Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson — who Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has referred to as a “mentor” and personally invited to lead a monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon — recently said that he would have fought for the southern Confederacy during the US Civil War.

In a recent interview, journalist Mehdi Hasan noted Wilson’s comment, adding, “Lest we forget, [the Confederacy] had 3.5 million people enslaved, had a constitution that required the protection of slavery. It was a place where torture of slaves was legal. And you, Doug Wilson, in 2026 are saying you would’ve fought for that South. What kind of moral man are you if you were willing to fight for a side that enslaves and tortures people?”

In the interview, Wilson said, “[The slave-owning Confederate states] were not Nazis. [Slavery] was a fallible, messed-up institution. We don’t defend the institution of slavery. I’m glad that slavery is gone. I wouldn’t have gone to war to fight for slavery. If, had I been in that moment, I would have fought to defend Maryland, which is where I grew up. Maryland or Virginia or something like that.”

Despite being a slave state, Maryland was not a Confederate state, though Virginia was.

Hasan replied, “But [the Confederacy was] fighting for slavery. I mean, they made that very clear, the Confederate leaders. So you would have been fighting for slavery, which is a bizarre thing to own up to in 2026…. The Confederacy was fighting for slavery. So by definition, you [would be] fighting for slavery, which is insane.”

Wilson replied, “I deny your minor premise,” apparently denying that fighting for the Confederacy would be tantamount to fighting for slavery.

Hasan also pointed out that, in Wilson’s 1996 pamphlet Southern Slavery As It Was, Wilson claimed that antebellum slavery created a unique affection and harmony between races and that no society has recreated that since. Mainstream historians have widely rejected this claim, and Hasan deemed it “racist.”

Wilson is the co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a Christian Nationalist denomination with over 130 churches worldwide. Among its key beliefs is that the United States should be subject to biblical law. Hegseth attends a church within Wilson’s denomination.

Wilson believes that “decent human beings” owned slaves, that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote (instead, allowing their husbands or male “heads of the household” to vote), that consensual gay adult encounters should be illegal, and that the world should be a Christian one that forbids public displays of non-Christian religions.

Wlson voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024 because he supported Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court. The appointees have gone on to issue numerous anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion rulings that uphold Christian religious expression over bodily autonomy or anti-discrimination laws.