an "Unnamable Other"—Spirit, Ultimate Reality, the Divine—by whatever name we choose to call it. It is the Spirit that comes to us. And because that Spirit is universal, I welcome and celebrate spiritual experiences across all religious traditions.

I entered the United Church believing it was a faithful next step toward a more inclusive expression of this truth. Yet, navigating a modern "culture church"—an institution whose background is often heavily seated in politics—requires us to re-examine what it means to be truly driven by the Spirit. My spirit stands for the exact opposite of the separatist mindset. I believe religion should serve as a bridge to bring all people of the world closer together. We have one planet and one people. It is from this vantage point of radical openness that I offer this critique of the fortified, exclusionary ideology taking root across our border.

From a United Church Pulpit

When I stand in the pulpit of the United Church of Canada, I look out at a world that desperately needs bridges, not walls. Yet, we live in an era of intense theological and cultural polarization. On one hand, we navigate the quiet compromise of the "culture church," where the profound mystery of the divine encounter is easily swallowed by prevailing political and social tides. On the other hand, we witness a dangerous, reactionary alternative.

We see this explicitly in the ideology of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is frequently mislabeled by secular commentators as a Christian Reconstructionist seeking an outright, aggressive takeover of pluralistic America. In reality, his writings and public alignment with the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) reveal something far more insidious: he operates as a theological separatist. Hegseth is not trying to convert a pluralistic society; he is using a distorted variation of classic Reformed logic to build a fortified, parallel world designed to separate entirely from it. Where the universal Spirit builds bridges to bring humanity together, Hegseth’s ideology builds a fortress to tear us apart.

The Ghost of Totius—How Kuyper Became a Blueprint for Segregation

To understand the machinery behind Hegseth’s separatist worldview, we must revisit a profound historical tragedy from the Dutch Reformed tradition: the weaponization of Abraham Kuyper.

In the late 19th century, the Dutch theologian and Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper articulated a concept known as soevereiniteit in eigen kring—sphere sovereignty. Kuyper’s original vision was a defense of freedom against totalitarian state overreach. He argued that God had woven distinct areas of authority directly into the fabric of creation—the family, the school, the church, and the state. Each sphere answered directly to the divine, meaning a secular government had no right to dictate how a parent raised a child or how a community practiced its faith.

However, a theology designed to protect human freedom can easily be twisted into a mechanism of cruel exclusion.

In the mid-20th century, theologians in South Africa—most notably J.D. du Toit (Totius) and political figures like D.F. Malan—imported Kuyper’s blueprint. They radically altered his logic, arguing that if the Divine created distinct, sovereign "spheres" of life, then it must have also ordained the absolute, permanent separation of different cultures and races. They rebranded this as "separate development". A doctrine meant to keep the state from crushing the conscience of a community was deformed into the divine, structural justification for Apartheid.

Pete Hegseth, deeply influenced by the CREC church network operating out of Moscow, Idaho, is executing the exact same theological pivot today. He is not dividing people along explicit lines of race, but he is drawing an absolute, impermeable boundary based on ideological and cultural purity. By taking the language of independent spheres, Hegseth treats the broader, pluralistic world not as a space sustained by a universal, unifying Spirit, but as a source of terminal cultural contamination.

Hegseth the Separatist—Building the Fortress

While true Christian Reconstructionists actively desire to capture the existing machinery of the secular state to enforce biblical law globally, Hegseth’s rhetoric is fundamentally obsessed with contamination, retreat, and tactical withdrawal. His primary focus is on safeguarding an uncompromised, pure "remnant" by building a parallel society.

We see this blueprint explicitly in his approach to education. Hegseth does not treat the public school system as a shared civic space to be improved through faithful, loving participation. Instead, he labels public schools as secular "indoctrination camps" and advocates for a total, systemic exodus into an isolated network of classical Christian schools and homeschooling cooperatives.

We see this same separatist impulse in his military rhetoric. Even as he steps into the role of commanding the world's most powerful military, his primary focus remains insular. His written and spoken goal is to purge institutional diversity and cultivate a purified, isolated "warrior class" within the state’s apparatus—a walled castle capable of withstanding the secular tide. It utilizes the vocabulary of cultural mandate, but it strips it of any universal hope. For Hegseth, the ultimate goal is not a transformed, unified world, but a heavily fortified enclave.

The Erasure of the Spirit—Schilder’s Cross vs. Hegseth’s Castle

This defensive retreat represents a catastrophic departure from a genuine theology of the Spirit. The true alternative to cultural compromise is found in the legacy of Klaas Schilder, who famously navigated the terrifying, hostile culture of Nazi-occupied Holland without ever building a bunker.

Schilder championed a concept that stands in direct opposition to Hegseth's fear of contamination: "engagement under the cross."

For Schilder, the believer does not have the luxury of building a walled-off, parallel kingdom to keep their hands clean. Schilder argued that the dynamic, sovereign movement of the Spirit sends us into a broken world. To engage culture "under the cross" means to occupy every single square inch of society—politics, education, art, and governance—not as triumphalist conquerors looking for a fight, but as servants willing to suffer. It is an act of sacrificial love and obedience, confident that the boundless Spirit sustains us even in the middle of the storm.

Now, look at the "American Calvinist" strategy championed by Hegseth and the Moscow, Idaho movement. They have systematically erased the open, boundaryless reality of the Spirit, replacing a dynamic encounter with the Divine with a mechanical, institutional moat.

In Hegseth’s theological ecosystem, faith is reduced to a hyper-structural, earthly checklist: Are your children in the approved school? Do you submit to our specific patriarchal hierarchy? Have you separated from the public square? If you check the boxes, you are deemed safe inside their man-made borders. But by turning faith into a mechanical border check, they swap a vibrant, Spirit-led theology for an exhausting exercise in institutional compliance and political tribalism. Schilder's theology sends an empowered believer out to break barriers; Hegseth's ideology locks a terrified believer inside a bunker.

One Planet, One People—The Unifying Spirit

To stand as a minister in the church today is to navigate a precarious, painful gap. Looking out across our spiritual landscape, I see two equally destructive temptations drawing people away from true, transformative spirituality.

On one side stands the temptation of the "culture church," where the church functions primarily as a social mirror—reflecting whatever political wind happens to be blowing—losing its unique, mystical, and prophetic voice. It blurs the edges of the divine encounter, mistaking contemporary political alignment for ultimate reality, and becomes a mere chaplaincy to politics.

But the antidote to a compromised culture church is not, and can never be, Pete Hegseth’s separatist fortress.

Hegseth and his ideological allies look at the shifting culture and panic. Their response is a reactionary, defensive retreat into an exclusionary enclave. They build parallel worlds, trading a theology without borders for a localized, protective bunker. A community that builds a moat around itself has stopped being a bridge. It replaces the sovereign, unpredictable wind of the Spirit with human-made institutional walls and top-down political muscle.

Both models make the exact same error: they collapse the infinite reality of the Divine into human politics. One assimilates into the political state; the other retreats into a bunker to fight it. Both leave the universal, unifying Holy Spirit completely out of the equation.

A true understanding of the Spirit calls us out of both errors. It reminds us that all true religion must serve as a bridge to bring all the people of the world closer together. The future does not belong to a political committee, nor does it belong to a handful of fearful separatists in Idaho.

The future belongs to the Ultimate Reality—the Unnamable Other—who animates our world, breaks down our artificial definitions, and calls us to realize a profound, inescapable truth: we are one planet, and we are one people, always.

Discussion & Reflection Questions

The Trap of the Two Extremes

Bridges vs. Walls

A Theology Without Borders

Moving Forward: One Planet, One People

Leader's Guide Supplement: Scriptural Foundations

To ground these small group conversations in a shared text, leaders may read and pair the following passages with the discussion questions: