Guess Who Is Coming to DC?
Doug Wilson's Christian Supremacy 2.0
If you could put every bad and extreme Christian Nationalist/Supremacist idea into one bucket, shake it up a bit, and then pour it out as a new church planted right in the middle of Washington D.C., you would have “Christ Church DC.”
To give you some perspective on the purpose of this new church in a city that already has over 8000 places of worship, the founder, Doug Wilson, says it is necessary because the Trump Administration isn’t Christian Nationalist enough….(I’m not making this up)!
Seriously, they want an even more theocratic government, and this new church is as much a political entity as it is a religious one.
Christ Church DC is set to launch its first religious service on July 13 under the auspices of Jared Longshore, who served as minister of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho under Doug Wilson. He also served as a Fellow of Theology and Undergraduate Dean of New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, the college founded by, you guessed it, Doug Wilson.
Why is this significant? And maybe more important why should you and I care?
If you have been following the trajectory of evangelical, Christian Nationalist movement, the name Doug Wilson will emerge quickly as one of the most prolific and radical preachers of this so-called nationalistic “gospel.” Wilson founded Christ Church and New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho as vehicles to propel his vision of Christian Supremacy onto the nation. He has built his own empire of sorts with the aim to take over the town of Moscow and “Christianize” it.
I’ve been watching what Wilson is up to in Moscow, Idaho, and trying to discern the national implications. Well, now those implications are clear to see. This new church via Wilson’s contacts in Washington D.C. will have direct influence with key Trump officials including Vice President J.D. Vance, and Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.
A Radical Patriarchal-Racist-Mysognyistic Worldview
Before getting into the network of Christian Supremacists in the Trump Administration and their relationship to Doug Wilson (and Jared Longshore), it would be instructive to investigate the extreme and radical nature of their worldview and role that they feel Christianity (their version of it) should play in government and culture.
Describing Wilson’s theology goes something like this: he is a Reformed-Calvinist-Presbyterian-Covenantal-Evangelical-postmillennialist-Christian supremacist, who advocates Von Tilian presuppositional apologetics and theonomy. Okay if you are still reading this post, what all this means is that Wilson has an opinion on everything…and he is convinced he is right…all the time.
Here is a run down on some of Wilson’s more controversial ideas, using his own words. I think you will begin to see the danger he poses along with this new church plant in D.C.
Women Should Not Be Allowed to Vote
Wilson believes that giving women the right to vote was a mistake:
When women were granted the right to vote, the nation had already accepted the lie that a nation is nothing more than a collection of individuals. And so, the matter was framed this way: Men, as individuals, can vote, so why cannot individual women do the same? We were so muddled, we thought we were giving the franchise to women when we were in fact taking it away from families.
Wilson also believes that because women have taken a more political-economic-social role in leadership, men have become “spiritual eunuchs.”
Because of the crisis of masculinity in the home, that representation is not being offered by our households, and if it were being offered, it would be received by our civil order only with laughter and by an ignorant theological indignation in our churches. In short, we all, from top to bottom, are in high rebellion against God’s design for family and culture. This breakdown of family structure and masculinity has turned men into spiritual eunuchs.
Being Gay Should be Criminalized
Because Wilson sees the family structure in only one possible binary framework, he is opposed to anything that deviates from his norm; especially same sex marriage and transgenderism.
The biological act that consummates a marriage is the only act capable of reproducing our race. When a traditional marriage is infertile, this is an act of providence (or disobedience). When a homosexual union is infertile, this is something that is true by definition. And this means that the possibility of fruitfulness is removed (of necessity) from the definition of marriage.
Infertility is an act of disobedience? Wilson will have no other definition of marriage that doesn’t include procreation. This condemns infertile couples and same sex-partners, even though many adopt children and create wonderful families. For Wilson, marriage is only legitimate if there are biologically born children to a man and woman.
Wilson’s associate pastor, Joe Rigney, discussed during a recent podcast appearance how its mission is to embed a stronger anti-LGBTQ+ agenda into national politics using the new Christ Church D.C. Reflecting Wilson’s view, Rigney opined:
“We’re all grateful for a bunch of the stuff that the Trump administration has done and the balls that they’ve carried down the field, and then there’s a bunch that they’ve just absolutely fumbled and are totally blowing.”
Rigney was just getting warmed up as he continued his bombast:
“All the sodomites are still there,” he said, adding he is looking for politicians to commit to going after the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision legalizing marriage equality. He said he wanted to “calibrate the Christians in D.C. by the word of God and not by whatever the present administration can tolerate.”
“We’re gonna come for feminism. We’re going to go after sodomy. Those are the sins in that town. Those are sins that are acceptable among both parties in that town.”
Slavery Wasn’t So Bad
Perhaps his most outrageous comments relate to history and the role of slavery in the United States. Here Wilson proclaims himself to be a “paleo-Confederate” as opposed to a “neo-Confederate.” The difference is yet to be explained.
In a controversial pamphlet Southern Slavery, As It Was, Wilson contends that southern slavery was a benign institution and that it was a private family matter, consistent with his covenantal theology. The government had no right to interfere with a patriarchal family structure that included enslavement. The sin of slavery wasn’t so much in the act of owning slaves as it was in how slavery was ended by an oversized federal government intervening where is shouldn’t.
Wilson has written:
Southern slavery was not only sanctioned by the Bible but, thanks to the patriarchal kindness of their wise evangelical masters, a positive, happy, and pleasant experience for the majority of southern blacks.
He goes on in the pamphlet to suggest that “southern slaves genuinely appreciated those benefits and supported the system that provided them.” Then Wilson describes his fantasy land southern culture saying,
Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.
In one of the most historical revisionist comments ever written about the rape of enslaved women, Wilson posits that it was made up. He has simply regurgitated the debunked “Lost Cause” narrative:
Didn’t sexual exploitation undermine and destroy the black family? Critics of the South have consistently answered in the affirmative. They accuse slave owners and overseers of turning plantations into personal harems. Again, unfortunately for the thesis, the evidence on which these assumptions and conclusions are based is extremely limited.
Bringing the narrative forward to our time, Wilson writes, many of today’s problems in the United States found their roots in the “theological heresies implicit in the abolitionist movement and its unfortunate victory over the South in the Civil War.”
The ”unfortunate victory over the South?” Wilson romanticizes southern patriarchal-enslaved culture which brings into question how he views movements such as Black Lives Matter and other efforts to reduce systemic racism today. For him, proper evangelical theology promotes and perpetuates the worst racist ideas from the 19th century.
White supremacy is always the other side of the coin with patriachy.
Sexual Abuse Within Christ Church
And of course, true to the strong evangelical-patriarchal theology, sexual abuse has arisen within the church’s ranks. Wilson and other ministers have faced widespread criticism for the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases in its congregation. The allegations against the church involved requesting leniency for convicted abusers, siding with alleged perpetrators over victims and discouraging victims from speaking out.
Several members of the church, including former deacon Alex Lloyd who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in 2022, have faced arrests and convictions related to sex crimes.
The Catholic church and the Southern Baptist Convention are not alone in child sex abuse allegations.
Meet the TheoBros: Vance & Hegseth
With that solid “theological foundation” Wilson hopes to find inroads to the Trump administration. On the website for the new church, Wilson writes:
…we believe that there will be many strategic opportunities with numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration. These believers are obviously culturally engaged already, but we happen to believe that every form of cultural engagement needs to have a solid theological foundation and support, and we want to help to provide it.
Wilson hopes to bring his unapologetically Christian Supremacist theonomy to Washington D.C. and find great support for his patriarchal view of society. Wilson is the unofficial Grand Pooba Boomer of the TheoBros, members of a network of mostly millennial, highly opinionated, ultra-conservative men, many of whom also proudly call themselves Christian nationalists.
Among the tenets of their association with the Calvinist-Reformed Protestant Christianity is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law, more specifically, Old Testament laws; which they interpret to mean that women should be quiet, have babies, not vote, give men sex when they want it, and sell their souls to religious masculinity of the worst kind. Many men in the TheoBros movement are protégés of Doug Wilson, the leader of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. (TheoBros will be the subject of a future column)
TheoBro J.D. Vance & Childless Cat-Ladies
TheoBros bring us back to the likes of J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth. The TheoBros claim them for there fraternity. Although a Catholic, Vance has been recruited, endorsed and baptized into the TheoBro brotherhood. For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former ex-Marine who preaches about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect vessel to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian supremacy.
Vance has made critical comments about divorce, working women and women who don’t have children, calling them “childless cat ladies”. The TheoBros especially revelled in Vance’s quip about “childless cat-ladies.”
Vance embraced one of the TheoBros’ most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says TheoBro Stephen Wolfe, the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism. For Wolfe and other TheoBros, the historical American people are white Protestants.
Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson who at least speaks positively about the Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments. In Wolfe’s, The Case for Christian Nationalism, he writes that in an ideal Christian nation, arch-heretics could be executed.
Welcome to Christian Supremacy…TheoBro style.
Doug Wilson himself believes that the United States should adopt the Apostle’s Creed as our national manifesto. Wilson writes,
…but I do propose the formal adoption of the Apostles’ Creed, and without any hermeneutical funny business. I propose that as a nation we formally confess together that Jesus actually did rise from the dead.
No secularism, no multi-religious democracy…the US should be declared a Christian theocracy, run only by white, theologically correct, men.
Meet TheoBro Pete Hegseth! Onward Christian Soliders!
Finally, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s U.S. Secretary of Defense has ties to one of the most chauvinistic leaders of the Christian supremacist far right. Yep, Doug Wilson. In addition to having no experience that qualifies him for the job other than the fact that he is a hardline Trump loyalist, Hegseth comes to the table with a unique set of beliefs.
Hegseth is a supporter of the “Classical Christian school,” a specific structure of private schools that uses the Bible as the foundation and standard of truth in every subject and teaches all subjects “based on the principle that God is the Creator of all that exists.” It is the same network of schools established by Doug Wilson in 1993 under the umbrella organization called the Association of Classical Christian Schools.
Hegseth and his wife who live in Nashville, send their children to one of Wilson’s Classical Christian Schools where they can learn about how great slavery was and that women should not be voting. They also attend church at Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Goodlettsville, Tenn run entirely by men. It is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of churches linked to Wilson and his theology.
Hegseth isn’t just unqualified, but he is a threat to the security of the Department of Defense and to the foundations of our Democracy. Matthew D. Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, called Hegseth “one of the most extreme far-right figures ever nominated to a cabinet post, at least in modern memory.”
An admirer of the historical Crusades, Hegseth sports a tattoo of the Latin words “Deus Vult” on his bicep and a Jerusalem Cross on this chest. “Deus Vult” translates as “God wills it.” The phrase dates to 1096 in the first Crusades, as in God wills the use of violence to advance Christendom. More recently, it has been adopted by Christian nationalists and far-right militia groups as well as perpetrators of racial violence.
This is the influence coming to Washington D.C. in the guise of a church. It is really a white-supremacist and patriarchal extreme radical form of Christian Supremacy. The misogyny and extreme form of masculinity found in Wilson’s theology has already seeped into the Trump administration through his advisors like Vance and Hegseth.
You can expect more of the same in the coming days.
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This movement is absolutely horrible. There is nothing Christ-like about it. We need articles like this to show what is going on. It is past time we take a stand and keep this hateful, discriminatory movement from going any further in ruining our country.
Really disturbing news.