(OSV News) — A theology professor at The Catholic University of America has taken a leave of absence for a position at the Department of Homeland Security.
In a Sept. 11 statement emailed to OSV News, a DHS spokesperson confirmed that Chad Pecknold, associate professor of systematic theology at the university, has been named principal director of cultural outreach for the agency’s Office for Partnership and Engagement.
The office “conducts strategic engagements” with government at all levels, as well as private, academic, community and faith-based sectors, according to its website.
Included with DHS’s statement was a comment from Peckhold, who said he was “excited to confirm I’ve joined the Trump Administration” in the role.
“It is truly an honor to serve my country in this capacity,” said Peckhold in his comment.
In a statement provided to OSV News, the university said that “as is normally the case with faculty serving in an administration,” Pecknold “will serve in a personal capacity while on leave from the University and all teaching duties.”
The university noted it had “a long history of faculty contributing to public service across administrations,” adding, “We appreciate that our location in the nation’s capital gives faculty these opportunities.”
Pecknold has not yet responded to an OSV News interview request.
DHS did not respond to several questions from OSV News regarding Pecknold’s position, including its scope of responsibilities and salary. The agency did not provide details as to when the position had been created, whether Pecknold sought it out or was recruited, and whether the role was taxpayer funded.
OSV News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with DHS to obtain this information.
According to his Catholic University faculty profile, Pecknold’s areas of expertise lie in fundamental theology, Christian anthropology and political theology.
A specialist in the thought of St. Augustine, Pecknold applies Augustinian perspectives to current debates over the relationship between nature and grace, as well as natural and supernatural orders.
In the area of political theology — a term coined by 20th-century German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt, a staunch critic of liberalism who held that modern political concepts are parallels of the theological — Pecknold is “principally concerned with close readings” of St. Augustine’s “City of God,” according to his faculty profile.
Augustine’s work serves as “a fundamental and transcendent vision that inspires, and has the power to critique and correct, the dynamics of Western civilization,” states Pecknold’s faculty profile.
Along with his academic research, Pecknold writes commentary on public issues for both Catholic and secular outlets, including The Catholic Herald and The Wall Street Journal.
According to The Washington Post, Pecknold is a friend of Vice President JD Vance, a fellow convert to Catholicism.
The Washington Post also noted that Pecknold is among the most recognizable U.S. Catholics who endorse “post-liberalism” and its push for greater government involvement in “traditional morality and a shared national identity.”
DHS did not respond to a direct OSV News request asking if Pecknold’s hiring was a move to develop some sort of rapprochement with the U.S. Catholic Church on Trump administration immigration policies.
In a Sept. 11 press briefing with several Catholic organizations about the upcoming midterm elections, Richard Wood, a sociologist and president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California, commented on Pecknold’s new role, saying it “seems to me, as a lay Catholic, that there’s a real risk of a theologian being co-opted in a position like that to just provide kind of Catholic justification for policies determined somewhere else.”
“But there’s maybe an opportunity to really bring the Catholic voice to bear in a kind of ethically reflective and critical way, and the question to me is: Is that possible in the current moment?” Wood said.
August polling by Politico showed that half of Americans — including some 25% of those who supported Trump’s first term — disapprove of the administration’s mass deportation campaign as too aggressive.
That rating comes as U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has resumed its sweeps with an eye to reducing media attention, after a brief pause in high-profile detention operations following the fatal shootings of Minneapolis protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
CBS News reported that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, speaking to reporters on July 20, described the approach as a way to “turn down the temperature” with media while “turning up the heat on the streets.”
Close to 71% of the 65,765 held in ICE detention as of July 11 lacked any criminal conviction, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Along with outcries from Pope Leo and the nation’s Catholic bishops, U.S. immigration detention policies have also drawn international condemnation..United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk renewed his call Sept. 7 for accountability over rising deaths in ICE facilities, saying there have been “a total of 23 deaths in 2026 alone.”
