Indeed, the relationship between Haymes and Hegseth is a close one: Haymes’s podcast cohost is Brooks Potteiger, the pastor at Pilgrim Hill and Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, and Hegseth has appeared on the podcast numerous times. Haymes, meanwhile, thinks that Democrats and the media hate Pete Hegseth because he is “a straight, white, Christian man” who is preventing them from establishing their “gay race commie utopia.”
CoREC core tenets and Christian nationalism
CoREC (yes, we have written about Doug Wilson before but admit that his rise to prominence the last couple of years might warrant an updated entry) endorses the doctrine of “sphere sovereignty”, which encompasses the idea that all aspects of human life, including government, is or should be bound by a vision of biblical law that aligns with Old Testament precepts of ‘morality’ and punishment.
CoREC also endorses Postmillennialism, the view that Christ will return after Christian domination of the world is achieved, an idea that is – obviously – a major motivator for Christian nationalism movements that wish to transform society through religious and political means and think that any opposition to Christian nationalism is guided by Satan. Haymes himself is officially fighting to impose Christian nationalism on the nation “because if we don’t win politically and spiritually, then my great-grandchildren will be very likely imprisoned for saying the kinds of things that we [believe].” The prediction is of course merely a projection of his own preferences for how those who have different beliefs from himself should be treated.
Haymes is a devoted subscriber to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and believes that e.g. Democrats (Satanists) are deliberately working to replace Americans with Muslims to prevent the return of Christ: “make no mistake,” says Haymes, “mass immigration is designed by liberal globalists to destroy, to destroy our culture … Anglo-Protestant culture. […] specifically, they want more non-Christian, non-white people to come [to] supplant and replace the white voting population.” (For note: “White People Are Native Americans”, something that is important to remember when Haymes claims that “only Native Americans should hold political office in America.”) By contrast, as Haymes sees it, “Is the Bible in favor of these Ice raids? The answer is yes.” After all, “the Bible does not permit the civil magistrate to steal money from its citizens to pay for foreign nationals to come destroy our culture” – curiously, Haymes neglected to cite chapter and verse, but the idea is presumably all over the place and Haymes absorbed it from the Biblical whole by Biblical osmosis. And to emphasize, the anti-ICE protesters are “the bad guys” here because they are “actively trying to replace the native-born population of America with third-world migrants.”
Though he sometimes appears to promote the Lost Cause of the South, lamenting e.g. that the slaveholding states simply wanted to secede but “Lincoln and the north, the federal government said: no, you may not” and used unjustified power to get their way, it is worth noting that Haymes doesn’t, as opposed to what defenders of the Lost Cause idea usually try to do to cover their tracks, denounce slavery. Indeed, Haymes has explicitly argued that “the institution of slavery is not inherently evil. It is not inherently evil to own another human being” and “it is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said;” for in fact, “Christians in America have been led astray on this topic”. Haymes has also unconditionally endorsed the views of white nationalist and founder of the American Renaissance, Jared Taylor.
Haymes’s views on the state and society
“Republican Platform 2032 – Abolish Abortion & IVF – Ban Pornography – Bring Back Public Executions For Violent Offenders – Outlaw No Fault Divorce – Overturn Obergefell – Ban Gay Adoption – Ban public indecency (Which would ban pride parades). What did I miss?”
Among other things, CoREC is famous for their view on voting in rights, in particular that women should lose the vote in the US (and note that Hegseth appears to agree). After all, as Haymes puts it, “Voting is not a sacred right granted by God” and should, as such, not apply to everyone. In Haymes’s Biblical vision for society, only men take part and “to be ruled by women is, in fact, a curse”; even in the home, “the father has actual authority over his wife and children. And then the wife has authority over the children too, but ultimately it’s a patriarchal vision” (he does apparently not even pretend to advocate complementarianism). So when Joshua Haymes leads his own family in prayer, he explicitly prays “that God would give [his wife] grace to obey me.” As such, what would things look like if women were to be able to exercise power by voting?! Good grief.
And if you thought he hates women, he will tell you that the target here is not really women, but Satan: “Satan loves androgyny” [?], so “Christian women would do well to make a concerted effort to dress in a distinctly feminine manner in today’s gender confused clown world.” Importantly, though, ‘feminine manner’ does not include bikinis, which should be banned. “By the grace of God We WILL pass laws that legislate women’s bodies,” says Haymes.
Haymes has also advocated for capital punishment for adultery and abortion (though he qualified his endorsement of the former a little: “I am not in favor of rushing to capital punishment for adultery. Though in principle I am not against it. I am certainly in favor of completely overturning no-fault divorce and outlawing adultery, and enforcing serious penalties for it”). In fact, Haymes is particularly concerned that such executions should be public: “Public executions are Biblical. Therefore public executions are good. Therefore we should bring back public executions.” That said, he is apparently “not yet sold on the idea that all capitol [sic] punishment must be a public stoning where the community partakes” and might prefer “death by a public firing squad wherein the accuser and witnesses partake in the firing”.
The focus on punishment is actually pretty central to Haymes’ (and CoREC’s) view of how the state should be organized (and it’s important to note that Hegseth, again, appears to agree). You see, “The state’s role is not to do good,” such as providing education or healthcare or welfare; that’s for the family and for the church. The state’s role is “primarily punishment, capital punishment and [other] punishments.” And of course, the state, as well as the family, is bound to operate within the confines of biblical law where the Bible is understood as a unity, and in which Old Testament law – including proscriptions on homosexuality and adultery – is still binding.
As for gay rights in particular, Haymes has called for the drowning of LGBTQ+ Pride marchers. He tried to clarify that one a bit: “I do not believe that anyone should be drowning anyone in this scenario. I am simply stating the fact that Christ says that drowning is better than causing little ones to sin” but also that we need to take responsibility to ensure that Christ’s words determine our actions and our laws. Keep in mind that homosexuality is “uniquely evil”, and that “the dystopian LGBT nightmare” (Hegseth) is “one of Satan’s greatest tools for excising Christ from not just our classrooms but our country”. At the very least, it is “indefensible” for any Christian to believe that “gay couples should have the right to adopt children”; rather, “we should be looking to BOTH legislate and stigmatize this wickedness into oblivion.” After all, “modern LGBT is likely worse than Sodom”, since “modern LGBT cultists target kids” – though fortunately, homosexuality can be cured!
Meanwhile, people who post social media content that he dislikes should be jailed (see: no executions called for): “I’m in favor of using political power to tamp down on evil, degenerate, anti-social behavior,” or really, anything that doesn’t align with his views on things.
According to Haymes, liberalism is currently a greater threat to the US than neo-Nazism, and the only hope for America is “total defeat of leftist liberal ideology”; as he sees it, “it’s Christ or chaos.” The left consists of “evil, hateful demons” who have “declared war” (some might be struck by the notion that it is Haymes who seems to be trying to declare war, but you probably shouldn’t apply concerns for accuracy or details here). Also, Martin Luther King Jr. was apparently “worse than Stalin”.
Haymes on religious freedom
Like most wingnuts of his kind, Haymes engages in free historical revisionism to back up his view of how society should be organized. According to Haymes, “America was founded as a Christian nation”, even though it is currently “an apostate nation.” The current focus on religious freedom, for instance, is as such not only in conflict with the Bible but with the US’s own founding principles –that is, Haymes elaborates: “the First amendment was designed to ensure that every American can be any kind of CHRISTIAN he wants […] It was not designed to ensure every American has the right to publicly worship demons. False religion can and should be banned from public life.” The scholarship that went into this conclusion is of the same kind that has gone into most of his other conclusions (he really doesn’t care about truth or accuracy on these issues), but one upshot is of course that “every single politician should be giving special treatment to Christianity.” Not that Haymes particularly fancies the Constitution anyways: what he really wants is to take America “back to 1750”, before the Constitution, “to a time when we were 99 percent Christian.”
Anyways, with regard to other religions, Haymes is a “Christian supremacist” who thinks that “every other religion worships dumb idols and demons,” and he is adamant that non-Christian religions should not be allowed in America: “We should absolutely ban public displays of demon worship, and require our political leaders to be Christian.” In particular, he wants it known that he “hate[s] Islam with a perfect hatred” (theologians might note that Haymes views hatred as a perfection) and “want it be completely obliterated” (at the very least, they should be legally prevented from holding office.) And he unequivocally supported “the Muhammadan travel ban from Trump 1? That was awesome.”
Hinduism is not much better. Reacting to a statue of a Hindu deity in Mississauga, Ontario, Haymes lamented that “This is what a conquered [i.e. ‘greatly replaced’] nations [sic] looks like”. Indeed, his views on other religions seem to give rise to his main gripe with the Trump administration, which doesn’t always realize that America was founded exclusively for Christians and therefore, as he has repeatedly pointed out, that Hindus like Vivek Ramaswamy “should not hold public office” – “We must not permit demon worshipers to hold public office in our nation.” He is also “pretty positive yoga is demonic” (like birth control) because of yoga’s perceived origin in Hinduism (he is, by the way, on collision course with many of his followers on that one).
Other views conspiracy theories
Haymes has also toyed with straight-up QAnon content, and he is for instance confident that “Pizzagate is real.”
As for science, Haymes is of course a creationist, primarily on the grounds that “Darwinian evolution is fake and gay.”
Diagnosis: Primarily a horror movie clown with murderous tendencies; a deeply fundamentalist, raging conspiracy theorist groyper whose concern for truth, accuracy or decency is non-existent. Now, there are many such people out there, but Haymes has a direct line to the loftiest circles of power in the US and seems to wield genuine influence over those circles.
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