The Rev. Franklin Graham turns to scripture for his message during the Pentagon Christmas worship service on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (Matthew Adams/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — Continuing with the concept of firsts for the Defense Department, the Pentagon held a Christmas worship service on Wednesday led by the Rev. Franklin Graham.

“It’s a privilege to be here at the Pentagon. This is a great, great facility. Men and women from all across this country, representing the people of this great nation,” Graham said as part of his Christmas message.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth since May has hosted monthly evangelical prayer services for about 30 minutes in the Pentagon’s auditorium and broadcast on its internal cable network.

Hegseth has said previously that attendance at the prayer service was voluntary but encouraged the uniformed military personnel and civilian employees there to tell their co-workers about it.

The Wednesday service was moved outside to the Pentagon courtyard and extended to one hour. Christian singers Matthew West and Anne Wilson performed Christmas songs, as well as original music from their albums, for hundreds of people.

Graham, who leads the Christian humanitarian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, is the son of the Rev. Billy Graham and one of the leading figures in evangelical Christianity.

Franklin Graham’s son, Edward, was invited by Hegseth to speak at the July prayer service.

Edward, the chief operating officer at Samaritan’s Purse, graduated from the United States Military Academy and served 16 years in the Army, according to his biography.

Military personnel and civilians before the event approached Franklin and Edward to speak with them and take a photo.

“I think they’re basically the special forces of Jesus,” said Jennifer Hegseth, the wife of the defense secretary, in her opening remarks. “They go into places nobody else wants to go. They do the hard things, and they even show up here on Wednesday in December to help pray with us.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledges members of the crowd at the Pentagon’s first Christmas worship service on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. Hegseth in May started monthly evangelical prayer services at the Pentagon. (Matthew Adams/Stars and Stripes)

Hegseth was not able to attend the majority of the ceremony, as he was at Dover Air Force Base, Del., with President Donald Trump to pay their respects to two Iowa National Guard members and a U.S. civilian interpreter who were killed in a Dec. 13 attack in the Syrian desert, joining their grieving families as their remains were brought back to the country they served.

Hegseth’s wife stepped in to give the opening remarks to the crowd in the courtyard. She acknowledged the loss of Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown.

She also gave a shout-out to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in attendance, who this month started a prayer service at the Department of Labor after attending one of the Pentagon’s monthly services. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who also attended the worship service, has been hosting a weekly Bible study at her agency, Hegseth said.

Most of the service was music being performed in what turned out to be good weather for a winter day in the nation’s capital. Hegseth prior to the event had requested Wilson sing his favorite song, “O Holy Night.”

Christian singer Anne Wilson perfors at the Pentagon’s first Christmas worship service on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (Matthew Adams/Stars and Stripes)

The song was performed around the 45-minute mark of the event. The secretary made it back just in time to catch a portion of the song.

Hegseth provided a few remarks afterward and acknowledged he “barely” made it. He said he had just gotten back from the dignified transfer. He said there is no way to manage what to say to the families who lost loved ones. In the midst of that, “almost to a man and to a woman, you see them start to find hope in that there is something bigger,” Hegseth said.

“Yes, they served our nation. They put on the cloth of our uniform. Served all of us, on behalf of all of us,” he added. “They serve a bigger and greater God, and we know where they are. We pray with them. We pray for them.”

Amid questions about the U.S. striking alleged drug boats, Hegseth on Tuesday night posted a video on X ordering sweeping changes to the U.S. military’s chaplain corps, with a plan to simplify a system that he said has become too focused on “new age” concepts.

He took special aim at the Army, saying its current spiritual fitness guide is pushing secular humanism, and he ordered the service to cease using the program immediately.

Hegseth said the Pentagon is working on a new program, which could curtail what qualifies as a faith or belief recognized in the military.

“I’m grateful that the secretary is supporting our chaplains and backing our chaplains,” Franklin Graham said. “I’m so grateful for that because this is the bedrock of our country. There is not a community that you don’t go into where there isn’t a church, house of worship, nowhere.”

In 2017, the Defense Department updated what qualifies as a recognized religious denomination or belief system, with a list of 221 groups that ranged from the mainstream to obscure Christian sects, Wiccans and atheists.