It was a moment that seemed almost scripted for viral infamy: on April 15, 2026, inside the Pentagon’s solemn halls, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took the podium at a worship service and recited a prayer that, to many ears, sounded eerily familiar. Dubbed “CSAR 25:17,” the prayer was presented by Hegseth as a time-honored invocation for combat search-and-rescue missions—particularly poignant, he said, after a recent operation to recover two Air Force crew members shot down over Iran.
But as the words echoed through the livestreamed service, a ripple of recognition washed over viewers. The prayer’s cadence, its dramatic invocation of vengeance, and even its structure bore a striking resemblance to the famous monologue from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 cult classic, Pulp Fiction. In the film, Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Jules Winnfield, delivers a pseudo-biblical sermon before meting out brutal justice. The speech, which has become a pop culture touchstone, is itself a creative adaptation—Tarantino and Roger Avary took a sparse line from Ezekiel 25:17 and transformed it into something grandiose, theatrical, and, ironically, more memorable than the original scripture.
Yet Hegseth’s version was neither the exact biblical verse nor Tarantino’s script verbatim. Instead, it was a third, distinctly military adaptation—one that replaced “the righteous man” with “the downed aviator,” and swapped “charity and goodwill” for “comradery and duty.” The closing invocation didn’t mention “the Lord,” but rather, “you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” The architecture of the speech, however, remained unmistakable: a rising cadence, moral framing, and a climactic declaration of vengeance.
According to The National, Hegseth explained that he had received the prayer from the “lead mission planner” of the recent rescue mission in Iran. He told the congregation, “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee, and amen.”
The moment quickly exploded online. Social media users, meme aficionados, and cultural commentators alike highlighted the uncanny resemblance to Pulp Fiction. “Bro, there’s no way his speech writer isn’t memeing on him. This is directly from the movie, you can’t mistake the cadence,” one Reddit user quipped, as reported by The Herald. Others wondered aloud whether the event was satire or a genuine blending of pop culture and military tradition.
The real Ezekiel 25:17, as found in the King James Bible, reads with far less drama: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.” Tarantino’s version, and by extension Hegseth’s, imbues the text with a sense of narrative, morality, and theatricality that the original verse lacks. This transformation is not accidental. As The Atlantic observed, Tarantino’s monologue has been quoted so often, and with such conviction, that it has taken on an aura of ancient wisdom—despite its cinematic origins.
Hegseth’s adaptation, now dubbed “CSAR 25:17,” appears to have been absorbed into a specific strand of military culture, where repetition and ritual have granted it the feel of tradition. According to BBC News, Hegseth described the prayer as something “used by ‘Sandy 1’ to address A-10 crews before combat search-and-rescue missions,” suggesting its regular deployment in operational settings. The invocation of “Sandy 1” itself is a nod to the call signs used by U.S. Air Force rescue pilots, further rooting the prayer in military lore.
Yet the episode has sparked a broader debate about the blending of scripture, cinema, and military tradition. Is it a harmless bit of cultural recycling, or does it signal something deeper about the way authority is constructed in the modern era? As The Guardian pointed out, the line functions as a prayer not because of its textual fidelity to scripture, but because it sounds like one—and because it has been repeated often enough to acquire authority.
This phenomenon feels especially at home in the current political climate, where cultural references, memes, and cinematic language are routinely pressed into service as tools of communication and persuasion. In the Trump era, as The Atlantic noted, there is a tendency to treat culture as a usable vocabulary—borrowing authority from familiarity rather than from original source material. Pulp Fiction’s sermon, already imbued with the cadence of scripture and the clarity of a moral fable, is an ideal vessel for this sort of repurposing.
Hegseth himself is no stranger to controversy. Since becoming Secretary of War under President Donald Trump, he has made Christianity a conspicuous part of his official duties, regularly holding church services at the Pentagon. Earlier in April 2026, he called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” during another Pentagon prayer service. He also announced changes to the military’s chaplain corps, which he claimed had been “infected by political correctness and secular humanism,” according to AFP. Hegseth’s affiliations with Christian nationalist circles and his visible tattoos—Arabic script for “kafir” and Crusader symbols—have only heightened the scrutiny.
The timing of the prayer’s recitation added further fuel to the fire. On the same day, House Democrats filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth, accusing him of war crimes, abuse of power, and mishandling the Department of Defense. Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari charged that Hegseth was “violating his oath, endangering US servicemembers, and committing war crimes, including attacks on civilians and a girls' school in Minab, Iran.” Despite the gravity of the accusations, the impeachment effort faces long odds: Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, making removal unlikely. No cabinet official has ever been removed via impeachment, though Secretary of War William Belknap resigned before a vote in 1876, as noted by The National.
The controversy over “CSAR 25:17” is more than a quirky footnote in the annals of Pentagon history. It’s a window into how language, culture, and authority are negotiated in real time—how a line from a 1990s film, inspired by a 1970s Japanese martial arts movie, can be repurposed as a military prayer and delivered from the highest echelons of U.S. power. The discomfort for some comes not from the misquotation itself, but from the realization that, in this context, the origins of the language don’t seem to matter. What matters is the effect: the words sound authoritative, carry moral weight, and fit the occasion—even if their genealogy is tangled and more than a little ironic.
For all the debate it has stirred, Hegseth’s invocation stands as a testament to the strange alchemy of tradition, pop culture, and institutional ritual. Whether it endures as a fixture of military lore or fades as a passing meme, it has already left its mark on the cultural landscape—and, for better or worse, on the Pentagon’s storied walls.