Exploring Doug Wilson's Religious Influence

Where did Doug Wilson come from? Community Evangelical Fellowship, the former name of Christ Church, but we'll get to that later, was informed, or reformed, in a vacuum. The theological, political, and cultural trajectory of Doug Wilson, the CREC, Christian nationalism, patriarchalism, theonomy, reconstruction, authority and submission, alpha males, beta males, trad wives, the whole kit and caboodle. Intentional, designed, and strategic to its very core. But that doesn't mean it was well designed, nor well intentioned, but it was deeply strategic. It was a reaction. It was a reaction to the perceived softness and weakness of late 20th century evangelicalism. Sermons that could have been mistaken for being plagiarized from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, music that tried copying artists from 15-20 years back and doing it poorly, and youth groups that were just an excuse to throw a pizza party and sleep over and not fear your parents saying no, felt bored Jesus, moralism gone rampant, and a steep decline in biblical literacy. A perfect recipe for reaction. Because softness needs a serrated edge, weakness needs to be strengthened, and theology's got to get out of the counselor's room and preach with firmness, with conviction. Maybe ruffle some feathers while you're at it. Because if theology doesn't bite back, that's do anything. Welcome to Sons of Patriarchy episode one, How Did We Get Here? or The War on the Evangelic Fish. In this episode, we'll talk with some friends about evangelicalism from the mid-20th century to the early 2000s, the perceived crisis surrounding biblical manhood and womanhood, some early commendations from respected Reformed evangelical pastors and theologians, and then we'll conclude with a better way forward. Let's begin with a historian with a PhD from Notre Dame whose interests intersect at gender, religion, and politics. I'm Kristen Kobus-Dumais. I'm a professor of history at Calvin University, and I am the author of Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Dr. Dumais is also a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today. and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. And the first question I asked her was, how did you get to know about Doug Wilson? I'm not sure when I first heard about Doug Wilson. I didn't mean to write a book on evangelical masculinity. I didn't actually mean to write a book on evangelicalism. It just happened that in the early 2000s, some of my students at Calvin University were... brought to my attention this book by John Eldredge, Wild at Heart. And they told me, Professor Dume, you have got to read this book. So I took their advice. I read it and I was kind of blown away by what I saw there, a very militant, militaristic conception of quote unquote biblical manhood. And so that made me curious. Where did this come from and what is this doing? And this was in the early years of the Iraq war. And we had all this. A survey data that white evangelicals more than any other demographic were pro-war, pro-preemptive war, condone the use of torture. And so I wanted to figure out what this very militant conception of biblical manhood might have to do with what we were seeing on kind of the political stage. And so I started digging. And very quickly, I realized that Eldridge was just the tip of the iceberg. This was in the early 2000s. And I started coming across other. other preachers like Mark Driscoll, repressed, misogynistic, extremely militaristic. And I think that's when I first came across Doug Wilson and particularly his book, Future Men. I think that was the first book of Doug Wilson's that I read. And in that book, Future Men, it was published in 2001, the same year as John Eldredge's Wild at Heart. And Wilson is arguing for theology of fist fighting and for raising boys to be warriors and, you know, this rugged masculinity and really leaning into gender difference. And men for Wilson are the initiator and the. colonizer and the penetrator and women need to be receptive and submissive and all of this stuff. And when I was reading that book, I thought, you know, wow, this is pretty wild. This is pretty extreme. What do I do with this guy? And the more I looked into Wilson, the more I wondered, you know, is this guy too fringe? And when I when I finally came to write the book that would become Jesus and John Wayne, that was a key. question for me because I didn't want the book to be dismissed as kind of focusing on the fringe. What I was trying to capture was a mainstream movement. But when I was talking to people and interviewing people in my research, I kept running across Doug Wilson. People kept telling me, you are going to be looking at Doug Wilson, aren't you? Right. And have you heard of this guy, Doug Wilson over and over again? And so I started to wonder, what's. fringe here and in what's mainstream. And his views, Wilson's views on gender, masculinity, female submission, on homosexuality, on race, on basically any issue seemed extreme, even extremist. And yet he just kept popping up everywhere. So I started taking a closer look. And what I came to see is that Wilson prided himself on not being mainstream. He kind of built a brand making fun of mainstream evangelicals. What was it he called promise keepers? This is late 1990s or very early 2000s. What was it? Discipleship program for weenies or something like that. Yeah, you're right. So he's just poking his finger at mainstream evangelicalism. He's something more authentic. more rugged more militaristic more christian and in uh in his novel to evangeli fish which is a terrible terrible work of literature if you can use that word i it took me literally months to read this little book because it was so cringe i just couldn't get through it and um yet it ends up winning I think it was the 2012 Christianity Today Book Award. And I see Wilson spouting these really racist views and really crass, misogynistic views. And then I see him platformed, not just by Christianity Today, but also by John Piper, by the kind of, you know, the respectable evangelicals. establishment evangelicals, if you will. And what I started to see was that while he prided himself on being a kind of fringe figure, he was being supported and kind of whitewashed, winked at, and promoted by mainstream evangelicals. And that was really the dynamic that I saw in the early 2000s. And I thought, this guy has to be in the book. So I put Wilson in the book. And Wilson, for me, became a key figure to understand this relationship between mainstream and fringe. And to understand how that relationship shifted over time. That in the 1990s, I think it's fair to say that Wilson was a fringe figure. And, you know, he was out in Moscow, Idaho, and he I mean, he couldn't get along with anybody. So he he started up his own denomination, had no real formal theological training to speak of. And so he's fringe in pretty much every way. And by about 2010 or so, he is, as I put it, within shouting distance of the mainstream. And since that time, what we've seen is in some ways what used to be mainstream now looks pretty fringe. You see Christianity Today and other kind of mainstream platforms struggling and getting taking a lot of hits from the right. And you see the growing power on the right of this of this more extreme version of right wing Christianity and of Christian nationalism. But when I when I wrote Jesus and John Wayne. I sent it out to other scholars to read before it went to press. And one esteemed scholar of evangelicalism sent back a critique. One of his main points was. around my treatment of Wilson. And what he said is, I've never even heard of this guy. Now, let me tell you, this is like the leading scholar of American evangelicalism. In that group. And he said, right, I've never even heard of this guy. Why are you giving him this airtime? And the idea that by focusing on somebody or even just including your narrative, somebody like Doug Wilson, I mean, I included dozens of people, but Doug Wilson. think it's a few pages spread throughout the book. You know, why are you including this guy? This is the, you know, kind of, you know, what people call nut picking, right? You're just picking out, cherry picking the extreme examples to make evangelicals look worse than they really are, right? That was kind of the argument. My editor, on the other hand, who comes from outside this community entirely, his instructions to me were, this guy is fascinating. I want to know more about that. Wilson of all the people in the book. And he was saying, you know, do we really need to know about all of these guys? Because I had a lot. I actually trimmed the book down significantly from the initial draft. There were just too many people for especially for readers outside of this world. Right. Like, who are these guys? It just seems it's so much to take in. But Doug Wilson is the one that he pointed to as saying, I want more on this guy. I think this guy is important. So that was, I was writing the book in 2016, 2017, 2018, and that has certainly borne itself out. What we've seen happen in the last handful of years is Wilson moving more and more into the spotlight, into the mainstream, really helping to define what is mainstream white evangelicalism today. It's not something I could have foretold, certainly not when I first started reading him in the early 2000s, and really not necessarily when I was writing Jesus and John Wayne. Although, like my editor, I knew that he was important, and I heard so many people tell me that. You have to look at Doug Wilson, right? No, no, no, you really have to look at Doug Wilson. So like Dr. Dume was saying when she was writing her book just a couple years ago, The assumption was, well, is he really that big? He was just French. But is that really the case? And to find out, you have to dig back into evangelical history, which is what she does. So let's continue. When you look at 20th century American evangelical history, you've got, you know, what are we talking about? What is evangelicalism? And a lot of the focus in recent decades even, particularly among the scholars, is really to kind of separate out mainstream evangelicalism from the harsher traditions or strands and to really center this mainstream, more ironic, outward-facing, outwinsome evangelicalism, much more respectable, participating in mainstream society, intellectually sophisticated. This is the evangelicalism evangelicalism of Christianity today, of Fuller Seminary, of Wheaton College, right? That's the kind of evangelicalism that really was at the center when most people were thinking about evangelicalism, or at least evangelical insiders wanted to think that was the center. Certainly in the realm of scholarship, that was mainstream. But you've also always had the kind of fundamentalist. strands. And I think that scholars too readily separated those out. So you have the respectable evangelicalism, the Christianity Today, and then way over in that corner, you might have some fundamentalists. And then, yeah, you have Bill Gothard doing his thing over there, but that's clearly not mainstream evangelicalism. And then Rush Dooney, I mean, Rush Dooney is so weird, and nobody, almost nobody actually claims direct influence by Rush Dooney. He's over and over again, kind of referred to as a shadowy figure in evangelical history. And who really follows Rush? He's so fringe. He's so radical. His ideas on gender and women shouldn't vote and homosexuals should be murdered and all these things. So you try to say, well, wait, who's actually, what is the influence here? And you're shut down really quickly. You know, don't, what you're looking at is fringe and you're trying to smear all evangelicals. And so, in fact, the fringe and the more extreme expressions have been intertwined with the more respectable faces of evangelicalism. You know, there's not so much distance between Bill Gothard and James Dobson. And so Doug Wilson, I think we can see in this respect, too, coming out of a Christian Reconstructionism by kind of rolling your eyes at Doug Wilson and some of the crosser things he said. I think some mainstream evangelical leaders kind of whitewashed their own. version of evangelicalism and maybe convinced themselves that there was a little bit more distance separating their version of evangelicalism from that of Doug Wilson, when in fact he was building on pretty influential strands. So if we go back to Christian Reconstructionism and see, you know, what is this movement, this harsh, legalistic, hierarchical movement? Where do we see its influence? We see its influence in the work of Francis Schaeffer, who then brings it into the mainstream. We see its influence in a figure like Howard Phillips, who goes on to found the Council for National Policy, the hub of the Christian right, bringing together right-wing politicians and religious leaders, mostly evangelicals, and funders. Just an absolute center of power for the Christian right from the 1980s on. And so these undercurrents of more extreme versions of evangelicalism persist. But the mainstream evangelicals and those who have platforms and those who are getting most public attention, with the exception maybe of the Pentecostal televangelist types, where there's some weird stuff going on over there. But certainly the Wheaton and the Christianity Today and the Fuller types are like, no, no, no, no. We are mainstream evangelicalism. We are very reasonable. We do not embrace harsh patriarchy. In fact, they don't even use the word patriarchy, and they get a little offended if you apply it to them. They're complementarians, maybe even soft complementarians. And then they're compassionate conservatives. And then they want to be winsome to win the culture, right? And that's then where Wilson comes along and says, nah, you're too soft. You're too wimpy, right? We're at war here. And those conservative and more extremist undercurrents, right? They haven't disappeared. And he's tapping into that. And they were... always there and particularly in the political wing of the religious right, but also in communities across the country. And then through his networks, through his kind of media arm and through his curriculum, he ends up shaping pockets across the country, particularly in conservative Presbyterian spaces. And And so and that goes on for a very long time. Right. He's not in a hurry. He doesn't he he he's working on this project. He's playing the long game. And and now what we see is the fruits of that. And particularly, I think, by the end of the 1990s, you see a growing disenchantment with the softer side of evangelicalism. And in my book, I I make up. point to situate that growing dissatisfaction, it starts already in the mid to late 1990s as a response to the Promise Keepers movement, where, you know, these guys are all about patriarchy, sure, but they're also, you know, hugging and crying and singing and all these kinds of things. And that just seemed to be a little too soft. You also have strands of egalitarianism that are accepted within the movement alongside of the more traditional patriarchy. And what you also have going on politically in the 1990s is the Cold War had ended and kind of the old playbook of the religious right no longer seemed to apply. So you have a lot of questioning. One word that I came across over and over again when I was researching the 1990s was the word confusion. Confusion. What does it mean to be a man? What should our politics? be now that the Cold War has come to an end? Do we focus on the global persecution of Christians? Do we focus on relief, on justice work, right? It really seemed like it was a time of potential new directions. Then you start seeing a backlash, gaining power. The pendulum starts to swing back and you've got some culture warriors out there saying, no, no, no, no, you can't have tenderness in the trenches, right? We have a war here, a war for the soul of America, and we need to toughen up. This kind of compassionate conservatism isn't going to cut it, and it certainly is not going to be useful. to leaders of conservative organizations, conservative political organizations in particular, you need an enemy, right? And the scarier your enemy, the more likely you're going to be able to mobilize your people and drive donations. And so you see this, again, the pendulum kind of swinging towards a more militaristic vision of what it is to be a Christian and what it is to be a Christian American. And that's where, that's Doug Wilson's moment, right? He's made for that moment. And so 2001, right when his book Future Men hits the shelves of Christian bookstores, right within months, we also have the terrorist attacks, September 11, 2001. Boom, that message of, right, we don't need wimpy men here. What we need is strong men. And we have a battle to fight. And that battle suddenly is not metaphorical. And it is global in scale. And it is a religious war. And we need strong men. And we need men who know how to use a gun. And so he recommends training young boys to use firearms and absolutely train them how to fight because this is what we need to defend Christianity, to defend Christian America. So all of a sudden, Doug's more extreme views end up finding. pretty wide resonance across evangelical spaces. And that happens right around 2001. And in the 2000s, then you just see that become more and more mainstream. He's not the only one, right? This is also the height of somebody like Mark Driscoll. He's, you know, coming to prominence during the same era. This is also when we have the young restless and reformed and the new Calvinism. And, you know, Calvinism is a great theology for all of this. And Wilson becomes a Calvinist along the way. And... You know, Calvinism seems much harsher and more rigorous and more virile than the softer, more emotive evangelicalism. And I say this as a Calvinist myself. I teach at Calvin University. I remember back in the day, you know, hearing about new Calvinism and the young restless and reformed. And I had just gotten to graduate school at that time. And I remember thinking like, yes. it's our moment, right? You know, Calvinist, who'd ever really heard of us before? And I come from a Dutch Reformed tradition. We are, you know, all in on John Calvin and Abraham Kuyper and worldview and all of this stuff. And I started hearing that more widely and I thought, oh, this is awesome. And then I started reading some of these guys and I thought, oh, oh, no, no, no, this is not, this is not my Calvinism, right? This is not my tradition. This is something else entirely. But very quickly that came to be the face of Calvinism. in this country. And they loved Calvinism because it had a harsh doctrine of sin and of hell and of punishment and of substitutionary atonement. And there is nothing kind of soft and gentle or warm and fuzzy about their brand of Calvinism. And so you see this kind of, I was going to say resurgence, but it's more just a bubbling up of taking. hold of Calvinism across evangelicalism, including in the Southern Baptists. convention. And so then through those kind of Calvinist networks, you also see the spread of the theology and a growing affinity for some of the leaders who used to be fringe folks like Doug Wilson. It's just kind of a perfect storm. And what we see in the early 2000s then is his teachings are going to find widespread resonance far beyond Moscow. And at least one of those whom Doug Wilson's teachings resonated with in the 2010s and in the 2000s as well was one of the most respected pastors and theologians of the late 20th and in the early 21st centuries, John Piper, former senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church and founder of Desiring God. And here's his endorsements. Actually, two endorsements. of Doug Wilson. Let's listen to them. So you put all that together with the fact that he's got a solid commitment to inerrancy, an unflinching, unashamed commitment to the Bible, that he loves the historic Christian faith and regards the Westminster Standards as orthodoxy, that he loves history and is a historical student, that he loves the vision of John Calvin Hizah. Culture-savvy person. I wanted to give him the assignment of talk to us about the biblical script and the impact of Calvin on this world through this biblical script called the Bible. I'm really eager to hear what he says. This isn't about him, so I won't talk about him anymore, but Doug Wilson is one of the most careful and bright, reformed, post-millennial, objectivist theologians around, and he's got people around him that are dumb. It wasn't just John Piper who invited and approved of Doug Wilson at the Desiring God National Conference in 2009. The late R.C. Sproul, whom I hold in high regard, founder of Ligonier Ministries, hosted Doug Wilson. at the 2000 Ligonier National Conference. And here's the first question he was asked during the Q&A. Let's listen in. Doug, you've been sitting there rather peaceably. Let me direct a question your way. Peaceable guy. It's a very direct question. I'm sure you're used to getting direct questions because you speak very plainly and directly. So let me just read it as it has been asked here. The questioner says, You began your talk by slamming brothers in Christ who design seeker-sensitive services. You ended your talk by encouraging us to love our brothers, lest we appear odious to the world. Should we attend to your words or to your actions, or can it be both? Who is that guy? Mrs. Sproul, it says here. In that case, she's quite right. One of the things, I thought of mentioning this as an illustration, but I wasn't sure how many people here were aware of the magazine that I edit, in which some of these same things that I addressed in the talk are treated with imperfect tenderness. You speak very plainly and directly. What Wilson might describe as speaking with a serrated edge. The magazine he edits is Credenda Agenda, the drug of choice for many who enter the Christ Church Treatment Center. Doug also was invited to the 2003 League International Conference, here answering a question about psalms and worship. I've been singing psalms in one way or the other my entire adult Christian life. I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist church where we just sang hymns, but when the Jesus movement... hit and exploded. One of the things that was new and fresh and very, very different at the time was some of the psalms that you mentioned, but I would prefer to call them snippets of psalms. There are more commendations and approvals from other ministries, pastors, theologians, and the like, but we'll get to those later. Only two years after founding his own denomination, he's invited to one of the largest, if not the largest, Reformed conference in the world. A few years later, he's invited back after some concerning books from the publishing house he founded. But we'll get to that. And then Desiring God comes calling beginning the late 2000s. The Wilsons started small. He's never been French. He's always been known for his forthrightness, his sharp tongue, and questioned by many, you don't sound very pastoral, should we talk like you? But when everyone's fighting the same beasts, the woke agenda, radical feminism, government overreach, the coming turn against cultural Christianity and evangelical belief, along with erosion of the public school system, it's easy to join forces with those you may not have considered before. When we assume that culture is fighting unfairly and winning, allowing the ends to justify the means, we think it's high time for us to do the same and prop up those we should have questioned. Doug knows this. He's slowly positioned himself to be the voice of those who want to fight back, who are tired of being the butt end of the cultural joke, pointing the finger at the weak Christian, who's too gospel-centered to care that modern America is going to hell in a handbasket. Doug Wilson is strategic. Dr. Dume continues. I mean, he was all about strategic evangelicalism, still is, and he has been extremely strategic. But when you listen to him, it, you know, sometimes I think part of the problem for why he was under the radar. for so long, here I'm talking particularly with respect to scholars of evangelicalism, is because he's hard to take seriously. He's so bombastic. Yeah. And he's hard to define, too. He's hard to like, what do you think about stuff outside of that fringe? Oh my gosh. He is so hard to pin down. I will say that when I wrote my sections on Doug Wilson and Jesus and John Wayne, they were among the hardest to write because When is he being serious? When is he joking? He contradicts himself. He is really hard to pin down. And when you try to, you know, like, that's intentional on his side. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's very intentional. It's very intentional. It's part of his strategy. But I think when other people would just, you know, like, give a little listen, it's hard to take this guy seriously. Oh, come on, you know, like, and then and then moving on, right? He's not presenting as certainly a kind of Standard, you know, intellectual, religious figure. Again, he's kind of a blowhard. And, you know, I don't think he would be offended by that. I think he'd be quite proud of that. That certainly is that he wanted to make very clear that he was not going to be following other people's rules. He was setting his own rules. And by breaking establishment rules, that was his brand. And there was a reason for that. And that just became more and more attractive over the course of the early 2000s. And I think it has really contributed to his more recent popularity in light of the kind of the Trump era, which we're almost a decade in now into this kind of new new era where, you know, Trump is a figure who also broke conventions and norms and. And hard to pin down, confusing. Yeah, very hard to pin down and took great pleasure in breaking those norms and in offending people. And, you know, so Doug Wilson's style and personality is also really having a moment right now. And so in a lot of ways, his moving into the spotlight just makes a ton of sense. And as far as I can tell, there are two aspects. to is gaining popularity. The first is a blueprint for the success. And then the second is how do you get there? Let's begin with the blueprint. When we look at Wilson's appeal, you know, part of it is there's kind of good mixed in with the bad. There is a vision of strong, cohesive families of caring for your children, of forming your children in the faith that you hold to, of living in a community where you know your neighbors, where you're closely connected to your neighbors, at least half of them or, you know, whatever fraction are part of the church community, if you're in Moscow and not all of the neighbors. But, you know, I think that it is a vision that appeals to people who feel. who are disconnected, who, you know, are our ties to our own families are often strained because we feel attacked by culture, like culture is going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, we'll get there in a minute. Yeah, but I mean, even before we get into the culture wars, just, you know, thinking about how. You know, compared to a couple of generations ago, we move around a lot, a lot. Many of us are not living in our in the communities in which we grew up. We're feeling kind of isolated or maybe alienated. And, you know, if you live in bigger cities, too, it can be hard to kind of find a place. You know, Wilson's church community vision promises a place of belonging and an identity. And that's really powerful today. And then it. also plays on fears. And he has done his own part for sure to kind of gin up these culture wars fears. The left is out to get you. Feminism has destroyed men and the fabric of this nation. You know, all of the, you know, the woke culture and, but he's hardly alone in that, right? So, so there's a whole industry out there on the right. to demonize the left, to demonize feminism, to talk about this is the end of Christian America and Christians are besieged and this is your last stand. You need to fight now or the government will come for your children. And this rhetoric is just part and parcel of the religious right. But what Doug Wilson offers is a solution. It's not just the fear mongering, but it's also then come to me. I have the answer. I will keep your family safe. I will equip you to keep your family safe. Right. And so it's a really powerful vision that he is offering for people who are feeling afraid for whatever reason and people who are looking for a place to belong. Because if you follow his rules, if you play by his book, you will find a place to belong. I think he uses the there is an email that went out. maybe half a year ago, I think it was February or March. And the wording he used was not dissimilar from like a well-known prosperity preacher who'd say, if you follow this, this, and this, if you train your kids in this way, if you bring them through this homeschooling curriculum, if you slap the sin out of them, if you spank the sin out of them, then your kids will grow up in the faith and be upstanding citizens in God's kingdom. Yeah, Doug Wilson offers this model of hierarchy and obedience. And the idea is if you follow that model, if you obey God, and what that looks like is for men to obey God, it is to own their authority, to exercise that authority over their wives, over their children, and in their communities. And if you do that, the idea is then God will bless you. And then your children will turn out. all right. And, and, you know, obedience brings blessing and brings prosperity, not necessarily financial prosperity, spiritual prosperity, this holistic flourishing, right? That's, that's really the promise. So you follow these rules, you, you play by his rules and, you know, you're going to have happy children and you're going to have the life that you wanted. Yeah. It really is striking. You buy the Canon Press Plus, whatever subscription, you buy only Canon Press materials, you put your kids through the Lagos homeschool curriculum, or you drive over to Moscow and put them through Lagos school. Then you go to New St. Andrews, then you build that community over Moscow, or you build your own little community wherever you live in the US. And this is the rule for success for American families to stave off. the woke agenda of America and make sure you've got strong kids who can fight the battles in America. And many parents are looking for instructions, right? How do you raise kids? I have three kids. It's not easy. You know, you're second guessing all the time. I mean, at least if you have a problem kid and who doesn't, I have one. And so you're looking for like, how do we do this? Right. And you have a genuine faith and it's important to you. And so you want to impart that to your kids. And then Wilson comes along with the rule book. Here you go. And I've met people, too, who kind of came to the faith and as young Christians were introduced to Doug Wilson's teachings. And he has an answer for everything. Right. And so there you are now for especially young Christians or for those who are in a kind of echo chamber. or an isolated religious space. they may not be aware that there are actually other ways to be Christian. There are a lot of other ways to be Christian. There are other ways to raise your children as Christians. There are other ways to even have Christian schools. I went to Christian schools all through nearly, nearly my entire childhood. I sent my own kids to Christian schools, but they look nothing like Doug Wilson's Christian schools, right? You know, I'm in a Christian marriage, and it looks nothing like what Doug Wilson says all Christian marriages have to look like. But for a lot of people who get pulled into his system, they don't even have that awareness. This is the way to be Christian. And then you hear some heartbreaking stories, really. I was talking with a woman not long ago who had a fairly normal childhood until all of a sudden she didn't. Because her dad came under the influence of Doug Wilson's teachings through a pastor in a small church. And then he ends up moving their family halfway across. the country, not to Moscow, but to somewhere else, kind of out in the wilderness. She became a stay at home daughter, homeschooled and the whole thing. And she's still trying to piece together her life after leaving that more than a decade ago. Right. And so, you know, it's kind of hard when I when I think about Wilson and his teachings. And, you know, on the one hand, you can say, hey, you know, raise your kids how you want them. And if you want to homeschool, you can do that. Every parent has a right to do that. And, you know, we're all kind of living. out of our faith commitments, whether those are, you know, formal religious faith commitments or whatever we think is good and true. And then you look at some of the wreckage here. You look at some of the costs. You look at the people who have been caught up in the system, particularly those who did not have power, who were taught your role here is submission to women, to children who grew up in this. And you see what that does to them. And, you know, I'm sure there are some folks who say I'm perfectly happy and this is all great. And there are a lot of people who, you know, are really struggling to come out of those spaces. And, you know, it's hard to watch that. And then it's hard to watch his influence extend. And it's hard to watch him, you know, I Really trying to now speak into the, you know, potential creation of a Christian nationalist government, which is, you know, he finds himself on that stage now. And it's been a long journey to get there, but he has been strategic every step of the way. And this has caught the current American imagination. And I'm sure you've heard about Christian nationalism. But we wouldn't have gotten here had Doug Wilson not began the homeschooling curriculum in the 90s and founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools in 1994, with Logos School being the first and the New St. Andrews a couple years after that. Let's hear from Dr. Dume on how he expanded this blueprint, this little bubble in Moscow that is growing more and more. every day. One of the ways that he expanded his bubble, expanded his influence beyond Moscow, was through the Christian homeschooling networks. Not only his own school, he founded his own school and then very soon after his own college, New St. Andrews, because, well, it started because he didn't want to, he and Nancy didn't want to send their own child to a public school to hand hand their child, their responsibility over to an ungodly, you know, government school, to use his words. And so start your own school and then recruit more kids to join. And you just continue to expand and then developing curriculum for the school and then expanding that. And then the association of Christian schools and the curriculum that he developed just spread through Christian homeschool. communities which really began growing over the course of the 1990s and the early 2000s due to a variety of factors, but one of which is the kind of the networks of the religious right. You have James Dobson start to promote homeschooling as the kind of ideal way to raise your kids. And you have Mike Ferris. And then you have with the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. And then you have basically this whole kind of network developing Doug Phillips as well. And they all know each other and they're all kind of somewhat in competition, but mostly really supporting each other. They're part of this movement. And one thing to remember is that when you tell people under your authority or in your orbit that the rest of the world is evil, that you cannot expose your children to anything on the outside, that they will be corrupted and that their salvation is at stake. What you do is you build a captive audience and you build a market. And so another thing Doug Wilson has always been very smart about is producing his own media. He has his own publishing house. He develops his own curriculum. Now, I mean, part of what that is, is, I mean, if you want to say indoctrination, if you want to say discipling, if you, I mean, choose your word. Well, he creates his own demand and then he fills that demand. Exactly. He creates his demand and then he fulfills that demand. And he makes money while doing it, right? And, you know, so that's another another thing just to keep in mind that this is it's it's a community. It's a church. It's it's a publishing empire. Increasingly so. It's a business. It's all of these things and they all work in tandem. And for him and he's not the only only evangelical who would say this. Right. It's also a sign of God's blessing, the prosperity. And all of this is a sign. Right. This is the way it's done. This is the way you advance your vision. And this is the way. that you expand your influence. But there's this pesky thing about expanding your influence. It usually takes more than a husband and wife and a couple families. You need people, people with power, and you need to make alliances with these people of power, people you may share differences with theologically, but politically, that's where the power lies. Because being against something is so much more powerful than being for something. And if there's something Doug Wilson really dislikes, it's public schools. But we're not there yet. So you find the problem, or you create it, develop the solution, draw up the blueprint, expand your empire, and create alliances across theological lines, but within political ones. Let's continue. We see that like... unity across difference. And that's one of the themes that I brought out in Jesus and John Wayne, that you have a lot of these really cantankerous men, men with some really sizable egos, who theologically speaking, there are a lot of theological differences between guys like Doug Wilson and Al Mohler and Mark Driscoll. And I mean, just come up with any list and you're going to John MacArthur and others, and you're going to find a number of theological differences. and yet they are able to unite. They're able to come together, all those egos in the room. What unites these guys who supposedly care an awful lot about theology, unites them with one another, but divides them against other Christians, other Christians who may share their view of the atonement, may share their view on basic creedal issues across the board. What unites them is that. a commitment to patriarchal power, patriarchal authority, and the militancy that goes along with it. And we're really living in that reality as these alliances have been forged. They're really now in this moment, 2024, really coming to the surface. And we're living in the reality, really, that has been kind of building for decades now. Yeah, maybe too, even not say to beyond the patriarchal movement, because I think they all agree on that. It's it seems they're also united against the things that they dislike. And it's the the woke agenda coming in and the liberalizing of America and the incoming immigrants and the the vote voting rights of minorities and women and all that stuff. And now they're all coalescing. around these negative aspects, quote unquote, and they say, we got to fight this with our theological differences. If you look at Doug Wilson, he loves militaristic language, loves that. And he comes by that honestly. His dad before him, a preacher, really, really leaned into this warfare imagery, right? Christianity is war. And if you're in war, you need to study tax. tactics and you need to know what you're doing. You need to be smart. You need to be ruthless. Right. So Wilson kind of inherits that strategic evangelicalism in his dad's words. And Uh, and what that means, it means a number of things. So strategic evangelicalism for, um, one facet of this is what is to be strategic here is to know what you can accomplish, to know what you can take. Uh, so early on when I was, when I was reading Wilson and, and observing, uh, his, his kind of religious empire as it grew in Moscow, I, um, you know, I was trying to figure out, is this Christian nationalism? And this is before Christian nationalism was kind of a favorite topic, right? But historians have used that terminology for a very long time. You know, what's his end game here? And what was a little confusing was that, you know, he had this enclave mentality, right? Was he trying to shape the world or was he trying to, you know, just build this little escape from the world? out in the middle of Idaho somewhere, that place most of us had never been and had no plans of going to. Right. So what's his goal here? Is it just a kind of enclave mentality, kind of the Benedict option of, hey, the world is against us, but we're going to raise our families, we're going to start churches, we're going to start schools, we're going to live our lives. Okay. That's one thing. But that's not really, that was a strategic move. It was a strategic move to build that religious empire there, to expand, to eventually, ideally, take over that city, small city, for God to Christianize the city. But now we find ourselves in a different moment where he's perched with his allies. He's on the cusp of possibly taking over the country. This is the Christian nationalist agenda now with the election looming, the Trump agenda, Project 2025, this list of like more than 100 conservative organizations, movements teaming up. This is where you see Doug Wilson and Al Mohler shaking hands to maximize the. Christian impact on the state. And this is the moment that we find ourselves in. So it's not just about Moscow anymore. It's about shaping the entire country around his view of what God has ordained for women, for men, for children, for society. And it's really quite astonishing, honestly, to be in at this moment. right now and to see where this is all led. Now, again, that vision to kind of take over the country, that isn't something new. That is also something kind of baked in to his theology, the theology that shaped him decades ago. He was influenced by Rush Dooney's Christian Reconstructionism. And if you read Rush Dooney, you see that is the end goal. It is to align all of society according to... their understanding of God's law. And their understanding of God's law is one that is extremely hierarchical. It is based on hierarchy and submission. So at the top of that is God, and then kind of God's authorities, but only the God kind of appointed government authorities, right? Because there's authorities that are not doing God's will. So then you can contest. that authority. But then very important, the patriarch and the pastor. So Wilson has a ton of authority in his community. And then he demands that husbands, fathers also wield that kind of authority. And then the plan there is that a properly ordered family and multiplied across many families. will lead to a properly ordered, God-honoring society. And that is the goal that he is going for right now, not just in Moscow, but in the country. The fathers of these properly ordered families need to make sure that secular society doesn't touch their kids. If you grew up sometime between the late 80s and early 2000s, as I did, purity culture was the solution. You either grew up fearing sex or being fascinated by it. Maybe a little bit of both. But sex was taboo. Pulpits wouldn't dare mention it. When they did, it got weird. Boys and girls flanked the sides of every middle school dance. And sex ed was awkward. Essentially every Christian marriage manual written in the late 20th century's message was the same. Men need sex all the time because of their uncontrollable testosterone. And women... Well, they have to put up with it and put out. You never talked about sex until you were supposed to have it. Sort of hormonal whiplash. Men were shy and women were scared. Enter Doug Wilson and his obsession with sex. The pendulum had swung too far towards prudishness. With Doug Wilson, well, ride Sally Ride. Let's talk about sex. Yeah, Doug Wilson is one of those evangelical pastors who loves to talk about sex. He's not the only one. I mean, you can trace this back. Really, I mean, we can go to Tim Lafayette if you want or Billy James Hargis if you will. But going back to the 60s and 70s, right? I think there's often this because evangelicals talk about sexual morality a lot. There's a misperception that they are uncomfortable talking about sex. In fact, I don't know of anybody who talks about. sex more than evangelicals do. Oh, my goodness. Even though they talk all the time. Oh, you know, let's talk about porn. Let's have a support group. What are you doing? You know, what are you doing now? What are you doing? You know, and tell me more. Let's talk about purity. Let's talk about all the things that you shouldn't be doing. And wait, just keep thinking about all those things that you should not be doing. Are you still thinking about them? Let's add more to the list. Right. And then and then now let's also think about what you should be doing, because boom, you're married now and you need to please your husband and your husband has so many sexual needs and so many sexual rights and you have so many obligations as his wife. And let me tell you how to perform all of those obligations, right? This is evangelical teaching on sex. And it's, I mean, if you don't believe me, just pick up an evangelical sex manual and there's many, many to choose from. A little story here when I... wrote Jesus and John Wayne. And when I was submitting the manuscript to publishers originally to see who wanted to publish it, I included a sample chapter in that chapter, included a section on evangelical sex manuals. And what I found is that one publisher that reviewed the manuscript, only one was a Christian publisher, and they really wanted to see the book. And I kept saying, I'm just not so sure this is the book for you. And They said, no, no, no, give it to us. And later the editor told me that they needed to print out paper copies and send the chapter around because it was triggering their anti-porn software. He had this publisher because it was so graphic and so explicit. And I was just quoting direct quotes from these evangelical sex guides because, okay, so let me tell you how the logic goes. Men are made by God. filled with testosterone and they have almost insatiable sexual need. And God gave them this desire, this aggressive desire, and it's linked to their more general aggression. This is just, you know, boys will be boys. This is how God made men and God made men to be dangerous. But that's a good thing. It's a good thing because that danger, potential for danger, potential for aggression is absolutely necessary to protect vulnerable women and children. So it's all part of God's plan. But part of that aggression is an aggressive sex drive. Again, just how God made men. So kind of no real sense of, I don't know, the fall and sin and how that might corrupt any of this. No, no, no, no. That's all, you know, God helps us build and it helps us found institutions. And that's only what men do because men are risk takers. Women don't do this. They are the initiators. They are the colonizers. They are the. penetrators, right? That is their God-ordained function. And so, right, that's a lot of sexual need right there. How are we going to deal with that and still maintain a moral society? Two ways. Women who are not married. have to do everything in their power not to seduce these men. Because again, huge sex drive here. So they have to dress modestly. And, you know, if anything happens to them, chances are it was their fault. What were they wearing? Because they know men's sex drive is so high then they're wearing this stuff. Of course they know. It's on them. And you know, what was that little girl doing? And it was astonishing to me. when I first started reading these teachings. Like, seriously, you're going to blame a young girl for her own abuse at the hands of her own father because she somehow tempted him? Like, what even is this? Okay, so one of the ways that this is, that sexuality is contained, right, within a moral social order is for women who are not married to not tempt men. The other way is for women who... are married that they have to fulfill their husband's every sexual need. That it's absolutely critical. So here again, when you have men who are abusers, abusers of children, over and over again, you're going to hear blame placed on his wife. Clearly she was not meeting his every sexual need. What was the man to do, right? Go down the hall to his daughter's room, apparently. Again, this is like shocking. It's, it's, I hate even. repeating this. And when I was reading this in my research, I thought you have got to be kidding me, but this was a pattern I came across over and over again. So it is on women to ensure sexual morality. Boys are going to be boys, men will be men. And so that means if there's any slip up, any sexual misconduct, there is always a woman to blame, sometimes a child. We've traversed a small but important range of the evangelical landscape, the need for theological robustness, and the perceived threat of secularization which sparked the conservative response. But maybe you're not convinced, because the only reason we'd fight back against the rising tide of the red-pilled is because we've been infected by wokeism. So we're directing this next portion towards you, answering the question, Is there another way to respond to late 20th century soft evangelicalism and post-modernity? Here's Dr. Dumais. I'm biased against this movement. You know, I think it would be more accurate to say that as a historian of Christianity, I'm aware of so many expressions of Christianity throughout world history, throughout American history. I'm aware of so many different ways in which people of faith have tried to respond obediently to God's word in how they marry, how they relate men and women, how they live out their roles as women, as men, how they raise their children, how they educate their children. When you look through American history, you can see a lot of really just incredible diversity within that. Regional diversity, denominational diversity, and then change over time. My first book is actually a history of what we might call Christian feminism in the late 19th and early 20th century, where you saw incredible Christian women who actually wrote on a strand of women who were conservative, who were literalists, biblical literalists, believed in the inerrant authority of the scriptures. And when they read those scriptures, they saw a Jesus who was the liberator of women. They saw a savior who divested himself of earthly power and offered a counterintuitive model for Christians to follow, the model of servanthood. Not a kind of fake, you know, quote unquote, servant leadership. That's really all about the leadership that says it's to serve others, but it's really grabbing all the power, but truly a self-sacrifice. sacrificial model of leadership. And they looked at scriptural passages that talked about, you know, women shall prophesy. They looked at women among Jesus'disciples, and they looked at the ways in which the way Jesus treated women was so different from the way that others in his time and place did, and that they sought to live out of that tradition, of that. understanding of the scriptures, that they didn't abandon God's word. They dug deep into God's word and lived out lives of faithful service, right? According to a different understanding of Frankly, less so gender, although gender is part of it, but of power. I think that's what it really comes down to. When you read the scriptures, when you read the gospels, what is the central teaching about Jesus and power? And then what does it mean to follow Christ? And yes, Jesus comes again with all power and glory. What was the model? What shape did that power look like on earth? How was he tempted by the devil? What was he asked to do? It was to seize power over all the nations, right? To take that power. His followers wanted that, right? His followers were waiting for that Messiah, the Messiah that was going to give them earthly power. And who doesn't want earthly power, right? And the only thing better than having earthly power is having it and calling it righteous. That is not the model that Jesus lived. And that is what was so revolutionary about Christianity. That was what was so revolutionary about the early church. But who was drawn to the early church? The poor and women. Why? Why? Because there was a new way of understanding who they were. And a new way of understanding what it meant to live and to live obediently. And so I would say to folks in those spaces who don't want to listen to me, do not listen to me. I'm just a historian. But, you know, read. Read outside your tradition. Read. Read theology. Read the lives of Christians across time, across church history, and see the different ways in which people have. read the scriptures and taken the word of the Lord seriously and see how they have lived it out in their lives. And then look back at your system. And, um, and if you, if you, if there's no space to question, if there's no space to, to be a part of the communion of saint of, of, um, you know, participating in a, in a larger, um, body of Christ. then I think it's worth asking some questions because that's really not the model that Jesus calls us to in the New Testament. And when he calls us to unity, when he calls us to be one and all of his followers to be one, and that's not a Christianity that's building walls and certainly not one that's building walls between believers. And if that's really the kind of the essence and making you fear those, not just outside of the faith, but outside of your own particular church, you know... That's unbiblical. Reading outside your tradition, ideological instincts, and political affiliation can be difficult, unnerving, and unsettling. This tends not to be the case because you find yourself disagreeing with them, but agreeing with them. Seeing the world through a different set of eyes. Cultural differences, geographical differences, faith differences, familial differences. These have a way of either expanding your horizon or narrowing your outlook. To be confronted with disagreement and nuance when you've grown up in a system of rigidity, of black and white without a shade of gray, can be frightening. Because a blueprint for success, a community within a community within a community, a schooling system committed to rewriting or ignoring history, and the establishment of an entirely in-house media empire builds up a tribe that worries about its own, fears what's outside, and builds alliances with like-minded. To describe the response of Doug Wilson, this movement as an echo chamber isn't quite strong enough. It's like Plato's cave, wherein the shackles are self-imposed and the shadows on the wall don't come in from the light outside, but the movement of the leader's hands through a flashlight. It's contrived, it's enclosed. and it's strategic. Leaving this cave means dealing with a world you aren't ready for, you've been told is evil, and is leaderless. Being in the cave is comfortable, it's known, and it's secure, but it's not real. Dealing with frustration, with a blurred line between good and evil, understanding how the world works, and participating in discussions with those you disagree with and finding that maybe... might just start agreeing with them. Leaving the cave is terrifying, but after a while you realize it was only a cave, and now you can explore the world, and we'll help you do that with a host of trusted pastors, counselors, and friends. But I digress. I asked Dr. Dume for a final thought, and she concludes by talking about Wilson's finances, and his media empire i've heard some things um but i don't have evidence so uh yeah you know clearly he's he's uh he's not short of funds um nice thing is you know really good production value if you're if you're stuck watching a lot of his um videos um nicely done And he really understands communication. He is extremely good at that. And I think what's interesting about him too is he built his own platform. And he didn't feel a need to go out to other platforms. He didn't feel a need. So he owns all of his material. He collects all of his own royalties. And he doesn't have to play by anybody else's rules. He developed his own distribution system. Like really important. important um so he has just built his own platform and that has served him extremely well so we conclude episode one how did we get here or the war on the evangelic fish we looked at how late 20th century evangelicalism both fueled the rise for and provided the foundation of doug wilson and the cacophony of the movements he founded and influenced as we said in the beginning he didn't come out of nowhere Throughout this series, we'll dive deep into the man himself, the church he took over, the anti-denomination he founded, the schooling system and homeschool curriculum, theology, views on gender roles and odd connections to the Trinity, dozens of stories of abuse within CREC circles and outside CREC circles, what abuse is, how to care for those abused, what justice looks like for those who are abused, and how we can respond to the movement as a whole. We want to thank Dr. Kristen Kolbis-Dumais for her time and expertise describing how the evangelical and cultural landscape was prepared for Doug Wilson to take over. Our next episode will focus on the patriarch himself, Doug Wilson. Let's get to know him. Sons of Patriarchy is brought to you by the administrators of Examining Doug Wilson in Moscow in partnership with Peter Bell. It's written, produced, and edited by Peter Bell. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Aaron Feeney. This series wouldn't be possible without the dozens of abuse survivors whose bravery and vulnerability make it what it is. Every episode was sent to them before being published, and their feedback, edits, encouragement, and eventual approval make this what it is. May your voices be heard far and wide. Thank you.

Intentional, designed, and strategic to its very core. But that doesn't mean it was well designed, nor well intentioned, but it was deeply strategic. It was a reaction.

It was a reaction to the perceived softness and weakness of late 20th century evangelicalism. Sermons that could have been mistaken for being plagiarized from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, music that tried copying artists from 15-20 years back and doing it poorly, and youth groups that were just an excuse to throw a pizza party and sleep over and not fear your parents saying no, felt bored Jesus, moralism gone rampant, and a steep decline in biblical literacy. A perfect recipe for reaction. Because softness needs a serrated edge, weakness needs to be strengthened, and theology's got to get out of the counselor's room and preach with firmness, with conviction. Maybe ruffle some feathers while you're at it.

Because if theology doesn't bite back, that's do anything. Welcome to Sons of Patriarchy episode one, How Did We Get Here? or The War on the Evangelic Fish. In this episode, we'll talk with some friends about evangelicalism from the mid-20th century to the early 2000s, the perceived crisis surrounding biblical manhood and womanhood, some early commendations from respected Reformed evangelical pastors and theologians, and then we'll conclude with a better way forward.

Let's begin with a historian with a PhD from Notre Dame whose interests intersect at gender, religion, and politics. I'm Kristen Kobus-Dumais. I'm a professor of history at Calvin University, and I am the author of Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Dr. Dumais is also a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today.

and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. And the first question I asked her was, how did you get to know about Doug Wilson? I'm not sure when I first heard about Doug Wilson.

I didn't mean to write a book on evangelical masculinity. I didn't actually mean to write a book on evangelicalism. It just happened that in the early 2000s, some of my students at Calvin University were... brought to my attention this book by John Eldredge, Wild at Heart. And they told me, Professor Dume, you have got to read this book.

So I took their advice. I read it and I was kind of blown away by what I saw there, a very militant, militaristic conception of quote unquote biblical manhood. And so that made me curious. Where did this come from and what is this doing?

And this was in the early years of the Iraq war. And we had all this. A survey data that white evangelicals more than any other demographic were pro-war, pro-preemptive war, condone the use of torture.

And so I wanted to figure out what this very militant conception of biblical manhood might have to do with what we were seeing on kind of the political stage. And so I started digging. And very quickly, I realized that Eldridge was just the tip of the iceberg.

This was in the early 2000s. And I started coming across other. other preachers like Mark Driscoll, repressed, misogynistic, extremely militaristic.

And I think that's when I first came across Doug Wilson and particularly his book, Future Men. I think that was the first book of Doug Wilson's that I read. And in that book, Future Men, it was published in 2001, the same year as John Eldredge's Wild at Heart.

And Wilson is arguing for theology of fist fighting and for raising boys to be warriors and, you know, this rugged masculinity and really leaning into gender difference. And men for Wilson are the initiator and the. colonizer and the penetrator and women need to be receptive and submissive and all of this stuff.

And when I was reading that book, I thought, you know, wow, this is pretty wild. This is pretty extreme. What do I do with this guy?

And the more I looked into Wilson, the more I wondered, you know, is this guy too fringe? And when I when I finally came to write the book that would become Jesus and John Wayne, that was a key. question for me because I didn't want the book to be dismissed as kind of focusing on the fringe. What I was trying to capture was a mainstream movement.

But when I was talking to people and interviewing people in my research, I kept running across Doug Wilson. People kept telling me, you are going to be looking at Doug Wilson, aren't you? Right. And have you heard of this guy, Doug Wilson over and over again? And so I started to wonder, what's.

fringe here and in what's mainstream. And his views, Wilson's views on gender, masculinity, female submission, on homosexuality, on race, on basically any issue seemed extreme, even extremist. And yet he just kept popping up everywhere. So I started taking a closer look. And what I came to see is that Wilson prided himself on not being mainstream.

He kind of built a brand making fun of mainstream evangelicals. What was it he called promise keepers? This is late 1990s or very early 2000s.

What was it? Discipleship program for weenies or something like that. Yeah, you're right.

So he's just poking his finger at mainstream evangelicalism. He's something more authentic. more rugged more militaristic more christian and in uh in his novel to evangeli fish which is a terrible terrible work of literature if you can use that word i it took me literally months to read this little book because it was so cringe i just couldn't get through it and um yet it ends up winning I think it was the 2012 Christianity Today Book Award.

And I see Wilson spouting these really racist views and really crass, misogynistic views. And then I see him platformed, not just by Christianity Today, but also by John Piper, by the kind of, you know, the respectable evangelicals. establishment evangelicals, if you will. And what I started to see was that while he prided himself on being a kind of fringe figure, he was being supported and kind of whitewashed, winked at, and promoted by mainstream evangelicals.

And that was really the dynamic that I saw in the early 2000s. And I thought, this guy has to be in the book. So I put Wilson in the book. And Wilson, for me, became a key figure to understand this relationship between mainstream and fringe.

And to understand how that relationship shifted over time. That in the 1990s, I think it's fair to say that Wilson was a fringe figure. And, you know, he was out in Moscow, Idaho, and he I mean, he couldn't get along with anybody.

So he he started up his own denomination, had no real formal theological training to speak of. And so he's fringe in pretty much every way. And by about 2010 or so, he is, as I put it, within shouting distance of the mainstream.

And since that time, what we've seen is in some ways what used to be mainstream now looks pretty fringe. You see Christianity Today and other kind of mainstream platforms struggling and getting taking a lot of hits from the right. And you see the growing power on the right of this of this more extreme version of right wing Christianity and of Christian nationalism.

But when I when I wrote Jesus and John Wayne. I sent it out to other scholars to read before it went to press. And one esteemed scholar of evangelicalism sent back a critique.

One of his main points was. around my treatment of Wilson. And what he said is, I've never even heard of this guy.

Now, let me tell you, this is like the leading scholar of American evangelicalism. In that group. And he said, right, I've never even heard of this guy.

Why are you giving him this airtime? And the idea that by focusing on somebody or even just including your narrative, somebody like Doug Wilson, I mean, I included dozens of people, but Doug Wilson. think it's a few pages spread throughout the book. You know, why are you including this guy?

This is the, you know, kind of, you know, what people call nut picking, right? You're just picking out, cherry picking the extreme examples to make evangelicals look worse than they really are, right? That was kind of the argument.

My editor, on the other hand, who comes from outside this community entirely, his instructions to me were, this guy is fascinating. I want to know more about that. Wilson of all the people in the book.

And he was saying, you know, do we really need to know about all of these guys? Because I had a lot. I actually trimmed the book down significantly from the initial draft.

There were just too many people for especially for readers outside of this world. Right. Like, who are these guys? It just seems it's so much to take in.

But Doug Wilson is the one that he pointed to as saying, I want more on this guy. I think this guy is important. So that was, I was writing the book in 2016, 2017, 2018, and that has certainly borne itself out.

What we've seen happen in the last handful of years is Wilson moving more and more into the spotlight, into the mainstream, really helping to define what is mainstream white evangelicalism today. It's not something I could have foretold, certainly not when I first started reading him in the early 2000s, and really not necessarily when I was writing Jesus and John Wayne. Although, like my editor, I knew that he was important, and I heard so many people tell me that.

You have to look at Doug Wilson, right? No, no, no, you really have to look at Doug Wilson. So like Dr. Dume was saying when she was writing her book just a couple years ago, The assumption was, well, is he really that big? He was just French. But is that really the case?

And to find out, you have to dig back into evangelical history, which is what she does. So let's continue. When you look at 20th century American evangelical history, you've got, you know, what are we talking about? What is evangelicalism?

And a lot of the focus in recent decades even, particularly among the scholars, is really to kind of separate out mainstream evangelicalism from the harsher traditions or strands and to really center this mainstream, more ironic, outward-facing, outwinsome evangelicalism, much more respectable, participating in mainstream society, intellectually sophisticated. This is the evangelicalism evangelicalism of Christianity today, of Fuller Seminary, of Wheaton College, right? That's the kind of evangelicalism that really was at the center when most people were thinking about evangelicalism, or at least evangelical insiders wanted to think that was the center.

Certainly in the realm of scholarship, that was mainstream. But you've also always had the kind of fundamentalist. strands.

And I think that scholars too readily separated those out. So you have the respectable evangelicalism, the Christianity Today, and then way over in that corner, you might have some fundamentalists. And then, yeah, you have Bill Gothard doing his thing over there, but that's clearly not mainstream evangelicalism. And then Rush Dooney, I mean, Rush Dooney is so weird, and nobody, almost nobody actually claims direct influence by Rush Dooney.

He's over and over again, kind of referred to as a shadowy figure in evangelical history. And who really follows Rush? He's so fringe.

He's so radical. His ideas on gender and women shouldn't vote and homosexuals should be murdered and all these things. So you try to say, well, wait, who's actually, what is the influence here? And you're shut down really quickly.

You know, don't, what you're looking at is fringe and you're trying to smear all evangelicals. And so, in fact, the fringe and the more extreme expressions have been intertwined with the more respectable faces of evangelicalism. You know, there's not so much distance between Bill Gothard and James Dobson.

And so Doug Wilson, I think we can see in this respect, too, coming out of a Christian Reconstructionism by kind of rolling your eyes at Doug Wilson and some of the crosser things he said. I think some mainstream evangelical leaders kind of whitewashed their own. version of evangelicalism and maybe convinced themselves that there was a little bit more distance separating their version of evangelicalism from that of Doug Wilson, when in fact he was building on pretty influential strands. So if we go back to Christian Reconstructionism and see, you know, what is this movement, this harsh, legalistic, hierarchical movement?

Where do we see its influence? We see its influence in the work of Francis Schaeffer, who then brings it into the mainstream. We see its influence in a figure like Howard Phillips, who goes on to found the Council for National Policy, the hub of the Christian right, bringing together right-wing politicians and religious leaders, mostly evangelicals, and funders.

Just an absolute center of power for the Christian right from the 1980s on. And so these undercurrents of more extreme versions of evangelicalism persist. But the mainstream evangelicals and those who have platforms and those who are getting most public attention, with the exception maybe of the Pentecostal televangelist types, where there's some weird stuff going on over there. But certainly the Wheaton and the Christianity Today and the Fuller types are like, no, no, no, no. We are mainstream evangelicalism.

We are very reasonable. We do not embrace harsh patriarchy. In fact, they don't even use the word patriarchy, and they get a little offended if you apply it to them.

They're complementarians, maybe even soft complementarians. And then they're compassionate conservatives. And then they want to be winsome to win the culture, right? And that's then where Wilson comes along and says, nah, you're too soft.

You're too wimpy, right? We're at war here. And those conservative and more extremist undercurrents, right? They haven't disappeared.

And he's tapping into that. And they were... always there and particularly in the political wing of the religious right, but also in communities across the country.

And then through his networks, through his kind of media arm and through his curriculum, he ends up shaping pockets across the country, particularly in conservative Presbyterian spaces. And And so and that goes on for a very long time. Right.

He's not in a hurry. He doesn't he he he's working on this project. He's playing the long game.

And and now what we see is the fruits of that. And particularly, I think, by the end of the 1990s, you see a growing disenchantment with the softer side of evangelicalism. And in my book, I I make up.

point to situate that growing dissatisfaction, it starts already in the mid to late 1990s as a response to the Promise Keepers movement, where, you know, these guys are all about patriarchy, sure, but they're also, you know, hugging and crying and singing and all these kinds of things. And that just seemed to be a little too soft. You also have strands of egalitarianism that are accepted within the movement alongside of the more traditional patriarchy.

And what you also have going on politically in the 1990s is the Cold War had ended and kind of the old playbook of the religious right no longer seemed to apply. So you have a lot of questioning. One word that I came across over and over again when I was researching the 1990s was the word confusion. Confusion. What does it mean to be a man?

What should our politics? be now that the Cold War has come to an end? Do we focus on the global persecution of Christians?

Do we focus on relief, on justice work, right? It really seemed like it was a time of potential new directions. Then you start seeing a backlash, gaining power.

The pendulum starts to swing back and you've got some culture warriors out there saying, no, no, no, no, you can't have tenderness in the trenches, right? We have a war here, a war for the soul of America, and we need to toughen up. This kind of compassionate conservatism isn't going to cut it, and it certainly is not going to be useful. to leaders of conservative organizations, conservative political organizations in particular, you need an enemy, right? And the scarier your enemy, the more likely you're going to be able to mobilize your people and drive donations.

And so you see this, again, the pendulum kind of swinging towards a more militaristic vision of what it is to be a Christian and what it is to be a Christian American. And that's where, that's Doug Wilson's moment, right? He's made for that moment. And so 2001, right when his book Future Men hits the shelves of Christian bookstores, right within months, we also have the terrorist attacks, September 11, 2001. Boom, that message of, right, we don't need wimpy men here. What we need is strong men.

And we have a battle to fight. And that battle suddenly is not metaphorical. And it is global in scale. And it is a religious war.

And we need strong men. And we need men who know how to use a gun. And so he recommends training young boys to use firearms and absolutely train them how to fight because this is what we need to defend Christianity, to defend Christian America.

So all of a sudden, Doug's more extreme views end up finding. pretty wide resonance across evangelical spaces. And that happens right around 2001. And in the 2000s, then you just see that become more and more mainstream.

He's not the only one, right? This is also the height of somebody like Mark Driscoll. He's, you know, coming to prominence during the same era. This is also when we have the young restless and reformed and the new Calvinism. And, you know, Calvinism is a great theology for all of this.

And Wilson becomes a Calvinist along the way. And... You know, Calvinism seems much harsher and more rigorous and more virile than the softer, more emotive evangelicalism.

And I say this as a Calvinist myself. I teach at Calvin University. I remember back in the day, you know, hearing about new Calvinism and the young restless and reformed.

And I had just gotten to graduate school at that time. And I remember thinking like, yes. it's our moment, right? You know, Calvinist, who'd ever really heard of us before? And I come from a Dutch Reformed tradition.

We are, you know, all in on John Calvin and Abraham Kuyper and worldview and all of this stuff. And I started hearing that more widely and I thought, oh, this is awesome. And then I started reading some of these guys and I thought, oh, oh, no, no, no, this is not, this is not my Calvinism, right? This is not my tradition. This is something else entirely.

But very quickly that came to be the face of Calvinism. in this country. And they loved Calvinism because it had a harsh doctrine of sin and of hell and of punishment and of substitutionary atonement.

And there is nothing kind of soft and gentle or warm and fuzzy about their brand of Calvinism. And so you see this kind of, I was going to say resurgence, but it's more just a bubbling up of taking. hold of Calvinism across evangelicalism, including in the Southern Baptists.

convention. And so then through those kind of Calvinist networks, you also see the spread of the theology and a growing affinity for some of the leaders who used to be fringe folks like Doug Wilson. It's just kind of a perfect storm. And what we see in the early 2000s then is his teachings are going to find widespread resonance far beyond Moscow.

And at least one of those whom Doug Wilson's teachings resonated with in the 2010s and in the 2000s as well was one of the most respected pastors and theologians of the late 20th and in the early 21st centuries, John Piper, former senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church and founder of Desiring God. And here's his endorsements. Actually, two endorsements. of Doug Wilson. Let's listen to them.

So you put all that together with the fact that he's got a solid commitment to inerrancy, an unflinching, unashamed commitment to the Bible, that he loves the historic Christian faith and regards the Westminster Standards as orthodoxy, that he loves history and is a historical student, that he loves the vision of John Calvin Hizah. Culture-savvy person. I wanted to give him the assignment of talk to us about the biblical script and the impact of Calvin on this world through this biblical script called the Bible. I'm really eager to hear what he says.

This isn't about him, so I won't talk about him anymore, but Doug Wilson is one of the most careful and bright, reformed, post-millennial, objectivist theologians around, and he's got people around him that are dumb. It wasn't just John Piper who invited and approved of Doug Wilson at the Desiring God National Conference in 2009. The late R.C. Sproul, whom I hold in high regard, founder of Ligonier Ministries, hosted Doug Wilson.

at the 2000 Ligonier National Conference. And here's the first question he was asked during the Q&A. Let's listen in. Doug, you've been sitting there rather peaceably.

Let me direct a question your way. Peaceable guy. It's a very direct question.

I'm sure you're used to getting direct questions because you speak very plainly and directly. So let me just read it as it has been asked here. The questioner says, You began your talk by slamming brothers in Christ who design seeker-sensitive services.

You ended your talk by encouraging us to love our brothers, lest we appear odious to the world. Should we attend to your words or to your actions, or can it be both? Who is that guy? Mrs. Sproul, it says here. In that case, she's quite right.

One of the things, I thought of mentioning this as an illustration, but I wasn't sure how many people here were aware of the magazine that I edit, in which some of these same things that I addressed in the talk are treated with imperfect tenderness. You speak very plainly and directly. What Wilson might describe as speaking with a serrated edge.

The magazine he edits is Credenda Agenda, the drug of choice for many who enter the Christ Church Treatment Center. Doug also was invited to the 2003 League International Conference, here answering a question about psalms and worship. I've been singing psalms in one way or the other my entire adult Christian life.

I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist church where we just sang hymns, but when the Jesus movement... hit and exploded. One of the things that was new and fresh and very, very different at the time was some of the psalms that you mentioned, but I would prefer to call them snippets of psalms.

There are more commendations and approvals from other ministries, pastors, theologians, and the like, but we'll get to those later. Only two years after founding his own denomination, he's invited to one of the largest, if not the largest, Reformed conference in the world. A few years later, he's invited back after some concerning books from the publishing house he founded.

But we'll get to that. And then Desiring God comes calling beginning the late 2000s. The Wilsons started small.

He's never been French. He's always been known for his forthrightness, his sharp tongue, and questioned by many, you don't sound very pastoral, should we talk like you? But when everyone's fighting the same beasts, the woke agenda, radical feminism, government overreach, the coming turn against cultural Christianity and evangelical belief, along with erosion of the public school system, it's easy to join forces with those you may not have considered before. When we assume that culture is fighting unfairly and winning, allowing the ends to justify the means, we think it's high time for us to do the same and prop up those we should have questioned.

Doug knows this. He's slowly positioned himself to be the voice of those who want to fight back, who are tired of being the butt end of the cultural joke, pointing the finger at the weak Christian, who's too gospel-centered to care that modern America is going to hell in a handbasket. Doug Wilson is strategic. Dr. Dume continues. I mean, he was all about strategic evangelicalism, still is, and he has been extremely strategic.

But when you listen to him, it, you know, sometimes I think part of the problem for why he was under the radar. for so long, here I'm talking particularly with respect to scholars of evangelicalism, is because he's hard to take seriously. He's so bombastic. Yeah.

And he's hard to define, too. He's hard to like, what do you think about stuff outside of that fringe? Oh my gosh.

He is so hard to pin down. I will say that when I wrote my sections on Doug Wilson and Jesus and John Wayne, they were among the hardest to write because When is he being serious? When is he joking? He contradicts himself. He is really hard to pin down.

And when you try to, you know, like, that's intentional on his side. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's very intentional.

It's very intentional. It's part of his strategy. But I think when other people would just, you know, like, give a little listen, it's hard to take this guy seriously. Oh, come on, you know, like, and then and then moving on, right?

He's not presenting as certainly a kind of Standard, you know, intellectual, religious figure. Again, he's kind of a blowhard. And, you know, I don't think he would be offended by that.

I think he'd be quite proud of that. That certainly is that he wanted to make very clear that he was not going to be following other people's rules. He was setting his own rules. And by breaking establishment rules, that was his brand.

And there was a reason for that. And that just became more and more attractive over the course of the early 2000s. And I think it has really contributed to his more recent popularity in light of the kind of the Trump era, which we're almost a decade in now into this kind of new new era where, you know, Trump is a figure who also broke conventions and norms and. And hard to pin down, confusing.

Yeah, very hard to pin down and took great pleasure in breaking those norms and in offending people. And, you know, so Doug Wilson's style and personality is also really having a moment right now. And so in a lot of ways, his moving into the spotlight just makes a ton of sense. And as far as I can tell, there are two aspects. to is gaining popularity.

The first is a blueprint for the success. And then the second is how do you get there? Let's begin with the blueprint.

When we look at Wilson's appeal, you know, part of it is there's kind of good mixed in with the bad. There is a vision of strong, cohesive families of caring for your children, of forming your children in the faith that you hold to, of living in a community where you know your neighbors, where you're closely connected to your neighbors, at least half of them or, you know, whatever fraction are part of the church community, if you're in Moscow and not all of the neighbors. But, you know, I think that it is a vision that appeals to people who feel.

who are disconnected, who, you know, are our ties to our own families are often strained because we feel attacked by culture, like culture is going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, we'll get there in a minute. Yeah, but I mean, even before we get into the culture wars, just, you know, thinking about how. You know, compared to a couple of generations ago, we move around a lot, a lot. Many of us are not living in our in the communities in which we grew up.

We're feeling kind of isolated or maybe alienated. And, you know, if you live in bigger cities, too, it can be hard to kind of find a place. You know, Wilson's church community vision promises a place of belonging and an identity. And that's really powerful today.

And then it. also plays on fears. And he has done his own part for sure to kind of gin up these culture wars fears. The left is out to get you. Feminism has destroyed men and the fabric of this nation.

You know, all of the, you know, the woke culture and, but he's hardly alone in that, right? So, so there's a whole industry out there on the right. to demonize the left, to demonize feminism, to talk about this is the end of Christian America and Christians are besieged and this is your last stand.

You need to fight now or the government will come for your children. And this rhetoric is just part and parcel of the religious right. But what Doug Wilson offers is a solution. It's not just the fear mongering, but it's also then come to me.

I have the answer. I will keep your family safe. I will equip you to keep your family safe. Right. And so it's a really powerful vision that he is offering for people who are feeling afraid for whatever reason and people who are looking for a place to belong.

Because if you follow his rules, if you play by his book, you will find a place to belong. I think he uses the there is an email that went out. maybe half a year ago, I think it was February or March.

And the wording he used was not dissimilar from like a well-known prosperity preacher who'd say, if you follow this, this, and this, if you train your kids in this way, if you bring them through this homeschooling curriculum, if you slap the sin out of them, if you spank the sin out of them, then your kids will grow up in the faith and be upstanding citizens in God's kingdom. Yeah, Doug Wilson offers this model of hierarchy and obedience. And the idea is if you follow that model, if you obey God, and what that looks like is for men to obey God, it is to own their authority, to exercise that authority over their wives, over their children, and in their communities. And if you do that, the idea is then God will bless you. And then your children will turn out.

all right. And, and, you know, obedience brings blessing and brings prosperity, not necessarily financial prosperity, spiritual prosperity, this holistic flourishing, right? That's, that's really the promise.

So you follow these rules, you, you play by his rules and, you know, you're going to have happy children and you're going to have the life that you wanted. Yeah. It really is striking.

You buy the Canon Press Plus, whatever subscription, you buy only Canon Press materials, you put your kids through the Lagos homeschool curriculum, or you drive over to Moscow and put them through Lagos school. Then you go to New St. Andrews, then you build that community over Moscow, or you build your own little community wherever you live in the US. And this is the rule for success for American families to stave off. the woke agenda of America and make sure you've got strong kids who can fight the battles in America.

And many parents are looking for instructions, right? How do you raise kids? I have three kids. It's not easy.

You know, you're second guessing all the time. I mean, at least if you have a problem kid and who doesn't, I have one. And so you're looking for like, how do we do this? Right.

And you have a genuine faith and it's important to you. And so you want to impart that to your kids. And then Wilson comes along with the rule book.

Here you go. And I've met people, too, who kind of came to the faith and as young Christians were introduced to Doug Wilson's teachings. And he has an answer for everything. Right. And so there you are now for especially young Christians or for those who are in a kind of echo chamber.

or an isolated religious space. they may not be aware that there are actually other ways to be Christian. There are a lot of other ways to be Christian. There are other ways to raise your children as Christians. There are other ways to even have Christian schools.

I went to Christian schools all through nearly, nearly my entire childhood. I sent my own kids to Christian schools, but they look nothing like Doug Wilson's Christian schools, right? You know, I'm in a Christian marriage, and it looks nothing like what Doug Wilson says all Christian marriages have to look like.

But for a lot of people who get pulled into his system, they don't even have that awareness. This is the way to be Christian. And then you hear some heartbreaking stories, really.

I was talking with a woman not long ago who had a fairly normal childhood until all of a sudden she didn't. Because her dad came under the influence of Doug Wilson's teachings through a pastor in a small church. And then he ends up moving their family halfway across.

the country, not to Moscow, but to somewhere else, kind of out in the wilderness. She became a stay at home daughter, homeschooled and the whole thing. And she's still trying to piece together her life after leaving that more than a decade ago.

Right. And so, you know, it's kind of hard when I when I think about Wilson and his teachings. And, you know, on the one hand, you can say, hey, you know, raise your kids how you want them.

And if you want to homeschool, you can do that. Every parent has a right to do that. And, you know, we're all kind of living.

out of our faith commitments, whether those are, you know, formal religious faith commitments or whatever we think is good and true. And then you look at some of the wreckage here. You look at some of the costs.

You look at the people who have been caught up in the system, particularly those who did not have power, who were taught your role here is submission to women, to children who grew up in this. And you see what that does to them. And, you know, I'm sure there are some folks who say I'm perfectly happy and this is all great. And there are a lot of people who, you know, are really struggling to come out of those spaces.

And, you know, it's hard to watch that. And then it's hard to watch his influence extend. And it's hard to watch him, you know, I Really trying to now speak into the, you know, potential creation of a Christian nationalist government, which is, you know, he finds himself on that stage now.

And it's been a long journey to get there, but he has been strategic every step of the way. And this has caught the current American imagination. And I'm sure you've heard about Christian nationalism. But we wouldn't have gotten here had Doug Wilson not began the homeschooling curriculum in the 90s and founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools in 1994, with Logos School being the first and the New St. Andrews a couple years after that.

Let's hear from Dr. Dume on how he expanded this blueprint, this little bubble in Moscow that is growing more and more. every day. One of the ways that he expanded his bubble, expanded his influence beyond Moscow, was through the Christian homeschooling networks. Not only his own school, he founded his own school and then very soon after his own college, New St. Andrews, because, well, it started because he didn't want to, he and Nancy didn't want to send their own child to a public school to hand hand their child, their responsibility over to an ungodly, you know, government school, to use his words. And so start your own school and then recruit more kids to join.

And you just continue to expand and then developing curriculum for the school and then expanding that. And then the association of Christian schools and the curriculum that he developed just spread through Christian homeschool. communities which really began growing over the course of the 1990s and the early 2000s due to a variety of factors, but one of which is the kind of the networks of the religious right. You have James Dobson start to promote homeschooling as the kind of ideal way to raise your kids.

And you have Mike Ferris. And then you have with the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. And then you have basically this whole kind of network developing Doug Phillips as well. And they all know each other and they're all kind of somewhat in competition, but mostly really supporting each other. They're part of this movement.

And one thing to remember is that when you tell people under your authority or in your orbit that the rest of the world is evil, that you cannot expose your children to anything on the outside, that they will be corrupted and that their salvation is at stake. What you do is you build a captive audience and you build a market. And so another thing Doug Wilson has always been very smart about is producing his own media. He has his own publishing house.

He develops his own curriculum. Now, I mean, part of what that is, is, I mean, if you want to say indoctrination, if you want to say discipling, if you, I mean, choose your word. Well, he creates his own demand and then he fills that demand.

Exactly. He creates his demand and then he fulfills that demand. And he makes money while doing it, right?

And, you know, so that's another another thing just to keep in mind that this is it's it's a community. It's a church. It's it's a publishing empire.

Increasingly so. It's a business. It's all of these things and they all work in tandem.

And for him and he's not the only only evangelical who would say this. Right. It's also a sign of God's blessing, the prosperity. And all of this is a sign. Right.

This is the way it's done. This is the way you advance your vision. And this is the way. that you expand your influence. But there's this pesky thing about expanding your influence.

It usually takes more than a husband and wife and a couple families. You need people, people with power, and you need to make alliances with these people of power, people you may share differences with theologically, but politically, that's where the power lies. Because being against something is so much more powerful than being for something.

And if there's something Doug Wilson really dislikes, it's public schools. But we're not there yet. So you find the problem, or you create it, develop the solution, draw up the blueprint, expand your empire, and create alliances across theological lines, but within political ones.

Let's continue. We see that like... unity across difference. And that's one of the themes that I brought out in Jesus and John Wayne, that you have a lot of these really cantankerous men, men with some really sizable egos, who theologically speaking, there are a lot of theological differences between guys like Doug Wilson and Al Mohler and Mark Driscoll.

And I mean, just come up with any list and you're going to John MacArthur and others, and you're going to find a number of theological differences. and yet they are able to unite. They're able to come together, all those egos in the room.

What unites these guys who supposedly care an awful lot about theology, unites them with one another, but divides them against other Christians, other Christians who may share their view of the atonement, may share their view on basic creedal issues across the board. What unites them is that. a commitment to patriarchal power, patriarchal authority, and the militancy that goes along with it.

And we're really living in that reality as these alliances have been forged. They're really now in this moment, 2024, really coming to the surface. And we're living in the reality, really, that has been kind of building for decades now.

Yeah, maybe too, even not say to beyond the patriarchal movement, because I think they all agree on that. It's it seems they're also united against the things that they dislike. And it's the the woke agenda coming in and the liberalizing of America and the incoming immigrants and the the vote voting rights of minorities and women and all that stuff.

And now they're all coalescing. around these negative aspects, quote unquote, and they say, we got to fight this with our theological differences. If you look at Doug Wilson, he loves militaristic language, loves that.

And he comes by that honestly. His dad before him, a preacher, really, really leaned into this warfare imagery, right? Christianity is war.

And if you're in war, you need to study tax. tactics and you need to know what you're doing. You need to be smart. You need to be ruthless.

Right. So Wilson kind of inherits that strategic evangelicalism in his dad's words. And Uh, and what that means, it means a number of things. So strategic evangelicalism for, um, one facet of this is what is to be strategic here is to know what you can accomplish, to know what you can take. Uh, so early on when I was, when I was reading Wilson and, and observing, uh, his, his kind of religious empire as it grew in Moscow, I, um, you know, I was trying to figure out, is this Christian nationalism?

And this is before Christian nationalism was kind of a favorite topic, right? But historians have used that terminology for a very long time. You know, what's his end game here? And what was a little confusing was that, you know, he had this enclave mentality, right? Was he trying to shape the world or was he trying to, you know, just build this little escape from the world?

out in the middle of Idaho somewhere, that place most of us had never been and had no plans of going to. Right. So what's his goal here? Is it just a kind of enclave mentality, kind of the Benedict option of, hey, the world is against us, but we're going to raise our families, we're going to start churches, we're going to start schools, we're going to live our lives. Okay.

That's one thing. But that's not really, that was a strategic move. It was a strategic move to build that religious empire there, to expand, to eventually, ideally, take over that city, small city, for God to Christianize the city.

But now we find ourselves in a different moment where he's perched with his allies. He's on the cusp of possibly taking over the country. This is the Christian nationalist agenda now with the election looming, the Trump agenda, Project 2025, this list of like more than 100 conservative organizations, movements teaming up. This is where you see Doug Wilson and Al Mohler shaking hands to maximize the. Christian impact on the state.

And this is the moment that we find ourselves in. So it's not just about Moscow anymore. It's about shaping the entire country around his view of what God has ordained for women, for men, for children, for society. And it's really quite astonishing, honestly, to be in at this moment. right now and to see where this is all led.

Now, again, that vision to kind of take over the country, that isn't something new. That is also something kind of baked in to his theology, the theology that shaped him decades ago. He was influenced by Rush Dooney's Christian Reconstructionism. And if you read Rush Dooney, you see that is the end goal.

It is to align all of society according to... their understanding of God's law. And their understanding of God's law is one that is extremely hierarchical. It is based on hierarchy and submission.

So at the top of that is God, and then kind of God's authorities, but only the God kind of appointed government authorities, right? Because there's authorities that are not doing God's will. So then you can contest. that authority.

But then very important, the patriarch and the pastor. So Wilson has a ton of authority in his community. And then he demands that husbands, fathers also wield that kind of authority.

And then the plan there is that a properly ordered family and multiplied across many families. will lead to a properly ordered, God-honoring society. And that is the goal that he is going for right now, not just in Moscow, but in the country. The fathers of these properly ordered families need to make sure that secular society doesn't touch their kids. If you grew up sometime between the late 80s and early 2000s, as I did, purity culture was the solution.

You either grew up fearing sex or being fascinated by it. Maybe a little bit of both. But sex was taboo.

Pulpits wouldn't dare mention it. When they did, it got weird. Boys and girls flanked the sides of every middle school dance. And sex ed was awkward.

Essentially every Christian marriage manual written in the late 20th century's message was the same. Men need sex all the time because of their uncontrollable testosterone. And women...

Well, they have to put up with it and put out. You never talked about sex until you were supposed to have it. Sort of hormonal whiplash. Men were shy and women were scared. Enter Doug Wilson and his obsession with sex.

The pendulum had swung too far towards prudishness. With Doug Wilson, well, ride Sally Ride. Let's talk about sex. Yeah, Doug Wilson is one of those evangelical pastors who loves to talk about sex.

He's not the only one. I mean, you can trace this back. Really, I mean, we can go to Tim Lafayette if you want or Billy James Hargis if you will. But going back to the 60s and 70s, right?

I think there's often this because evangelicals talk about sexual morality a lot. There's a misperception that they are uncomfortable talking about sex. In fact, I don't know of anybody who talks about. sex more than evangelicals do. Oh, my goodness.

Even though they talk all the time. Oh, you know, let's talk about porn. Let's have a support group.

What are you doing? You know, what are you doing now? What are you doing? You know, and tell me more. Let's talk about purity.

Let's talk about all the things that you shouldn't be doing. And wait, just keep thinking about all those things that you should not be doing. Are you still thinking about them? Let's add more to the list. Right.

And then and then now let's also think about what you should be doing, because boom, you're married now and you need to please your husband and your husband has so many sexual needs and so many sexual rights and you have so many obligations as his wife. And let me tell you how to perform all of those obligations, right? This is evangelical teaching on sex.

And it's, I mean, if you don't believe me, just pick up an evangelical sex manual and there's many, many to choose from. A little story here when I... wrote Jesus and John Wayne.

And when I was submitting the manuscript to publishers originally to see who wanted to publish it, I included a sample chapter in that chapter, included a section on evangelical sex manuals. And what I found is that one publisher that reviewed the manuscript, only one was a Christian publisher, and they really wanted to see the book. And I kept saying, I'm just not so sure this is the book for you. And They said, no, no, no, give it to us. And later the editor told me that they needed to print out paper copies and send the chapter around because it was triggering their anti-porn software.

He had this publisher because it was so graphic and so explicit. And I was just quoting direct quotes from these evangelical sex guides because, okay, so let me tell you how the logic goes. Men are made by God. filled with testosterone and they have almost insatiable sexual need.

And God gave them this desire, this aggressive desire, and it's linked to their more general aggression. This is just, you know, boys will be boys. This is how God made men and God made men to be dangerous. But that's a good thing. It's a good thing because that danger, potential for danger, potential for aggression is absolutely necessary to protect vulnerable women and children.

So it's all part of God's plan. But part of that aggression is an aggressive sex drive. Again, just how God made men.

So kind of no real sense of, I don't know, the fall and sin and how that might corrupt any of this. No, no, no, no. That's all, you know, God helps us build and it helps us found institutions.

And that's only what men do because men are risk takers. Women don't do this. They are the initiators.

They are the colonizers. They are the. penetrators, right? That is their God-ordained function.

And so, right, that's a lot of sexual need right there. How are we going to deal with that and still maintain a moral society? Two ways. Women who are not married.

have to do everything in their power not to seduce these men. Because again, huge sex drive here. So they have to dress modestly.

And, you know, if anything happens to them, chances are it was their fault. What were they wearing? Because they know men's sex drive is so high then they're wearing this stuff.

Of course they know. It's on them. And you know, what was that little girl doing?

And it was astonishing to me. when I first started reading these teachings. Like, seriously, you're going to blame a young girl for her own abuse at the hands of her own father because she somehow tempted him? Like, what even is this? Okay, so one of the ways that this is, that sexuality is contained, right, within a moral social order is for women who are not married to not tempt men. The other way is for women who...

are married that they have to fulfill their husband's every sexual need. That it's absolutely critical. So here again, when you have men who are abusers, abusers of children, over and over again, you're going to hear blame placed on his wife. Clearly she was not meeting his every sexual need.

What was the man to do, right? Go down the hall to his daughter's room, apparently. Again, this is like shocking. It's, it's, I hate even.

repeating this. And when I was reading this in my research, I thought you have got to be kidding me, but this was a pattern I came across over and over again. So it is on women to ensure sexual morality. Boys are going to be boys, men will be men.

And so that means if there's any slip up, any sexual misconduct, there is always a woman to blame, sometimes a child. We've traversed a small but important range of the evangelical landscape, the need for theological robustness, and the perceived threat of secularization which sparked the conservative response. But maybe you're not convinced, because the only reason we'd fight back against the rising tide of the red-pilled is because we've been infected by wokeism.

So we're directing this next portion towards you, answering the question, Is there another way to respond to late 20th century soft evangelicalism and post-modernity? Here's Dr. Dumais. I'm biased against this movement.

You know, I think it would be more accurate to say that as a historian of Christianity, I'm aware of so many expressions of Christianity throughout world history, throughout American history. I'm aware of so many different ways in which people of faith have tried to respond obediently to God's word in how they marry, how they relate men and women, how they live out their roles as women, as men, how they raise their children, how they educate their children. When you look through American history, you can see a lot of really just incredible diversity within that.

Regional diversity, denominational diversity, and then change over time. My first book is actually a history of what we might call Christian feminism in the late 19th and early 20th century, where you saw incredible Christian women who actually wrote on a strand of women who were conservative, who were literalists, biblical literalists, believed in the inerrant authority of the scriptures. And when they read those scriptures, they saw a Jesus who was the liberator of women. They saw a savior who divested himself of earthly power and offered a counterintuitive model for Christians to follow, the model of servanthood.

Not a kind of fake, you know, quote unquote, servant leadership. That's really all about the leadership that says it's to serve others, but it's really grabbing all the power, but truly a self-sacrifice. sacrificial model of leadership. And they looked at scriptural passages that talked about, you know, women shall prophesy.

They looked at women among Jesus'disciples, and they looked at the ways in which the way Jesus treated women was so different from the way that others in his time and place did, and that they sought to live out of that tradition, of that. understanding of the scriptures, that they didn't abandon God's word. They dug deep into God's word and lived out lives of faithful service, right?

According to a different understanding of Frankly, less so gender, although gender is part of it, but of power. I think that's what it really comes down to. When you read the scriptures, when you read the gospels, what is the central teaching about Jesus and power?

And then what does it mean to follow Christ? And yes, Jesus comes again with all power and glory. What was the model?

What shape did that power look like on earth? How was he tempted by the devil? What was he asked to do? It was to seize power over all the nations, right? To take that power.

His followers wanted that, right? His followers were waiting for that Messiah, the Messiah that was going to give them earthly power. And who doesn't want earthly power, right?

And the only thing better than having earthly power is having it and calling it righteous. That is not the model that Jesus lived. And that is what was so revolutionary about Christianity.

That was what was so revolutionary about the early church. But who was drawn to the early church? The poor and women. Why?

Why? Because there was a new way of understanding who they were. And a new way of understanding what it meant to live and to live obediently. And so I would say to folks in those spaces who don't want to listen to me, do not listen to me.

I'm just a historian. But, you know, read. Read outside your tradition.

Read. Read theology. Read the lives of Christians across time, across church history, and see the different ways in which people have. read the scriptures and taken the word of the Lord seriously and see how they have lived it out in their lives.

And then look back at your system. And, um, and if you, if you, if there's no space to question, if there's no space to, to be a part of the communion of saint of, of, um, you know, participating in a, in a larger, um, body of Christ. then I think it's worth asking some questions because that's really not the model that Jesus calls us to in the New Testament. And when he calls us to unity, when he calls us to be one and all of his followers to be one, and that's not a Christianity that's building walls and certainly not one that's building walls between believers.

And if that's really the kind of the essence and making you fear those, not just outside of the faith, but outside of your own particular church, you know... That's unbiblical. Reading outside your tradition, ideological instincts, and political affiliation can be difficult, unnerving, and unsettling. This tends not to be the case because you find yourself disagreeing with them, but agreeing with them. Seeing the world through a different set of eyes.

Cultural differences, geographical differences, faith differences, familial differences. These have a way of either expanding your horizon or narrowing your outlook. To be confronted with disagreement and nuance when you've grown up in a system of rigidity, of black and white without a shade of gray, can be frightening.

Because a blueprint for success, a community within a community within a community, a schooling system committed to rewriting or ignoring history, and the establishment of an entirely in-house media empire builds up a tribe that worries about its own, fears what's outside, and builds alliances with like-minded. To describe the response of Doug Wilson, this movement as an echo chamber isn't quite strong enough. It's like Plato's cave, wherein the shackles are self-imposed and the shadows on the wall don't come in from the light outside, but the movement of the leader's hands through a flashlight.

It's contrived, it's enclosed. and it's strategic. Leaving this cave means dealing with a world you aren't ready for, you've been told is evil, and is leaderless. Being in the cave is comfortable, it's known, and it's secure, but it's not real. Dealing with frustration, with a blurred line between good and evil, understanding how the world works, and participating in discussions with those you disagree with and finding that maybe...

might just start agreeing with them. Leaving the cave is terrifying, but after a while you realize it was only a cave, and now you can explore the world, and we'll help you do that with a host of trusted pastors, counselors, and friends. But I digress. I asked Dr. Dume for a final thought, and she concludes by talking about Wilson's finances, and his media empire i've heard some things um but i don't have evidence so uh yeah you know clearly he's he's uh he's not short of funds um nice thing is you know really good production value if you're if you're stuck watching a lot of his um videos um nicely done And he really understands communication.

He is extremely good at that. And I think what's interesting about him too is he built his own platform. And he didn't feel a need to go out to other platforms. He didn't feel a need. So he owns all of his material.

He collects all of his own royalties. And he doesn't have to play by anybody else's rules. He developed his own distribution system.

Like really important. important um so he has just built his own platform and that has served him extremely well so we conclude episode one how did we get here or the war on the evangelic fish we looked at how late 20th century evangelicalism both fueled the rise for and provided the foundation of doug wilson and the cacophony of the movements he founded and influenced as we said in the beginning he didn't come out of nowhere Throughout this series, we'll dive deep into the man himself, the church he took over, the anti-denomination he founded, the schooling system and homeschool curriculum, theology, views on gender roles and odd connections to the Trinity, dozens of stories of abuse within CREC circles and outside CREC circles, what abuse is, how to care for those abused, what justice looks like for those who are abused, and how we can respond to the movement as a whole. We want to thank Dr. Kristen Kolbis-Dumais for her time and expertise describing how the evangelical and cultural landscape was prepared for Doug Wilson to take over.

Our next episode will focus on the patriarch himself, Doug Wilson. Let's get to know him. Sons of Patriarchy is brought to you by the administrators of Examining Doug Wilson in Moscow in partnership with Peter Bell. It's written, produced, and edited by Peter Bell. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Aaron Feeney.

This series wouldn't be possible without the dozens of abuse survivors whose bravery and vulnerability make it what it is. Every episode was sent to them before being published, and their feedback, edits, encouragement, and eventual approval make this what it is. May your voices be heard far and wide. Thank you.

Transcript for:Exploring Doug Wilson's Religious Influence

Transcript for:
Exploring Doug Wilson's Religious Influence