'You're God's enemy': How a right-wing pastor's influence is growing — all the way to D.C.

02 June

A Christian nationalist compound is budding in Moscow, Idaho, but’s already got tendrils in the White House, say reporters.

Religion News reports Logos School construction workers are building what looks like a “miniature University of Virginia” on Christ Church’s 30-acre property on the outskirts of Moscow, Idaho. The expansion comes after decades of influential pastor Doug Wilson’s push to transform this small blue college town into a conservative Christian bastion.

Campus growth is being driven by families with four to six children, on average, and rapid emigration, says Religion News. The church has doubled in size since 2019 to about 3,000 people, which is about 10 percent of the population of the town of Moscow. It’s explosive growth for a school with a surprising philosophy.

“Secularism is resting on America like a dense fog, Wilson told NPR, adding that he openly desires the U.S. to be a Christian state: “I want the authority of the Lord Jesus to be confessed by the House and the Senate, and I want the president to sign it.”

NPR journalist Heath Druzin reports that nearly all members of the compound are white, and Christ Church leader Wilson co-wrote a pamphlet called ‘Southern Slavery As It Was,’ “which very much whitewashed the evils of slavery and painted the Confederacy as the victims.”

Christ Church co-founder Gabe Rench confided to Druzin in an interview that he viewed the secular Druzin as an “enemy”: “I'd say you're God's enemy. If you don't believe in Jesus, then then you're at odds - you're at war with God.

Religion News reports Wilson’s widening arm already reaches far beyond Moscow, however. Wilson has been featured on conservative talk shows, including Tucker Carlson’s ‘The Tucker Calrson Encounter’. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a church in Wilson’s denomination and has praised Wilson’s writings. And Wilson will be opening a new congregation in Washington, D.C., aimed at ”strategic opportunities with numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration” in July.

Moscow community member Joann Muneta told Religion News that she hoped the town of can resist the church’s constant call to battle.

“It’s a very peaceful, loving, inclusive community. They don’t want to fight,” said Muneta, despite the school’s combative messaging as suggested by its “Sword and Shovel” bookstore and its “Fight and Build” New Saint Andrews T-shirts.

Read the full Religion News report here.

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