Friends, I need you to stop scrolling and really pay attention to this now.

For the first time in history, the U.S. Army chief of chaplains was dismissed. Baptist News Global reports that on April 2, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly removed Army Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., offering no public explanation, was overshadowed by the simultaneous ouster of Gen. Randy George.

Green's termination marks the first time an Army chief of chaplains has been fired since the position was created under the National Defense Act of 1920. Daily Wire He was three years into a traditional four-year term.

That isn't a footnote. It's the story.

Green grew up on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He enlisted in the Army as a cannon crewman and field radio repairman, then left active duty in 1986 to pursue ordination. He earned a Master of Divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. www.army.mil He was the third African American to serve as Army chief of chaplains. His decorations include the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star.

He guided soldiers through war and grief. He was deployed to Iraq. He developed the Army's spiritual readiness framework from within.

Hegseth still eliminated him.

Hegseth had previously ordered the War Department to remove Green's Army Spiritual Fitness Guide — a 112-page secular-inclusive resilience guide — within six months of its publication, citing that it mentioned God only once. Daily Wire

Just days before Green's firing, Hegseth announced that military chaplains would no longer wear rank insignia, instead displaying symbols of religious affiliation, and reduced the number of recognized faith codes from over 200 to just 31. The Hill Codes for Wiccans, atheists, and agnostics were among those eliminated. British Brief

This is not merely bureaucratic housekeeping. It is theological selection.

Hegseth is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which was co-founded by Christian nationalist Doug Wilson — whose teachings include that homosexuality should be criminalized, women should not have the right to vote, and that Southern Christians who enslaved people "were on firm scriptural ground." CBC News

At a recent Pentagon prayer service, Hegseth prayed for "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy." Yahoo! He called that worship.

The Black Baptist tradition — the one William Green upholds — has always recognized the difference between worship and empire. It was shaped by enslaved people who were told that God ordained their suffering. It rejected that lie then, and we reject it now.

Historian Ronit Stahl clearly states what is happening: the shift toward "a particular form of Protestant Christianity" as the Department of Defense's operating theology is new, and its implications for a religiously plural nation are serious. Yahoo!

→ LEARN: Read Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited — the text that frames Green's firing within its proper theological context. Read my new book, Makeshift Messiahs: Why The American Right Keeps Creating Political Saviors, to understand how we arrived here.

→ ENGAGE: Visit the Military Religious Freedom Foundation at mrff.org. If you are a veteran or know one, share this resource.

→ ADVOCATE: Reach out to your senators — especially those on the Armed Services Committee — and push for oversight hearings on the ideological reshaping of the military chaplaincy. Find your senators at senate.gov.

May you remember William Green — decorated, dedicated, dismissed during Holy Week without explanation or apology.

May you find, in your own tradition, the words empire has always feared: God is not on the side of the powerful.

We do not do this alone. We do this together.

Go in peace, and go in resistance.

— Rev. Jason Carson Wilson

by Rev. Jason Carson Wilson

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