When Pete Hegseth was nominated as US President Donald Trump's secretary of defense and was facing his confirmation hearing, he had to answer questions about his lack of leadership experience, allegations of abuse and his views on women in the military.
Mr Hegseth strongly denied the abuse allegations and eventually survived the hearing, becoming only the second cabinet nominee in the country's history to be confirmed after a 50-50 tie.
It was Vice President JD Vance's vote that broke the deadlock and sent Mr Hegseth to the Pentagon.
But since then, the former television host has again had to defend himself.
First, over his comments in Brussels when he opened the Trump administration's negotiations over the war in Ukraine by handing Russia a win, saying the invaded would have to cede land to its invader.
Then former members of his own inner circle inside the Pentagon were accused of leaking against him. They blame Mr Hegseth for the chaos and paranoia inside the Department of Defense.
One of his former advisers went so far as to say the secretary was responsible for "disarray" inside the institution responsible for one of the world's largest militaries.
There have been concerns about security breaches, including that Mr Hegseth's wife sits in on high-level meetings.
And then there was the Signal group chat.
In a baffing series of events, the US secretary of defense sent details about imminent attack plans to an unofficial Signal group chat, while a reporter was watching along as a member of the thread.
In the first Trump presidency, these misgivings might have seen Mr Hegseth pushed out the revolving door that seemed to be attached to the front of the White House at the time, but in this new era, loyalty is everything.
In every appearance Mr Hegseth makes, he is a pit bull for the president. And he is no longer entertaining any questions about how suitable he, or anyone else, is for the jobs Mr Trump has given them.
But all along the way, religious scholars have had their own questions about Mr Hegseth's faith and the spiritual advice that guides him as he oversees the US military.
That's because the secretary of defense is part of a congregation of churches co-founded by a man who openly calls for the US to become a Christian nation run by a Christian government.
In recent weeks, that network opened a new outpost just a few blocks from the US Capitol, and on the Sunday morning of its first service, Mr Hegseth was there.
For fellow believers, Mr Hegseth represents one of their own ascending to the upper echelons of American power — moving their church closer to the state than it has ever been before.
The little church in Idaho
Ignoring the exception to the rule who currently occupies the Oval Office, it is the norm in the US for politicians to have a stated and devout faith.
More than 60 per cent of American adults identify as Christian, with 23 per cent of them evangelical protestants, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Since returning to office, Mr Trump has established a national day of prayer and the White House Faith Office, and appointed television evangelist Paula White-Cain as its senior advisor.
For Republicans, protestants form part of the supporter base.
But it is the specific evangelical denomination Mr Hegseth calls himself a member of that has attracted recent attention, as well as the controversial pastor at the heart of it.
In the early 1990s, Douglas Wilson helped found the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, as a way to bring together like-minded churches that follow the same constitution.
Now the network includes more than 130 churches, including the flagship Christ Church run by Pastor Wilson in Idaho.
In the college town of Moscow, Pastor Wilson is growing Christ Church and building a campus that also includes a seminary and school.
As his following has grown and attracted new people to the area, members of the church have taken over a series of local businesses.
But Pastor Wilson's plans go far beyond Moscow.
In a recent interview with CNN, he said: "I'd like to see the town be a Christian town, I'd like to see the state be a Christian state, I'd like to see the nation be a Christian nation, I'd like the see the world be a Christian world."
He said he believed the US would be a Christian theocracy within 250 years.
CREC ascribes to a strict version of Reformed theology — rooted in the tradition of 16th-century Protestant reformer John Calvin, which puts a heavy emphasis on an all-powerful God who has dominion over all of society.
University of North Florida professor of religious studies and scholar of the religious right Julie Ingersoll said the Christian nationalism promoted by Pastor Wilson aimed "to bring Old Testament biblical law to bear on civil society."
"For the time being, they are working on making America a Christian nation, but their vision expands far beyond our borders," she said.
"They think this vision should shape the globe — that all nations should be Christian nations."
Last month, a new Christ Church opened in Washington DC, just a few blocks from the Capitol building.
An unmarked door leading to a space above a strip mall is where the Christ Church DC meets every Sunday, just a few doors down from a shop front for the Heritage Foundation, an institute whose mission is to build and promote conservative public policies.
Pastor Wilson said CREC's new Washington church began as a way to serve church members who relocated to work in the Trump administration.
"This is the first time we've had connections with as many people in national government as we do now," he told Associated Press.
"But this is not an ecclesiastical lobbying effort where we're trying to meet important people. We're trying to give some of these people an opportunity to meet with God."
The ABC approached Christ Church, including at its location in Washington DC, but did not receive a response.
'Family as a political reality'
Pastor Wilson's church and wider denomination practice complementarianism, the patriarchal idea that men and women have different God-given roles.
CREC constitutional documents provide some insight into its conservative teachings, including that marriage can only be between a man and woman, that there are only two sexes, that women should not be "mustered for combat," and that only men can hold office in the church.
In the 120-page governing document for the group of churches, the word "women" appears twice.
Every reference to church leadership, elders and pastors refers to men.
In the recent CNN story on Pastor Wilson's Idaho church, one of its senior pastors said he would support the repeal of the US Constitution's 19th Amendment — the one that grants women the right to vote.
Pastor Wilson told Associated Press he believed the 19th Amendment "was a bad idea," but said his wife and daughters did vote.
The men of Christ Church are being asked about their positions on women voting in civil elections held as part of a secular democracy, but their answers are prefaced on their belief that the entire system should be a Christian one.
In particular the idea that society should be organised by families, not individuals, despite individualism being a central theme of the great American experiment.
As Dr Ingersoll said, the objective was to "remake society" according to what they understood the Bible to require.
Pastor Wilson is getting more attention now, but he has long been building a platform of his own and regularly speaks to his following through his own media company.
In a recent video, he again discussed a woman's right to vote.
"Our concern in all of this is not the enfranchisement of men over and against women, our concern has to do with the disenfranchisement of the covenant household," he said.
"We believe that the basic building block of a thriving human society is the family. If you recognise the family as a political reality, then the family will need to have a political spokesman."
He said within the church, membership was individual, but in any act of collective decision making, the household was treated as the voting entity and the head of the household cast a vote, which was "ordinarily a man."
"But this means that when a woman is the head of the home, for example a widow, she is the one who casts the vote," Pastor Wilson said.
Dr Ingersoll said among some evangelical Christians there was an objective to correct a perceived imbalance.
"Protestants have concluded that Christianity has become feminised and that they need to sort of rebuild the masculine character of it," she said.
"There are a lot of forms of Christianity that are patriarchal. The idea of men in authority and women in submission is widespread."
But the pastors of Christ Church took that belief system to "a whole other level," Dr Ingersoll said.
Hegseth as Christian symbol
CREC and Pastor Wilson's Christ Church are just one denomination in a busy and fractured landscape of Christian faiths across the US.
But with such a high-profile parishioner in Mr Hegseth, the profile of the arch-conservative church is rising too.
Like so many American stories, Mr Hegseth's is one of redemption because, in his own words, before he was saved by his "lord and saviour Jesus Christ," he was a two-time divorcee who had not been faithful.
In the lead up to his confirmation hearing, he also acknowledged that he had paid off a woman who accused him of rape to prevent her from filing a lawsuit — but he maintained the 2017 encounter was consensual.
Mr Hegseth disputed further allegations, published in The New Yorker magazine, of sexual impropriety and financial mismanagement at two veterans' advocacy groups he once ran.
In an interview in late 2024 as he was preparing to convince the Senate to confirm him as a cabinet member, Mr Hegseth divulged all of this to conservative commentator Megyn Kelly and spoke about finding his faith again.
Asked if it would be fair to characterise him as a "serial cheater", Mr Hegseth said: "it would have been."
"It was a fair characterisation of me before I was changed by Jen and by my lord and saviour Jesus Christ," he said, referring to his now-wife Jennifer Rauchet.
"I grew up as a Christian … [with] wonderful Christian parents. I intellectually was associated with it, understood it, but never lived it."
Mr Hegseth said it was by going to church, including at a CREC gathering in Tenesee, and through his relationship with Ms Rauchet that he became "a changed man."
"Am I a perfect man? No. Was I a perfect man? Absolutely not. Do I regret those things? Yes. But is it who I am today? No," he said.
"I am just grateful for the grace of God that gives me this new chapter."
There have been quiet questions about just how much Mr Hegseth agrees with the teachings of controversial Christ Church senior figures like Pastor Wilson, in particular the position that women should not vote or be in combat.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell has confirmed Mr Hegseth's CREC affiliation and has told multiple media outlets, including Associate Press, that the Pentagon boss "very much appreciates many of Mr Wilson's writings and teachings."
However the Pentagon also clarified Mr Hegseth supported a woman's right to vote. It was forced to after he shared the CNN story in which Christ Church figures backed the repeal of the 19th Amendment, saying "All of Christ for all of life."
For Pastor Wilson, that post gave his movement legitimacy.
"I was very grateful to him for doing that. He didn't just repost it like, 'Oh here's an interesting thing that these weird people are doing,'" he said.
"He reposted it and he himself said, 'All of Christ for all of life,' which is the tagline that we use. So he was, in effect, reposting it and saying Amen at some level."
ABC/AP
