This far-right evangelical pastor has a 'detailed vision' for a MAGA theocracy

Donald Trump with Pastor Paula White at the National Faith Advisory Summit, in Powder Springs, Georgia, U.S., October 28, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Now in his early seventies, Pastor Douglas Wilson is hardly a newcomer to the Religious Right. Wilson, the pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, has been preaching a severe version of evangelical Protestant fundamentalism since the late 1970s. But during the 1980s and 1990s, he was a marginal figure in the evangelical world. Wilson, in those days, wasn't nearly as well-known as prominent Religious Right figures like the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Focus on the Family's James Dobson, or the Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) Rev. Pat Robertson.

In recent years, however, Wilson has achieved much greater prominence on the Religious Right, enjoying a close relationship with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Wilson is an unrelenting proponent of Christian nationalism as well as dominionist theology, which believes that the United States should be a total theocracy governed by strict Biblical law. Critics of that ideology argue dominionists would govern the U.S. in much the same way that the Sunni Taliban governs Afghanistan and Shiite Islamists govern Iran, albeit with fundamentalist evangelical Christianity rather than a Sunni or Shiite version of Shariah law.

Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies scholar and author of the book "Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction," is known for her expertise on extreme ideologies like Christian reconstructionism and dominionist theology. And in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 18, she examines Wilson's growing prominence in the GOP and the MAGA movement and the ways he would like to see the U.S. governed.

"In the college town of Moscow, Idaho," Ingersoll explains, "a once-obscure pastor-theologian has spent decades building his church into an empire. Today, he leads not only that church, but a denomination to which more than 150 churches around the world belong — plus a private school and an association of over 400 Christian schools, a college, a seminary, and a publishing house. In his writing and speaking over the decades, he has sought to revise our understanding of the reality of chattel slavery in the American South; articulated a vision of innate, virtuous hierarchy that includes an extreme form of male headship; and advocated the wholesale conversion of the United States of America to a theocracy that would apply Old Testament law across the land. Democracy, he once said, is 'foolishness.' And in his view, God is not just a God of love, but a God who actively participates with his people in war."

The religious scholar adds, "Last month, that pastor, Douglas Wilson, stepped up to a lectern at the Pentagon to address a monthly gathering of military leaders. He had come at the personal invitation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth."

Ingersoll emphasizes that although Wilson is way outside the mainstream of Protestant Christianity, he is now well-connected in the GOP, the MAGA movement and the Trump Administration. The scholar describes Hegseth as "Wilson's most powerful and well-known follower in Donald Trump's America."

"Proponents of America as a Christian nation are often somewhat hazy about what the end state of a 'Christian nation' would look like specifically," Ingersoll observes, "but Wilson and his followers have carefully laid out a detailed vision. For them, a Christian nation would be governed directly by biblical law — and in every area of its common life and culture, it would be shaped by a comprehensive 'biblical world and life view'…. If you accept that the Bible is true, Wilson believes that the rest of his political-theological paradigm must follow."

Ingersoll adds, "A Christian nation, in his account, is a nation in which there is no area of life and culture where the Bible is not the ultimate authority. Wilson and other Christian nationalists draw on a framework known as 'sphere sovereignty' to interpret and apply the Bible to every area of modern life."

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