I Think Doug Wilson Is Weird and Will Not Gain Support for Many, If Any, of His Mandates

Posted on by June 27, 2025avatar

Photo by Dariusz Grosa

“One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.” Gilbert K. Chesterton.

Today was an interesting day of dealing with the Tenth Presbyterian Church’s debacle. I believe some women can be initiators or willing participants in activities that might seem abusive. Unless I know what the outcome of a trial, church tribunal, or hear from the victim herself, I do not jump to conclusions. The public material that I found did not name any victims. Today, I got information from the horse’s mouth that adult clergy sexual abuse was involved, which was determined by the Philadelphia Presbytery. I have only received confirmation of that one name, and to the best of my knowledge, it has been deleted from posts. I stand by the police notes, which said they observed sexual activity, so that part of my posts will not be deleted.

PS If anyone thinks they need to lecture me about ACSA, I would suggest they read this blog. I get it. I wish 10th Presby had gotten it sooner.

If you have a moment, look at the new comment in the Faith Baptist post. JD wrote a treatise that he gave to his attendees. One chose to share it with us.  Dee was not impressed.

Doug Wilson

For those unfamiliar with him, this Wikipedia entry may be of assistance.

Douglas James Wilson (born June 18, 1953) is a conservative Reformed and evangelical theologian, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, faculty member at New Saint Andrews College, and author and speaker. Wilson is known for his writing on classical Christian education, Reformed theology, as well as general cultural commentary. He is a public proponent of postmillennialism, Christian nationalism, and covenant theology. He is also featured in the documentary film Collision documenting his debates with anti-theist Christopher Hitchens on their promotional tour for the book Is Christianity Good for the World?.

What are some things Wilson believes, which is why I think he will peak and not be generally supported?

Politico wrote Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump’s DC, the New Right Is Listening. I am simply going to write why I think he will not become the “man of the moment. Please add or subtract from the list. Also, if you don’t think Wilson is weird, tell me why.

  • He is, by his own description, an outspoken proponent of Christian theocracy — the idea that American society, including its government, should be governed by a conservative interpretation of Biblical law.
  • Wilson’s body of work — made up of over 40 books, thousands of blog posts and hundreds of hours of sermons and podcast appearances. (ed. No one is reading them except the faithful.
  • Beyond Moscow, the network of churches that Wilson founded in the late 1990s — called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC — has grown to include over 150 congregations across four continents
  • his frank defense of theocracy, his ultra-patriarchal views on gender relations and his reactionary stances on race and “the war between the states,” as he still calls the Civil War.
  • Wilson has been making inroads into the Republican establishment, aided by a growing audience for his work among allies of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. (Remember Focus on the Family’s James Dobson.)
  • most significant political boost to date when Pete Hegseth —who is a member of a CREC church in Tennessee and publicly praised Wilson’s work — was confirmed as Trump’s secretary of Defense. (ed. note: He is a new Christian and hasn’t been on the receiving end of discpline for either himself or his family.)
  • “It’s gratifying to have like-minded people — people around the country who think the way I do and who worship the way I do — coming into places where they can do something about it,” Wilson told me. (ed. A woman was a pilot on the recent bombing of Iran.)
  • Later this summer, Christ Church will open its first outpost in the capital, led by Wilson and a rotating group of pastors from the CREC. The new church has earned the support of powerful players in the MAGA movement: (ed. Good-they will get to know his bizarre iews.)
  • “New Right” of the GOP have been looking to Wilson’s work as a kind of how-to manual for injecting a hardline conservative form of Protestant Christianity into public life — a project that ranges from outlawing abortion at the federal level to amending the Constitution to acknowledging the truth of the Bible. (ed. I doubt either of these will ever come to pass.)
  • Women are barred from holding leadership roles at Christ Church, and women in CREC communities are expected to submit to their husbands. (There is some pushback from within the CREC due to concerns about abuse.)
  • he’s ditched the high-minded theological rhetoric and referred to various women as “small-breasted biddies,” “lumberjack dykes” and “cunts.” (ed. Take a look Wilson and start laughing. he is hardly the embodiment of the macho man.)
  • What he has in mind for America is closer to a return to the political order embodied by “the Constitution of the late 18th century and early 19th century,” with a weak central state, a small-R republican form of government and a high tolerance for displays of Christian faith in the public sphere.
  • in 2022, his allied publishing house, Canon Press, published a book called “The Case for Christian Nationalism” by the Protestant political theorist Stephen Wolfe. But whatever its merits as a marketing tool, the term undersells the scope of Wilson’s political vision: His ideal political arrangement, he told me, would be a kind of international confederation of Christian nations that he calls “mere Christendom,” harkening back to the alliance of Christian nation-states that dominated Europe during the Middle Ages. (ed. Seriously?)
  • he suggested the Supreme Court should build on its recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade by re-evaluating Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. (ed. I don’t think this will ever happen. )
  • Amending the Constitution to include reference to the Apostles’ Creed, restricting office holding to practicing Christians and changing voting practices to award votes by household, with the default vote-holder being the male head of the household. (ed. <snicker>)
  • even some of his more modest reforms could only be brought about via constitutional amendment — or, if that fails, civil strife. (ed. With Wilson as Supreme Commander?)
  • (Important point here) R.J. Rushdoony, who argued that all Biblical law, including the Old Testament law, still applied to the contemporary world. Most of the thinkers Wilson was drawn to were “postmillennialists,” meaning they believed the second coming of Christ would occur after an extended period of Christian dominion on earth. (ed. They must do this in order for Christ to return.)
  • Even as evangelicals entered the Republican coalition through the 1970s and 1980s with groups like the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family, Wilson’s heterodox theology and his hard-right politics had kept him on the fringes of the conservative movement. He occasionally dabbled in national politics — in 1992, he served as the Idaho state coordinator for Howard Phillip’s far-right U.S. Taxpayer Alliance (ed. How’d that go?)
  • Wilson co-authored a pamphlet with the Calvinist theologian J. Steven Wilkins that offered a qualified Biblical defense of slavery, arguing that antebellum slavery “produced a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since
  • In April 2024, he was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to discuss his views on Christian nationalism, earning Carlson’s praise as “one of the rare American Christians pastors who is willing to engage on questions of culture and politics.” In July 2024, he spoke at Turning Point USA’s “Believers Summit,” hosted by the MAGA activist Charlie Kirk. (ed. He sounds good until you have to live with him.)
  • Between speeches by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and JD Vance, Wilson sat down with Hazony and Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The symbolism of this arrangement was not lost on Wilson’s followers. For decades, Mohler had been a leading face of the conservative evangelical establishment that had distanced itself from Wilson. Now, the two men were appearing onstage together, affirming their shared goal, as Mohler put it, of “maximizing the Christian commitment of the state and of the civilization.” (ed. There isa reason I left the SBC)
  • In recent years, several former members of Christ Church have accused Wilson of mishandling or downplaying cases of sexual assault, marital violence and child abuse within the CREC community. (“They sure have,” Wilson wrote in a statement when I later asked him about those accusations. “Look at them go.” He has denied wrongdoing as part of the “library” of responses to various controversies that he maintains on his blog.) Other former members argue that, regardless of Wilson’s personal involvement in specific incidents, the church’s teachings about the patriarchal nature of sexual relations either excuse or implicitly encourage these sorts of acts, especially marital violence against women.

Point: Doug Wilson is unusual, and he will not garner a following to support a Constitutional Amendment to ratify the Apostle’s Creed and many other silly ideas. He’s made some serious mistakes (in my opinion) when it comes to abuse, etc. I believe he is a net liability. I say let him get exposed all over DC. I don’t think it will go well in the long run.

Comments

I Think Doug Wilson Is Weird and Will Not Gain Support for Many, If Any, of His Mandates — 57 Comments

  1. DW seems to have been effective at building institutions to carry on his vision after he departs the scene. It might work, in terms of gaining a bigger share of the “pie” of Christianity in US.

    But my perception is that that “pie” is shrinking, and it may not be possible to gain consent of the governed for a radical reconfiguration of US along the lines DW aspires to.

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  7. Samuel Conner,

    “My perception is that the pie is shrinking”

    There is evidence to suggest this so you may be right.

    Interesting also that Wilson types seem to hitch their aspirations, theology and world view on present US soft power and US hard power and overall US influence in the world, yet dare say so nor acknowledge the uncomfortable probability that such power & influence is diminishing.
    This nationalism and exceptionalism and dogmatic assumptions seems to be really hard to shake off for these chaps and in relation to being in the faith business – trusting in God alone through Christ – while recognising the temporary aspect of this short life to that of the eternal Kingdom of God and subsequent Kingdom values – which Jesus taught and lived out – all this seems paradoxical.
    One wonders if there are Wilson type Christian nationalists in Fiji or New Zealand or Samoa or the Dominican Republic, where overt soft and hard power and world influence is found wanting?

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  9. Nancy2(aka Kevlar),

    You can read all about him in Christianity Today, Volume 53, No.4(April 3009)- “ Profile
    THE CONTROVERSIALIST
    Between his prolific writing, prominence in classical Christian education, and recent foray into public apologetics, Doug Wilson is becoming a mainstream evangelical. Maybe
    By Molly Worthen”

    Worthen, Molly. 2009. “The Controversialist: Between His Prolific Writing, Prominence in Classical Christian Education, and Recent Foray into Public Apologetics, Doug Wilson Is Becoming a Mainstream Evangelical. Maybe.” Christianity Today, 2009.

    Fascinating insights into how he got to where he is now.

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  11. Ian Docker,

    Thank you; in back of mind when posting I was wondering how well his ideas might play outside US borders. I imagine “not well.”

    I interpret his movement to be a manifestation of longing for cultural hegemony. There have been a number of such movements in US since the ’70s. I don’t think American churches know how to thrive in a culture they don’t control. Whatever it was that enabled the first churches to thrive in the culturally hostile environment of pagan Rome and to eventually overthrow paganism, … I think Christianity in US has lost that.

    What that is, I’m not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with Jesus’ command “love one another as I have loved you” and his promise to send the Spirit.

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  12. “Benevolent slavery?” REALLY?? This is a return to pre-Civil War arguments that proclaimed that God was OK with slavery–a “plantation Jesus”, as a couple of contemporary authors have asserted. I haven’t seen this nonsense since Dr. L Nelson Bell wrote essays for the Southern Presbyterian Journal supporting segregation. (yes, Bell who was father of Ruth Bell Graham, father in law of Billy Graham). If you want to read more about this, here is a link that explains what Southern Christian slaveholders were hearing from pulpits to justify slaveholding: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slaveholding-southerners-fought

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  15. Arlo: He’s not the only one with that kind of thinking. MacArthur talked about something similar

    And Douggie ESQUIRE of Vision Forum talked about 200-year dynastic plans worthy of Tywin Lannister, specifically mentioning “estates & houseervants”. (“With Benefits?” nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean know what I mean know what I mean…)

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  16. Jean: “Benevolent slavery?” REALLY?? This is a return to pre-Civil War arguments that proclaimed that God was OK with slavery–a “plantation Jesus”,

    Promise the n*gg*rs Heaven in the Hereafter and they’ll stay docile work animals in the Here and Now. Keep them focused on The Sweet By and By and they won’t get Uppity. That’s why In Jr College the instructors mentioned Christianity as being the Perfect Slave Religion.

    (Incidentally, the trope of blacks as subhuman animals didn’t get established until the transatlantic slave trade took off. Before that, black Africans in European art were shown primarily as exotic “funny-looking foreigners”, emphasis on FOREIGN.)

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  24. Muff Potter: Let’s face it, those guys don’t want a democracy, they want a dictatorship.

    Because to God’s Special Pets, God is nothing more than Omnipotent POWER, the Ultimate Cosmic Dictator and they get to be His court favorites.

    “There is no Right, there is no Wrong, there is only POWER. And those who are too weak to wield it.”
    — Lord Voldemort

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  26. Lowlandseer:
    Nancy2(aka Kevlar),

    You can read all about him in Christianity Today, Volume 53, No.4(April 3009)- “ Profile
    THE CONTROVERSIALIST
    Between his prolific writing, prominence in classical Christian education, and recent foray into public apologetics, Doug Wilson is becoming a mainstream evangelical. Maybe
    By Molly Worthen”

    … Fascinating insights into how he got to where he is now.

    Link: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2009/04/controversialist/

    “… Yet between his prolific publishing, prominence in private Christian education, and taste for the difficult questions that evangelicals often avoid, Wilson is becoming someone who even those minding their own business in the noncontroversial ‘mainstream’ cannot afford to ignore.”

    – Molly Worthen

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  27. Dee, I’m with you that Wilson’s craziness should be exposed. The problem is, in the current climate there are a lot of people who a) don’t know that there are reasonable Christian faithful and where to find them or b) already have a negative view of Christians for whatever reason. For those people, Wilson will a) be negatively informative and b) simply confirm their anti-Christian sentiments. The faithful Christians in the DC are are going to have to be very patient.

    D.

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  28. Headless Unicorn Guy: If TWW is any indicator, between 2009 and 2025 it’s become the other way around.

    I personally don’t think he could be classified as “mainstream evangelical” and this excerpt from the article I referenced above, I think, demonstrates that.

    -“ When they weren’t strumming the guitar or preaching, both brothers were discerning their own theology. They met with friends one morning a week to debate ideas in Evan’s living room, calling themselves the Drones, after the idle gentlemen’s club in P. G. Wodehouse’s novels. Then, “through a series of unfortunate events … my brother got interested in Calvinist theology,” says Evan, 54, a soft-spoken man with a graying beard and a penchant for fiddling with his pipe. Evan embraced a form of openness theology, arguing that God could not know or absolutely control the future.

    “That uncertainty appalled me,” says Doug. “But as an Arminian, I had no way of answering it. Evan was being more consistent with his free-will premises than I was being with mine.” In a fraught period that Evan calls “The Great Unpleasantness,” Doug became a postmillennial Calvinist, drifted away from the Drones, and asked Evan to resign from all teaching roles in their church.
    In Doug’s words, he “fell down the Reformational stairs,” and his church began attracting “refugee Presbyterians” in the late 1980s. Yet no Reformed denomination would welcome his church, a Baptist-Presbyterian “mutt,” or certain ideas Wilson held about the covenant and the sacraments. In 1995, his church was one of three that cofounded a new denomination, the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
    Wilson’s congregation, Christ Church, was growing so rapidly that he didn’t have time to escape to seminary (save for one summer at Regent College in Vancouver), and did his best to study independently. His studies covered Scripture and the church fathers, but also led him further off the beaten track, to Christian Reconstructionism”

    (Worthen, Molly. 2009. “The Controversialist: Between His Prolific Writing, Prominence in Classical Christian Education, and Recent Foray into Public Apologetics, Doug Wilson Is Becoming a Mainstream Evangelical. Maybe.” Christianity Today, 2009).

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  29. ~ “christian education” is far better done from borrowed and inexpensive secondhand materials chosen by you and conducted by you, supplemented by your ordinary or other schooling if possible. The odd titles will coincide but you won’t have postmils telling you what to think. In my young day all young people read what they liked outside (and often in) school and we were all curious about all subjects and not passive, and we slowed down a lot of rot.

    ~ postmil is VERY VERY chic indeed, ever since the summer camps for elite schoolboys, yoof events (“terraplaning”), etc

    ~ The items in the portfolio are dispensible for the purpose of proclaiming success. As you see they are a mixture of obviously bad but chic ideas with a few nominally good ones which latter will be reversed in practice

    ~ DW and his many lookalikes don’t do religion or church, it is worldly secular politics to a monarchical and intense, manic, slapdash model. You will be dismayed how many of the public have been conditioned to it. He hasn’t had to change in order to achieve his “mainstream” image. But “open theology” was a silly excuse to react in this way.

    ~ what “matters” is being called “Direction of Travel”

    ~ His allies discredit actual prayer but we have to reclaim prayer and reclaim the truth about a bad spirit. This is a codependency problem and apart from manic (a bad example) and deliberate slipshodness we don’t need to go around “diagnosing” “narcissistic”. Psalm 1 is our manifesto and the content of the prayer of Daniel ch 9: 3-21, in its meaning, our method. The devious always divert from Daniel by pretending to quote from Daniel.

    ~ We need to be frank in encouraging agnostics (we sat idly while “christians”
    “ethnically cleansed” agnostics) but simultaneously as believers play our part in our own relationships with the Almighty. To people of the sort referred to, our having a relationship with the Almighty defeats their purpose.

    ~ The remedy for bad Holy Spirit talk is not EITHER different bad Holy Spirit talk NOR no Holy Spirit talk. I have been bringing this into the majority of my comments throughout my
    contacts with Dee’s comment threads. Back scratching top down parachurches, by making pastors unsure in their own minds about the Gospel core, induced more or less all church managements to teach us explicitly that honest Holy Spirit belief and honest history belief are third-to-fifth order. They have done nine-tenths of DW’s work for him.

    P.s contrary to published “lifecycle models”, Ethical Doubt will precede both Operational Doubt and Ideological Doubt which will delay Absolute Doubt

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  30. Samuel Conner,

    “I think Christianity in the US has lost that”.
    Aggree and would add within many aspects of western society and culture too despite its significant advancements to which we intellectually, physically and materially benefited from.
    Of course such advancements are a two edged sword that call for us to trust in people of power and influence and find meaning in popularity and the ownership and use of material things and human services.
    This is the great Christian values challenge. Defining where one need put their trust, hence ultimate security, and finding true meaning not in things and subsequent experiences, but by living a contented and service life with God through Christ, because ultimately its this relationship, which transcends this short life that all one truly needs.

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  31. The longer I read TWW, the more some basic verses/passages in the NT pop into my head… one of the biggest concepts is that we are strive to be “Christ like” and follow him and his example.
    So, this begs the question, what is “Christ like” and what entails “following him”…
    I might add that Paul clearly in many books encourages this..
    So, to me, that is one of the main purposes of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John… ( given the misuse the Gospel by the Neo Cals, I spelled out the four books….

    So, now, the punch line…. Does Doug Wilson remind you of Christ, as written in the four books listed???

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  32. I was appalled a few years ago when my church’s senior pastor mentioned that he really liked something about Wilson, but he wasn’t too keen about anything else (sigh of relief from me). I don’t think he will get very far from his fiefdom in Moscow, ID. He is also not very young, and I wonder who will continue his legacy after he is gone. If you want an interesting, strange little read, his daughter wrote a book called “Eve in Exile” (daughter’s name is Rebekah Merkle). Depending on your stance on women in the church, it’s quite scary. We read it in a women’s Bible study last year, and it was not very well-received by the members of the group.

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  33. Jeffrey Chalmers,

    “Christ like”…& “One of the main purposes of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John”

    Wasn’t raised in a Christian church focused home, but in my neck of the woods, and like other parents at that time, my darling mother would send me off to morning Sunday School at the local church. (Boomers were the last generation of non church going children to experienced this)
    The spiritual diet in Sunday school was always based on the life and teachings of Jesus naturally taken from the 4 gospels. As a child I found this life and teachings to be deeply moving & profound and the very fact that Jesus reached out to all soughts of nobodies without any expectation of receiving anything back, for a somewhat self-centred child like myself, this was amazing and Jesus was someone in which I could truly trust. More of it I say and NOT just in kids Sunday school.
    As for poor old Paul. To think politians take issue when they are misquoted or verballed because of open and hidden agenda’s

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  34. Ras al Ghul: Sure right now people like Dee laugh at Wilson and his MAGA-Trump buddies or thinking they can take over. But then so did the Germans in the 1920s at some silly political fringe group with a failed beer hall uprising. Somehow the musical Cabaret comes to mind.

    Never underestimate the oddly explicit narcissist coming to power, even as they lie, exaggerate, cheat, confound reason, or attack women, etc. Barabbas was voted in for example, and more recently narcissism has prevailed in contemporary elections. It happens no matter how impossible or nonsensical it seems. They attack women yet they have their loyal women followers. And they rise to power far beyond the expectations of reason and common sense. Yes, remember the Holocaust. They were warned, they knew better, they saw it happen, they let it happen.

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  35. Nancy2(aka Kevlar):
    “Benevolent slavery?” REALLY??
    Jean,

    Not much difference between that and “complementarian marriage”…….

    True.

    I’ve always wondered if the reason the white guy has doubled down on control of his woman is cuz he lost control of his “colored folks” as Civil Rights gained traction. The timing seems to coincide. The type of guy who just can’t be a man without his own personal command and control over someone, who will take orders, serve him and actually do the work. Entitled little bugger of a “man.”

    Perhaps historians Beth Allison Barr and Kristin Kobes Du Mez could shed light.

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  36. Ras al Ghul:
    Muff,

    Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

    I get the anger. I live 115Km away from the border of a powerful country where the administration has stated that annexation is on the menu (hint- it’s not Russia) – so I completely understand the sentiment.

    However – we are not in the 1700’s anymore and there are tools in the toolbox that we can use before donning our tricorn and storming the Bastille.

    This applies to church congregations as well as governments.

    Apathy will kill our democracies before any autocrat takes control. To riff from the Church of the Subgenius, if we continue to relax in the safety of our own delusions and pull the wool over our own eyes then we will lose it.

    The Taliban, the followers of Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia did not have the support of the majority of the population – they had followers with singular purpose who moved as a block.

    And there are underlying causes to the support these blocks get. Issues that have not been resolved like poverty or disenfranchisment (feeling that you no long are part of whatever country/church/group).

    Autocrats (government or religious) want you to believe that you have no power – they want you to be angry and (potentially) violent or “disagreeable” – then they say “See? Look what happens when control is lost!” – they’ll present themselves as order from that unruly chaos.

    So put down the flintlock for now and we can start by getting involved – vestry, church board, school board, library board, volunteer organization.

    Muff Potter took part in a peaceful protest – in 1986 the Philippines removed a dictator without descending into civil war through mass peaceful protest.

    It’s a lot of work and may not be as cathartic as an old fashioned rage-a-thon but there is an example that Christians can follow.

    If you believe that Jesus was the son of god (or God – still don’t get Trinity but I digress) then he could have snuffed Pilate, the Sanhedrin, the Roman Empire with a thought. But he didn’t. Christianity is still a going concern, the Roman Empire is gone. When I was Christian, I liked to believe that he knew the Empire that crucifyed him would pass, just like everything else does.

    But I’m not saying roll over and just wait. Get involved, vote, speak out, dialog, go and join like minded individuals in peaceful marches. I’m thinking about throwing my hat into the ring for school board trustee. And this can apply to church congregations as well.

    To riff off Patrick McGoohan’s character in the Prisoner – you are not numbers, you are free people.

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  38. Jean,

    From this link:

    https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slaveholding-southerners-fought

    “. . . God has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of His Providence . . .” – Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina

    By this logic, murder, and all other sins are legitimized by their mere existence. If these “sins” exist, they must do so only at His behest via His Providence – the logical end of Calvinism in a nutshell.

    On a different, but very related tangent, The South had no other option but to secede. Their very existence, especially as they defined it, was being threatened. If a tribe is being threatened they must, and will, take action to preserve themselves and their way of life.

    I think this is how many extreme conservative Christians feel these days. I know because I have lost fellowship with many of them as they have become more and more radicalized.

    Is it simply “control”? Hmmm, not sure that is true in all cases. I suspect for many folks it is more likely facing the loss (or perceived loss) of what they have lived for several decades leading up to the recent administrations. A longing nostalgia for false “better days”. False because “there is nothing new under the sun”.

    Will this movement hold? I doubt it, and if the weird and radical views of more folks like Doug Wilson become more known, then the march down less desirable paths hopefully becomes less likely as folks have theirs eyes opened.

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  39. Afterburne:
    Jean,

    From this link:

    https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slaveholding-southerners-fought

    “. . . God has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of His Providence . . .” – Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina

    By this logic, murder, and all other sins are legitimized by their mere existence. If these “sins” exist, they must do so only at His behest via His Providence – the logical end of Calvinism in a nutshell.

    On a different, but very related tangent, The South had no other option but to secede. Their very existence, especially as they defined it, was being threatened. If a tribe is being threatened they must, and will, take action to preserve themselves and their way of life.

    I think this is how many extreme conservative Christians feel these days. I know because I have lost fellowship with many of them as they have become more and more radicalized.

    Is it simply “control”? Hmmm, not sure that is true in all cases. I suspect for many folks it is more likely facing the loss (or perceived loss) of what they have lived for several decades leading up to the recent administrations. A longing nostalgia for false “better days”. False because “there is nothing new under the sun”.

    Will this movement hold? I doubt it, and if the weird and radical views of more folks like Doug Wilson become more known, then the march down less desirable paths hopefully becomes less likely as folks have theirs eyes opened.

    Or they will fly to some South American country and drink a flavored beverage enhanced with a “special” ingredient. Or cut off their own gonads in a compound and then kill themselves. Place your bets now.

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  44. The NAR is also as Woo-Woo as when Art Bell used to open up the phone lines at 3 ayem.

    I’m talking Crowley Country; after all, what is “Imprecatory Prayer” but casting a Death Hex? Perimeter Walking except setting Wards/casting Magick Cirsles of Protection?
    And their Operation Ice Castle — a bootleg Everest climb attempt to go mano-a-mano with the Demon Queen of Heaven in Spiritual Combat?

    And they’re after political power, too?
    For a Witchfinder-ocracy?
    Like Zulu Isangoma (“Diviners”, which the Boers & Brits called “Witch-Doctors”) in a great Smelling-out, walking up and down amid the people with their fly-whisks ready to point out Witches. One tap or point of a fly-whisk and the Witch pointed out would be set upon and butchered on the spot.

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  47. Max,

    I think that some of DW’s socio-political goals resemble those of NAR, but I also think that he is theologically very different from them, along the lines of ways that conventional Reformed tend to differ from charismatic or pentecostal churches.

    Wilson is, it seems to me, “one of a kind” and I hope that HUG is right that his significance will fade after he departs the scene.

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  48. Samuel Conner: I think that some of DW’s socio-political goals resemble those of NAR, but I also think that he is theologically very different from them

    I guess I assumed he was part of the NAR movement since his Christian Nationalism ideology resembles that espoused by NAR leaders. It sure would be nice if these religious leaders would just preach Jesus.

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  51. Max: I guess I assumed he was part of the NAR movement since his Christian Nationalism ideology resembles that espoused by NAR leaders.It sure would be nice if these religious leaders would just preach Jesus.

    Reformed types tend to speak out very strongly against NAR ideas, including the so-called 7 Mountain Mandate which they describe as Dominion Theology. The irony is while they may be against the idea of Christians having a divine right to dominate various spheres of society, they seem to have no problem exercising undue authority over their own and other churches. Guys such as Wilson have gone so far as to form his own personal sphere of influence in Moscow. I seem to recall coming across a Facebook group that highlights how Wilson has been trying to turn the town into his personal fiefdom. There are a great many people within the church that accuse others of the very same things they are guilty of.

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  53. dainca:
    Dee, I’m with you that Wilson’s craziness should be exposed.The problem is, in the current climate there are a lot of people who a) don’t know that there are reasonable Christian faithful and where to find them or b) already have a negative view of Christians for whatever reason.For those people, Wilson will a) be negatively informative and b) simply confirm their anti-Christian sentiments.The faithful Christians in the DC are are going to have to be very patient.

    D.

    Former CLC’er:
    Dee,Thanks for bringing this up.I only recently heard about Heggseth’s connection to him and was beside myself.There are a lot of weird Christians associated with our current government.

    That is because their true lord and savior is the Orange Dear Leader and not the Jesus of the Bible.

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  57. Samuel Conner,

    Arlo,

    Seen from England, the theological differences aren’t much – material determinism predominates but the styles vary. One element professes dislike, another doesn’t comment. We mustn’t mistake degree for essence or inadvertence for gormlessness.

    It surprises English Christians if one suggests they should pray for just quality of government (they think prayer has to be ad hominem). They hate meanings and think Daniel 9: 3-21 is necromancy. They obsess about Cross Alone (without the Ascension gifts). It’s assumed christians were born to be manoeuvred like chess pieces.

    Every church announces the slogan “change (city or county) for Christ”. The intellectual weight is now lacking, especially since “christians” ethnically-cleansed all the agnostics from society and don’t see the need for any individual effort, quality or content of belief (non-Hoffer) on their own part any more.

    Churches advertise some sort of “DNA” ignoring that Richard Dawkins has pointed out that genetic inheritance is analogous with the meme replication effect. I think the tipping point was around 1995 to 2008.

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