God is Not Listening
The cameras were rolling at the Pentagon on March 25, 2026, when the Secretary of Defense bowed his head and prayed for God to grant American forces “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” Pete Hegseth read from Psalm 18: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed.”
Four days later, from St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the first American-born pope answered him. In a pointed rebuke, Pope Leo said, “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”
Invoking the prophet Isaiah, Pope Leo quoted, “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.”
The White House responded the next day. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing by addressing reporters: “Good afternoon everyone. Could you hear our ‘Amen’ in there? We just said a little loud prayer as a team.”
During the briefing, Leavitt was asked directly about the pope’s remarks. Her answer: “Our nation was a nation founded 250 years ago, almost, on Judeo-Christian values.”
“America was founded as a Christian nation,” Hegseth has repeated for years. His pastor, Doug Wilson, whom Hegseth has invited to pray at the Pentagon, believes America should be a theocracy.
The claim that America was founded as a religious project is not a new one, nor are Leavitt and Hegseth alone in propagating that belief. Men like David Barton, a longtime Texas GOP leader, are doing much of the heavy lifting. In April 2025, Barton sat before the Texas House education committee and showed them a worn Bible. He claimed that it was “actually printed by the official printer of Congress.” Then he produced a colonial-era reading primer and testified that first graders had once been drilled on 43 questions about the Ten Commandments, suggesting that American public schools should return to the practice. The founders intended America to be governed by Christian principles, he told the committee. He maintains that the separation of church and state is a myth.
Barton has been telling this story for almost 40 years, and he tells it with the confidence of a man who believes he has never been wrong about anything. He is the founder of WallBuilders, an organization that promotes what it calls “America’s forgotten history and heroes” through books, podcasts, a museum, and a lobbying network that reaches state legislators in all 50 states. Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. He says he gives more than 400 speeches a year.
There is one problem with David Barton’s version of American history: significant portions of it are made up.