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A new movement, “masculinism”, is uniting the right behind extreme anti-feminist views, chiefly in the United States. It promotes the dominant role of men in society, including the idea that men should dominate women.

The movement is led by figures such as self-declared misogynist Andrew Tate (named by the New Yorker as a “singularly influential proponent of masculinism”), who has just been arrested in the US, with his brother Tristan. UK authorities have just announced new charges against the brothers related to allegations of rape and sex trafficking – adding to previous charges in the United Kingdom, and a criminal investigation underway in Romania.

Other masculinists include male supremacist podcaster Myron Gaines, white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes and preacher Doug Wilson, leader of a network of 170 churches whose followers include US war secretary Pete Hegseth.

The term “masculinist” was originally coined in the late 1800s or early 1900s to refer to defenders of male domination. It was then adopted by some in the men’s rights movement in the 1980s as part of a reaction against second-wave feminism. Now, it is being widely used by manosphere and far-right figures and groups.

Masculinism is an extreme form of a men’s rights movement, which believes men should have more rights, power and opportunities than women.

Extreme ideas becoming more common

Andrew Tate has lived out these ideals in life – building an “empire of abuse” based on systemically exploiting women (whom he called “assets” he could “monetize”) for his webcam business.

Wilson was a guest pastor at the Pentagon’s monthly Christian prayer service in February, with Hegseth praying alongside him. He would like to remove women’s right to vote, and has said: “Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman.” And:

the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.

These extreme ideas are becoming more common among leading figures within the US right.

“Far from being a fringe belief system, masculinism has become the single most important force uniting the American right, bringing together an unlikely constellation of pastors, posters, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys,” argued feminist journalist Helen Lewis in a popular Atlantic article.

While right-wing leaders may disagree on Israel, or the role of big tech, they are united in their belief that feminism has destroyed the world, she says.

Though these ideas are also evident in Australia, they are so far confined to the fringes. Far-right commentary website XYZ, for example, whose editor-in-chief David Hiscox once said his goal was “redpilling white men about race” to advocate for the establishment of a “white” ethno-state, includes articles titled “Women’s and girl’s sports need to be banned”, “The woman problem” and “The decay of man”, all promoting masculinist sentiments.

At the same time, a recent study showed 25–30% of Australian boys aged 13–17 agreed with misogynistic attitudes, with 28% supporting “violence to resist feminism”. This mirrors a growing global sentiment that “feminism has gone too far” or that men are now discriminated against.

Extreme men’s rights

A core tenet of feminism has been to argue against simplistic gender roles, stating women can be leaders and men can be carers. Modern masculinist movements are a backlash against these arguments. They argue feminism has undermined the inherent differences between men and women, creating an imbalance that has destroyed modern society.

Masculinists focus in particular on the role of women in the public sphere, arguing women are too irrational and emotional to be involved in politics.

Initial versions argued feminism had gone “too far” and that men’s issues were being ignored. While men’s rights movements had an underlying current of belief in male dominance, they often – at least officially – claimed they were only about achieving equality.

Today’s masculinist movements officially remove the mask. They argue not just that men’s issues have been ignored, but that we need to return to a world of full male dominance.

They argue we should strip women’s right to vote, that women should return to a “traditional” life as homemakers, and that husbands should be able to control their wives’ lives – including their weight, spending habits, television viewing, and when they have sex.

These ideas stem from a belief in fundamental differences between men and women. Dominant values in the West (and some other parts of the world) promote traits characterised as “masculine” (logic, reason, conflict, individualism) and disparage traits considered to be “feminine” (emotion, collectivity, cooperation, being other-oriented).

Valuing one set of traits over another promotes the idea that men are more suited to being leaders in politics and business, while women are more suited to life in the home. Much of this is driven by the needs of capitalism, which has privatised domestic care.

As families have increasingly become less able to survive on one salary alone, this model has become untenable for many, with women increasingly entering the workforce over the past 50 years. Even so, these gendered roles have largely stayed the same.

Masculinists trace what they perceive as a collapse in good governance to women’s involvement. They argue not only that women shouldn’t be political leaders, but that they shouldn’t have the right to vote. Some, such as Wilson, advocate returning to a “family vote”, where male heads of households get to decide on the vote for the entire house.

Masculinists want men to have control in the family too. They promote the return to men being the heads of households and women being subservient homemakers and child-rearers. This aligns with white supremacist views.

Some masculinists believe that in pursuing careers, white women stopped having enough babies, resulting in a “replacement” of white people with people of colour.

Uniting the far right

Masculinism is an idea – and a movement – we need to take seriously. There are no serious moves to abolish suffrage, ban women from politics, or legally force them back into the home – yet. But these ideas are becoming increasingly mainstream in the US, as Wilson’s association with the upper echelons of the US government shows.

“Bit by bit we start to break down these walls … and then one day, we become the mainstream,” said Fuentes in a 2019 livestream, outlining his own strategy.

Despite the serious allegations he has faced, Andrew Tate and his ideas have received widespread political support, including allegations the Trump White House intervened in his case in Romania to have a travel ban lifted. (The White House denies backing the Tates in this way.) It is unclear what impact the Tate brothers’ weekend arrest will have on the support they receive.

Australia has yet to go as far as the US, with no mainstream leaders espousing views as extreme as the Tates or Wilson in the US. However, One Nation has increasingly adopted men’s rights and anti-feminist views, evidenced by Pauline Hanson’s recent attack on paid parental leave. Anti-feminist sentiment is also growing in the country, and Andrew Tate himself has become a very popular (albeit contested) figure here.

Feminists and anti far-right groups continue to resist this ideology – through the #metoo movement, for example, and in ongoing fights for abortion rights, increased pay for women, rights for trans people, and so much more.

However, the role of misogyny and masculinist thinking is still often ignored by those studying and fighting against far-right organisations – particularly security agencies, but also many mainstream researchers. Misogyny is often seen as a “lesser” extremism, ignoring the real violence this ideology creates.

Masculinism as a movement, however, is gaining steam. We must tackle it, both to stop the epidemic of violence against women and to ensure we don’t lose the gains feminism has made.The Conversation

Simon Copland, Honorary Fellow in Sociology, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Christian Nationalism

Doug Wilson: I’m Pushing the Overton Window to Combat Feminism

Getting to a "constitutional theocracy" will take a long time, but in the short term Wilson is pushing the Overton window against feminist egalitarianism while working to ban all abortion, overturn marriage equality, eliminate no-fault divorce, and eradicate the administrative state.

MAGA Cultist Shane Vaughn Says Former Trump Supporters Are Being 'Selfish' By Thinking For Themselves

Christian Nationalism

Doug Wilson, a middle-aged white man with gray hair and beard, is seated and speaking into a microphone. Partially visible behind him is an image of the cover of his book, "No Such Thing as Bad Words"

Doug Wilson: I’m Pushing the Overton Window to Combat Feminism

Doug Mastriano in suit and tie is seated at a table in a Senate hearing room, speaking to an off-camera senator

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rww

05/14/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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04/13/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

Religious-right leaders have been spent decades trying to get more Christians engaged in politics. So are they excited about a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate who is a Christian and a seminarian who speaks fluently about how his faith informs his politics? Hell no.

From the moment that Texas state legislator and former public school teacher James Talarico won the March 3 Democratic primary—and even before—right-wing Christian nationalists have been attacking Talarico. It’s not hard to understand why. Talarico is an effective speaker who is comfortable talking about his faith while promoting LGBTQ equality and reproductive choice and challenging his Republican colleagues. When Talarico appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last summer, the host who endorsed Trump in 2024 encouraged him to run for president.

Polls show that Talarico is currently running neck-and-neck with either of the two Republicans who are battling each other in a runoff that will be held in May. That means he is drawing support from millions of Christian Democrats and Independents.

That is unacceptable to Christian-right leaders who have tried to make supporting Donald Trump and voting for Republicans an article of faith. To undermine Talarico’s appeal, they are attacking his faith as well as his politics.

In other words, the same people who are quick to cry “religious persecution” when their political goals or tactics are criticized have no problem denouncing the faith of a fellow Christian who disagrees with their political positions.

Indeed, they take it on themselves to decide who counts as a “real Christian” based on whether a person is aligned with their religious and political worldview. And they viciously smear anyone who isn’t part of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

The attacks on Talarico are adding to the evidence that Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry and intolerance does not only extend to non-Christians.

Here are just some of the examples we’ve seen in the past month:

Brooks Potteiger, pastor of the church that Christian nationalist Doug Wilson planted in DC to take advantage of his relationship with Pete Hegseth and boost his influence among Christians in the Trump administration, and Joshua Haymes made news in March when they called Talarico’s theology demonic and deceitful. They said they hoped that God would “crucify him” in Christ—a metaphor for a spiritual overhaul. But Haynes added that if that wasn’t part of the plan God should “stop him by any means necessary.”

Wilson, whose vision for a Christian republic includes legal discrimination against non-Christians and liberal Christians, denounced Talarico as “a death angel from Texas,” explaining that “A death cult is any manner of life conducted outside Jesus Christ.”

One of the most Talarico-obsessed Christian-right figures is Gary Bauer, who has been pushing toxic right-wing politics since the days when he urged Ronald Reagan not to let any gay people serve on the first AIDS commission because it would insult conservative Christians. Bauer publishes a daily email newsletter that he has used to repeatedly go after Talarico.

In one of his diatribes, Bauer called Talarico the “poster boy” for “the concerted effort by the Democrat Party to steal the Gospel of Jesus to sell Marxism and moral depravity.” Bauer has called Talarico “far-left” and flat-out lied about Talarico’s position on border security, falsely claiming that he wants “open borders.” Bearing false witness, anyone?

There’s more.

Dominionist James Garlow’s Well Versed newsletter urged people to “beware” of the “heretical” Talarico. The Blaze’s far-right Steve Deace declared “James Talarico is going to be Legion” and called him “an object and a vessel of malevolence.” Anti-Islam author Michael Youssef denounced Talarico and progressive Christianity as “false gospels.”

Texas pastor Daniel Hayworth used the platform of the right-wing Human Events to call Talarico a wicked wolf in sheep’s clothing. Heyworth is married to the daughter of the notoriously corrupt GOP attorney general and is promoting his Senate candidacy.

Even Trump himself couldn’t resist getting in on the Talarico-bashing, charging on social media that Talarico was insulting Jesus. Talarico responded, “You want to know what insults Jesus? Kicking the sick off their healthcare while cutting taxes for billionaires. You know what insults Jesus? Deporting the stranger and separating babies from their mothers. You know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schoolchildren in Iran and sending our brave men and women off to die in another forever war.”

MAGA podcaster Eric Metaxas declared Talarico “diabolical” and a “fake Christian” during a conversation with right-wing author Megan Basham. Basham declared that Talarico is “not a Christian,” claiming that it wasn’t enough that Talarico affirms the historic Nicene Creed, saying “Satan could affirm the Nicene creed.” She claimed that Talarico is a “rank heretic” who has “antichrist views” and that “scripture commands us” not to treat him as a Christian brother. Metaxas and Masham bashed Christian journalists and publications that have treated Talarico and his Christian witness respectfully, going so far as to question their Christianity. “Any true Christian,” she claimed would denounce Talarico as a non-Christian heretic.

It is surely a disappointment to Metaxas and Basham that they don’t actually speak for all Christians. As polling suggests, Talarico’s message is resonating with plenty of Christians in Texas and elsewhere, including many who are tired of seeing their faith used to prop up Donald Trump and welcome a strong Christian critique of right-wing Christian nationalism.

David French, for example, wrote a New York Times op ed on Talarico’s appeal. Here’s an excerpt:

This miserable political moment won’t end when the left takes back the government from the right or if the right continues to beat the left. It will end when our politicians — especially Christian politicians — forsake cruelty for compassion and realize that we shall know Christians in politics not by their stridency and ideology, but by their integrity and love, including their love for, as Talarico put it, “all of our neighbors.”

That’s the significance of the Talarico moment — not the old news that a Christian can be progressive, but rather that Christian politicians can actually act like Christians. Kindness still has a place in the public square, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Among the Christian journalists whose openness to Talarico engrages Metaxas and Basham is Mike Cosper, a writer and producer who said on a Christianity Today podcast, “As evangelicals, there’s something good about seeing certain aspects of Christianity represented in the public square in the way that I think Talarico is doing it. I’m more encouraged by Talarico’s expression of Christianity in the public square than by a lot of what we’ve seen in MAGA world.”

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AN 4 26

When U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to destroy "a whole civilization" in Iran in an April 7 post on his Truth Social platform, the comment drew scathing condemnation not only from countless liberals, progressives and centrist Democrats, but also, from many Never Trump conservatives and libertarians. Even some far-right MAGA influencers, including Infowars' Alex Jones, former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), are calling Trump out.

Yet in far-right white evangelical circles, Trump still has plenty of loyal supporters.

In a biting article published on April 10, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that white evangelicals' feelings of "persecution" are helping fuel a "disastrous" war.

"For over a decade now, the Christian Right has deflected criticism of Trump's immorality and sadism by insisting they are facing persecution for their religious beliefs," Marcotte explains. "In their minds, they are the real victims of a culture gone to hell, and they see the president as their only hope to beat back these imaginary forces of oppression. Nothing, it seems, can shatter this persecution complex. As the Iran war continues to become an ever-bigger disaster, evangelicals are clinging harder than ever to the notion that because they need to defeat their fictional persecutors, Trump's myriad flaws are excusable and forgivable."

Far-right white evangelicals' "paranoid anger," Marcotte argues, is so extreme that they even view "devout Catholics" like Pope Leo XIV as persecutors.

"Regardless of what is being said in private to Catholic leaders," Marcotte observes, "it's clear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his allies are furious at the pontiff for undermining their efforts to frame this war as a Christian enterprise — and are suggesting that those who oppose it are the equivalent of Christ's persecutors…. (Pastor) Doug Wilson, who heads the denomination Hegseth belongs to, demonstrated how valuable the phony Christian persecution narrative is for conservatives who need an excuse to stick by the (Trump) Administration amid the Iran debacle…. In the real world, Hegseth is a belligerent official who relishes threatening Iranians with 'death and destruction from above.' But in Wilson’s telling, the defense secretary is a humble servant of God, besieged on all sides by the faithless in their ongoing war against Christ's followers."

Marcotte adds, " As the administration's skirmish with Pope Leo shows, though, it's getting harder for the Christian Right to package the Iran war as a product of God's love — even to followers who have a long history of swallowing all sorts of cruelty in the name of Christ…. Some who have been among the president's loudest supporters in the past, like former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and podcaster Tucker Carlson, are now proclaiming that this war goes against everything Christians should stand for. In an effort to bring critics like these back in line, many evangelical leaders are clinging to false narratives of religious persecution."

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AN 4 26

In the late 19th Century, women gained the right to vote in some states and municipalities. But it wasn't until the U.S. Constitution's 19th Amendment was adopted in 1920 that voting became a national right for U.S. women — millions of whom voted for the first time in the 1920 presidential election, which found Republican Warren G. Harding defeating Democratic nominee James M. Cox by roughly 26 percent (Cox's running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, went on to enjoy a landslide presidential victory in 1932).

The 19th Amendment has been considered settled law for more than a century. But during Donald Trump's second presidency, more and more evangelical Christian nationalists are seriously calling for the 19th Amendment to be abolished — including Pastor Doug Wilson, a close ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In an article published on April 2, New York Times reporter Vivian Yee takes a look at Christian fundamentalists who believe women should lose the right to vote. This proposal, according to Yee, is now "gaining adherents beyond the fringe" — and they believe that The 19th Amendment "drove America into national decline."

"Instead, they support 'household voting': one household, one vote — the husband's," Yee explains. "While many Americans would see this as an unthinkable regression to a time when women were treated as second-class Americans, proponents of the concept believe deeply that this arrangement is what God envisioned in a marriage. If, a decade ago, the idea was just another extreme provocation, today it is gaining adherents beyond the fringe."

Yee adds, "Male influencers and podcasters in the ultra-conservative corner of the internet known as the Manosphere often push to 'repeal the 19th,' and far-right young women have also backed the idea…. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a clip, last summer, of pastors in his ultra-conservative denomination, which holds that America is a Christian nation whose laws should reflect Christian tenets, arguing that women should be barred from voting."

Beth Allison Barr, a history professor at Baylor University, has changed the way she discusses fundamentalist proposals to repeal the 19th Amendment.

Barr told the New York Times, "I used to teach this as, 'This is this fringe thing that's out there.' Now, I teach it as, 'This is no longer fringe.'"

Yee notes that while "repealing the 19th Amendment would require approval by three-quarters of the states," other MAGA proposals — including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (the SAVE or SAVE America Act) — wouldn't make it illegal for women to vote but would make it more difficult.

"Some obstacles to women voting could come sooner," Yee observes. "President Trump and Republican allies are pushing legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, a restriction that opponents say could disenfranchise the many women whose married names do not match those on their birth certificates or other documents."

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AN 326

On Sunday night, March 22, CNN aired reporter Pamela Brown's documentary "The Rise of Christian Nationalism." And one of the far-right Christian nationalists Brown examined was Pastor Doug Wilson, who preaches at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

For most of his life, Wilson — now in his early seventies — was a marginal figure within Christianity. And his views are extreme even by religious right standards. Wilson, a proponent of "Christian reconstructionism" and "dominionist theology," believes that women should never have been given the right to vote, that wives should be totally submissive to their husbands, and that the federal government should be a Christian fundamentalist theocracy based on strict biblical law.

But in recent years, Wilson has become increasingly prominent in the GOP and the MAGA movement. And he is a close ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Criticism of Wilson is coming not only from politicians and activists — it is also coming from Christian ministers.

In a late March article published by Religion News Service (RNS), reporter Tracy Simmons stresses that some of Wilson's foes are residents of Moscow, Idaho — including the Rev. Hannah Brown, pastor at The United Church of Moscow.

Brown told RNS, "It's a very specific, very conservative, very fundamentalist version of what Christianity is. As somebody who leads a church and calls myself a Christian, that's not the Christianity that I believe."

Another Moscow resident who finds Wilson's views disturbing is 90-year-old Joanne Muneta, chair of the Latah County Human Rights Task Force.

Muneta told RNS that after watching Brown's CNN documentary, she felt "so sad."

Muneta argued, "When I think of all the teachers who devote their careers to bringing up children who think for themselves, who have confidence, who are kind — they want to erase that…. All the effort and pride from the '20s to the '50s to get women’s suffrage, and they're just going to say, 'Oh no, we didn’t mean that.'"

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AN 3 26

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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rww

02/19/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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02/18/2026

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth invited far-right Christian nationalist Doug Wilson to preach at the Pentagon Tuesday, reported Brian Kaylor at A Public Witness. Hegseth’s monthly evangelical worship services and the appearance of Wilson are signs of just how far the most aggressive forms of Christian nationalism have advanced within the MAGA movement and the Trump administration.

As Right Wing Watch has reported, Wilson is a Christian nationalist extremist who believes women should not have the right to vote. In the “Christian republic” he envisions, liberal Christians and non-Christians would not be allowed to hold public office or worship in public. He wants to see the Apostle’s Creed inserted into the U.S. Constitution.

Hegseth was criticized for apparently endorsing Wilson’s views last year when he promoted a CNN profile of Wilson with the comment, “All of Christ for All of Life.” (Hegseth eventually clarified that he supports women’s right to vote.) But Hegseth’s words and actions since then make it clear that he is intent on imposing his Christian nationalist worldview on the U.S. military.

Kaylor reported earlier that at the Feb. 5 National Prayer Service, Hegseth asserted, “America was founded as a Christian nation” and that public officials “have a sacred duty to glorify him.” He also suggested that serving in the U.S. military was a form of Christian spiritual warfare and that serving that mission could earn a soldier eternal life.

In 2023, Wilson’s Canon Press published The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel, which declared that the United States must formally “acknowledge the Lordship of Christ” in all its laws, “abolish abortion,” outlaw marriage equality, and “recapture our national sovereignty from godless, global entities who present a grave threat to civilization.” The statement affirms that “the Christian Nationalist project entails a national recognition of essential Christian orthodoxy” and supports laws against “public blasphemy.” Wilson is also notorious for publishing a book downplaying the evils of slavery.

Wilson oversees an expanding influence network that includes the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of “classical” Christian academies, and a cadre of far-right “theobros” who embrace his ultra-patriarchal Christian nationalist ideology. The Idaho-based Wilson planted a church in Washington, D.C. last year to “calibrate” conservative Christians working in the Trump administration in alignment with his worldview. Right Wing Watch recently noted that the mother of Brook Potteiger—the pastor tapped to lead Wilson's new church in D.C.—recently told an interviewer that Potteiger became psychically abusive and domineering after falling under Wilson's influence, so much so that she filed a report against him with child protective services.

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RWW

12/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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AN 12 25

For most of his life, Doug Wilson — the 72-year-old pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho — was a fringe figure even on the Religious Right. Wilson's Christian nationalist views were so extreme that he gained a reputation for being to the right of familiar evangelical fundamentalists like Liberty University's Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the Christian Broadcasting Network's Rev. Pat Robertson, and Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

But during Donald Trump's second presidency, Wilson has become increasingly visible. Trump's allies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, openly embrace Christ Church.

Religion News Service (RNS) reporter Tracy Simmons examines Wilson's growing prominence in the MAGA movement in an article published on December 12.

"Critics say that Christ Church's renown has less to do with the Almighty than with Wilson's dedication to Christian nationalism and his ties to like-minded officials in the Trump Administration and among its allies," Simmons explains. "Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has attended a Christ Church-affiliated congregation in Tennessee and has amplified Wilson's most controversial views, including his argument that women should not be allowed to vote. In the space of a month in April 2024, Wilson was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk on their respective podcasts."

Wilson, who believes that Christ Church is now "punching about our weight," started out as a Baptist but later moved to a severe form of Calvinism.

"Wilson came to national attention in 2003, when he organized a conference at the University of Idaho at Moscow about revolutions throughout U.S. history," Simmons explains. "Some in the community picked up on a booklet titled 'Southern Slavery, As It Was' that Wilson had co-authored some years earlier arguing that slavery, besides being allowed for in the Bible, was not as harsh in the antebellum South as is commonly portrayed. Soon, the campus and Downtown Moscow were plastered with flyers referring to Wilson’s university event as a 'slavery conference'…. To maximize his footprint in Washington, Wilson planted a church there this year, introducing what Wilson critic Kevin DeYoung called 'the Moscow mood' — cultural engagement 'with a spirit of … having fun while you’re doing it.'"

*Read Tracy Simmons' full Religion News Service (RNS) article at this link.

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12/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Trump and national Republicans pushed Indiana lawmakers for new district lines that could have allowed the party to gain two seats in next year’s midterms.

Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith (R) said the Trump administration threatened the state if the Republican-controlled legislature failed to gerrymander its congressional map.

Presidents can’t pardon individuals convicted of state crimes. Whether Trump understands that isn’t entirely clear.

The Trump-bashing congresswoman is said to be quietly trying to stage a revolt against House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The pastor, celebrating 50 years in his pulpit, has never had more influence than he does under the current presidential administration.

The White House appears to have tweeted then deleted a “Naughty List” of journalists, including top news reporters and outlets, in an act that is being described as “positively authoritarian” by one legal expert.

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AN 12 25

Comedian and podcaster Deborah Frances-White isn’t joking in her recent column for The iPaper, where she describes a growing movement of men who believe women’s right to vote should be taken away.

"The Guilty Feminist" host noted that she first assumed that it was rumblings coming from the "manosphere," an umbrella term for a loose network of online communities that promote ideologies of male supremacy and anti-feminism.

"However, even the most fiercely anti-feminist forces haven’t openly questioned women having the vote in my lifetime, because no one can remember a time when it wasn’t normal," wrote Frances-White.

She recalled being cornered in the lobby of one of her comedy shows, by a woman who claimed that women are "too emotional" to have the right to vote.

"That was my first alarm bell," she confessed.

White women in the U.S. earned the right to vote in 1920. Frances-White noted that Native American women weren't even classified as citizens until 1924 and some Black women were blocked from voting until the 1960s — particularly in the South.

But in the last decade, Supreme Court rulings eliminated the Roe v. Wade standard, allowing the government to regulate reproductive health.

Frances-White pointed to the "Project 2025" handbook, a plan authored by those working with the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation amid President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

The goals include not just replacing FBI staff with Trump loyalists, but the complete dismantling of the Department of Education, the mass deportation of immigrants and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

One section, however, focuses on enacting laws pushed by Christian nationalists, including laws that criminalize reproductive health.

"Much of this is being actioned now," she warned.

"Part of this new political climate includes the visibility of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which counts more than 160 congregations across North America, Europe, Asia and South America," she continued. "Their most recent outpost was strategically planted in Washington DC under the leadership of Pastor Doug Wilson. While they are not directly connected to Project 2025, many of their aims align neatly with it."

CREC spokespeople are outright arguing to overturn a woman's right to vote and put women "back to the household." Women's suffrage is "eroded family values" in their eyes. Women should only be voting, they believe, if she is the head of the household. That does not mean that men who are not the head of the household are not allowed to vote, however.

This reflects a broader argument within the Trump coalition. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has contended that if women are to be included in combat roles, they must meet the same physical standards as male soldiers.

In her closing remarks, Frances-White contends that what marks the beginning of the journey "on the road to Gilead" is not the overturning of a ruling like Roe, but rather when ideas questioning women's voting rights spread through conversations, social media, and videos without significant public opposition.

"It’s a quiet conversation in a church basement," she said. "It’s a campaign shared on social media. It’s ideas dropped in YouTube videos with millions of hits. It’s a moment when someone says, “maybe women shouldn’t vote,” and it doesn’t get laughed off. If you believe democracy means that each of us has a voice – the right to vote, choose, speak, dissent – now is the time to guard it."

Read the full column here.

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an 12 25

Over the years, right-wing firebrand author Ann Coulter argued, on various occasions, that the United States needs to "reconsider women's suffrage." And during Trump's second presidency, however, an increasing number of Christian nationalists and MAGA influencers are flat-out calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which, in 1920, gave women nationwide the right to vote.

Dale Patridge, a far-right evangelical Christian nationalist pastor, said, "I think we should repeal the 19th Amendment because I love America." Manosphere influencer Andrew Tate called for the U.S. to "stop letting women vote," and anti-feminist Hanna Pearl Davis repeatedly calls for women to lose their voting rights. Another opponent of women's suffrage is Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson, an ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In a column published on December 4, The Guardian's Moira Donegan warns that the movement to repeal the 19th Amendment is quite real among Christian nationalists and MAGA Republicans.

"More and more," the progressive observes, "influential voices in the MAGA movement and the far-right Republican Party are calling to strip women of the franchise. It's not that this is strictly a new development. Opposition to women's voting rights has long been a fringe, but persistent, feature of the American right. It's been a favorite hobby horse of extremist preachers; it trended among Trump supporters on social media in the lead-up to the 2016 election, when polls showed that Trump would win if only men voted."

Since 1920, Donegan notes, "opposition to women's right to vote" has "simmered at the extreme edges of political opinion." But increasingly, she emphasizes, MAGA figures are saying the quiet part out loud in 2025.

"Joel Webbon, a pastor and YouTube personality, has been at the forefront of this brand of misogynist Christian reaction….. The opponents of women's suffrage have, for now, no way of enacting their ambition: there is no path to repealing the 19th Amendment," Donegan warns. "But they are part of a growing movement to blame women's advancement — and their increased access, participation and visibility in education, the workforce, politics and public life — for a slew of social problems, from political polarization to economic stagnation to a vague sense of spiritual anomie…. This range of sexisms that have attained mainstream credibility in politics and the press rest on one assumption: that women's citizenship is partial and conditional compared with men's, that we have less of a claim on rights, dignity and public participation than our brothers do."

Donegan adds, "That this assumption is even held is an insult to women's dignity; that it is now so blithely accepted is a sign of how far women’s status has already sunk."

*Moira Donegan's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

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EXTREMISM MOJO

To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the “TheoBros”
These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.

Kiera ButlerNovember+December 2024 Issue

*Our November+December issue investigates the Christian nationalist movement that aspires to take over government at all levels, from school boards and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court. Read the series of stories here.

On July 15, when former President Donald Trump first appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, he brought along two new accessories. One was a large bandage covering his ear, which had been nicked by a would-be assassin’s bullet. The other was Ohio’s first-term senator and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, who was about to debut as the GOP vice presidential hopeful.

Two days later, after paying tribute to his wife, Usha—the child of immigrants from India—and their three biracial kids, Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media. “America is a particular place with a particular people,” Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and podcaster, wrote on X. “This is one of the most important political questions facing America right now,” posted former Trump administration official William Wolfe. “Answer it wrong, we will go the way of Europe, where the native-born populations are being utterly displaced by third world migrants and Muslims. Answer it right, and we can renew America once more.”

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William), the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.” For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.

For years, graying, khaki-clad evangelists have faithfully made the rounds at conservative events. However, as Wolfe, a 41-year-old former Princeton postdoc, writes in his book, these “men in wrinkled, short-sleeve golf shirts, sitting plump in their seats” are yesterday’s Christians. Among younger activists, they inspire the rolling of eyes—they are the embodiment of an ineffective boomer approach to taking over the United States for Jesus.

In their place, a group of young pastors hope to spearhead a Christian nationalist glow-up as they eagerly await a “Christian prince” to rule America. These often bearded thirty- and fortysomethings have suits that actually fit. They are extremely online, constantly posting on myriad platforms, broadcasting their YouTube shows from mancaves, and convening an endless stream of conferences for likeminded followers. Let’s call them, as one scholar I spoke with did, the TheoBros.

For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth—and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the US Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments.

IFrame Content

In American Reformer, their unofficial magazine, hagiographies of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco appear alongside full-throated defenses of countries that execute gay people. On podcasts, the TheoBros unpack “the perils of multiculturalism,” expose “Burning Man’s wicked agenda,” and peel back the nefarious feminist plot of Taylor Swift. In Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism, one of their seminal texts, he writes that in an ideal Christian nation, heretics could be executed.

The rise of the TheoBros worries more mainstream religious conservatives. Janet Mefferd, a former Christian radio host and journalist who tracks their ascendancy, says her community is alarmed to see an extremist movement gaining traction. “I’m not sure what the endgame is, other than they want to advance Christian nationalism,” she says. “But a lot of us find that terrifying.”

“I’m not sure what the endgame is, other than they want to advance Christian nationalism—but a lot of us find that terrifying.”

The TheoBros’ strategy is bottom-up: They aim to convert small American towns into Christian enclaves. But it is also top-down: Some are working to position themselves close to the locus of federal power. Vance, a Catholic convert married to a Hindu, would seem an unlikely hero for a movement of devout Protestants who believe in a homogeneous America. But over the last few years, his political orbit has increasingly overlapped with that of the TheoBros—so much so that to careful observers, his public echoes of their ideas are beginning to sound less like coincidence and more like dog whistles.

And those dog whistles signal the major themes of this election: hypermasculinity, declining birthrates, ethnonationalism—and no small measure of carefully curated misogyny. If you want to know some of the actors who red-pilled Vance, or at least those who flock to him, you need to meet the TheoBros.

Clockwise from top-left: Douglas Wilson, Joel Webbon, Josh Abbotoy, Andrew Isker, William Wolfe, and Brian SauvéYouTube

With no meetings, website, or an explicit statement of faith that unifies their beliefs, the TheoBros are not an official organization. They identify with 16th-century French theologian John Calvin, who spawned a rigid and deterministic form of Protestantism. Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida religion scholar, traces the current movement back to R.J. Rushdoony, an Armenian American philosopher who popularized the idea of Christian nationalism (and homeschooling) in the early 1970s.

Out of Rushdoony’s movement emerged two camps: the charismatic Christians, now known as the New Apostolic Reformation, and the reformed Protestants, which include the TheoBros. They share the goal of creating a Christian nation, says Ingersoll, but differ on a key point of theology: Adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation believe that God is still speaking directly to people through pastors who have declared themselves apostles and prophets. The TheoBros, meanwhile, believe that God said all he needed to say in the Bible.

Many TheoBros are also proponents of postmillennialism, the idea that believers can hasten Jesus’ return by fighting against the satanic forces of liberal excess. TheoBro Aaron Renn, an Accenture consultant turned Christian pundit, has described our current era as a “negative world,” where Christians are persecuted for their beliefs. Andrew Isker, another Bro, calls it “trashworld.”

Like all self-respecting millennials, the TheoBros have little tolerance for boomers, with the exception of their patriarch, Douglas Wilson, a 71-year-old pastor in Moscow, Idaho. When he was younger, Wilson imagined himself going into the family business—Christian bookstores—but after a stint in the military, he moved to Moscow in 1975 to study philosophy at the University of Idaho, where he became involved with the Jesus People, a kind of mashup of evangelical and hippie culture. He helped found Christ Church, the congregation over which he still presides and that regularly draws crowds of 1,300.

Wilson has since turned the college town into his own Christian kingdom. He helped found New Saint Andrews College, the Canon Press publishing house, and Logos School, one of the nation’s first classical Christian schools, where students exclusively study the Western canon. Wilson embraced Calvinism in 1988 and remade his church from the freewheeling Jesus People hub into something far more sober and buttoned-up, where women couldn’t be church leaders and the only music allowed was hymns and psalms. In the early 1990s, Wilson helped launch the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which had 502 member institutions across the United States as of March 2023.

“The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”

His influence over Moscow has not been without controversy. In a 2021 Vice exposé, former members of Christ Church alleged that ministers had encouraged them to stay in abusive relationships. That tracks with Wilson’s 1999 book, Fidelity: How to Be a One-Woman Man, in which he wrote, “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” For that reason, Wilson wrote, the dynamic of a dominant man and a submissive woman is “an erotic necessity.” (Wilson called allegations of the church urging women to stay in abusive relationships “categorically false.”)

Wilson has also promoted another form of dominance. In the 1996 book Southern Slavery: As It Was, Wilson and his co-author argued that the master-slave dynamic was “a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence,” and “there has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world” as that of the antebellum South. (In a 2020 blog post, Wilson said he now allows that while “the benevolent master is not a myth, the idea of the horrific taskmaster is no abolitionist myth either.”) When I asked Wilson about his controversial statements, he likened himself to a chef who strategically deploys jalapeno peppers: “Then some of my enemies online have combed through my writings, have gathered up all the jalapenos and put them on one Ritz cracker.”

:In July, at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, Wilson shared the stage with Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), as well as Vance, who auditioned his “America is a people” bit a week before his star turn at the GOP convention. Wilson agrees with Vance’s suggestion that children should be allotted votes, managed by their parents. “I would like to see elections where households vote,” he told me. Men, as the heads of households, would actually cast the votes. Though he believes that women’s suffrage was “a mistake,” he would allow a special exception for single mothers.}:

Wilson offered the crowd a few one-liners (“I’m a Presbyterian, not a Lesbyterian”), but mostly, he talked about the persecution of Christians. “It used to be that the sexually troubled had to keep their kinks hidden away in the closet,” he mused. “Now it is the conservative Christian who needs to keep his virtues hidden in the recesses of the closet.” After the National Conservatism Conference, Wilson appeared at the Believers’ Summit, which was headlined by Trump and hosted by the conservative political group Turning Point USA.

But it’s not just conferences and interviews with the likes ofTucker Carlson where Wilson promotes his ideas. He has a blog, a podcast, and a YouTube channel, thanks mostly to the urging of his children and younger colleagues. One example is that every year since 2018, Wilson has been celebrating what he calls No Quarter November: “The month where we say out loud what everyone is thinking.” In a2023 video, which was the brainchild of one of his sons, Wilson sits at a sumptuously appointed Thanksgiving table, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and addresses the camera. “If you think of my blog as a shotgun,” he says, “this is the month when I saw off all my typical, careful qualifications and blast away with a double-barreled shorty.” His wife, clad in an apron, brings out a turkey and places it in front of him, and then the tranquil scene is interrupted by a blaring alarm and a glowing red “perimeter breach” sign. Wilson excuses himself, heads to his garage, and straps on a flamethrower. After using it to light a cigar, he aims the fire at cardboard cutouts of Disney princesses Elsa and Ariel, and the logos of Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Netflix.

Wilson’s willingness to make campy content sets him apart, says Rachel Tabachnick, an extremism researcher who has been studying Christian nationalism for decades. “Instead of a crotchety old guy talking about stoning people, he’s like, super cool,” she says. “He’s witty.”

In subsequent videos, Wilson tackled women’s culpability in rape, the dark side of empathy, and the virtues of “something called the patriarchy—that which, according to our soi-disant and lisping political theorists, must be smashed. Only they say something like ‘thmasth.’”

Melek Zertal

Wilson has used his platforms to anoint the next generation of ultraconservative reformed Christian pastors, all of whom happened to be men. Mefferd, the conservative Christian journalist, told me that Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism got traction in mainstream Christian circles in part “because Doug Wilson endorsed.” Another Wilsonprotégé is Joel Webbon, a 38-year-old pastor who hosts a podcast and YouTube show, which he films from a wingback leather chair in a book-lined room.

Webbon wasn’t always reformed—he is an alumnus of a Bible school run by a New Apostolic Reformation affiliated outfit, which he now considers “straight-up heretical.” In his 20s, he broke from the group, moved to Texas, and started his own church. In a video from a few years ago, Webboncredited Wilson with emboldening him to say whatever he wanted—like telling a guest that the Founding Fathers weren’t responsible for the slave trade because Africans had done the actual kidnapping and enslaving.

“Kamala sees happy, large families and hates them. She wants them destroyed. She wants you to never be able to have this. She is a nasty, bitter harridan who hates all that is true, good, and beautiful.”

For Webbon, it was intensely liberating to watch Wilson speak in public without worrying about being canceled. “You stay in your little corner, you stay on your little leash, because you’re like, I don’t know what will happen,” Webbon said. “But when you see some other guy do it, and you’re like—that’s the worst thing that can happen? Vice writes an article about you? [Christianity Today editor-in-chief] Russell Moore won’t invite you to his birthday party anymore? Like, that’s it.” At arecent conference, he registered dismay over immigrants in his community. “It’s like full, straight-up Hindu garb at our neighborhood swimming pool, that my daughter is asking [about and] I’m trying to explain.”

In August, he remarked on his show that “a lot of people are gonna be surprised” when “you’re spending eternity worshipping Christ next to Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and Jonathan Edwards, and, you know, George Whitefield and Martin Luther King Jr.’s in hell.”

Webbon is so impressed by his own audacity that he maintains an online list of all the controversies in which he’s become embroiled. There, he explains why he called Christian men living in California “stupid” (they could just move to a red state); why he once ordered his wife to stop reading a book on theology (he didn’t want her exposed to beliefs that were different from his own); and why he believes in a patriarchal household structure (the Bible says so). Webbon, who is planning to host a conference in Texas next spring called “Christ Is King: How to Defeat Trashworld!” maintains that a “return to the Constitution is impossible” and that the only viable alternative is the Ten Commandments.

Some of Wilson’s other acolytes are attempting to create their own versions of Moscow, Idaho. Take Brian Sauvé, a 33-year-old Christian recording artist, podcaster, and pastor of Refuge Church in Ogden, Utah. Like Webbon, Sauvé wasn’t always reformed—Refuge began as a charismatic Christian church. After the lead pastor resigned in a scandal, the then-24-year-old Sauvé ascended to take his place, immersed himself in reformed theology, and moved the church in a new direction. Today, he presides over a Moscow-esque ecosystem: a publishing house called New Christendom Press, as well as St. Brendan’s Classical Christian Academy, modeled after those in Wilson’s network. “Can you feel it in the sails?” reads St. Brendan’s website. “The stiff breeze out of Moscow, Idaho? We can.”

On his three podcasts and to his more than 53,000 followers on X, Sauvé regularly states that women’s primary function is to bear children. In July, after Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies who are miserable” began widely circulating, he posted: “It is desperately sad to think of all the intentionally barren women who will find themselves totally alone in their 50s, realizing their irreversible mistake. They will wish they could trade it all—money, vacations, independence, all of it—for children they can now never have.”

But unlike more mainstream conservatives, Sauvé does not even pretend to champion the idea of a Judeo-Christian nation. He posted in July, “[O]ur political system is heavily influenced by Jews who reject Christ and embrace all manner of evils.”

An even more well-connected Wilson emulator is Josh Abbotoy, executive director of American Reformer and managing partner of a venture capital fund and real estate firm called New Founding. A former fellow of the right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute, Abbotoy reported that he recently participated in a Project 2025 presidential transition “strategic planning session” hosted by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. Bucks County Beacon reporter Jennifer Cohn revealed venture capitalist Chris Buskirk was listed as the editor and publisher of American Reformer. (The publication’s cofounder, Nate Fischer, later clarified to Mother Jones that Buskirk’s listing in the filing had been a clerical error, and that he was actually a board member of American Reformer.) In 2022, Buskirk co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a collection of powerful Trump donors including Catholic judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Another co-founder of the Rockbridge Network? None other than JD Vance.

Thiel, Vance’s mentor and former employer, is also a major funder of the National Conservatism movement. Obsessed with global birthrates, Thiel spent $10 million on his protégé’s successful 2022 Senate campaign. In July, shortly after Trump had announced Vance as his running mate, Cohn surfaced a tweet by New Founding’s network director, Josh Clemans: a photo of Vance with several New Founding staffers. The caption read “Our guy.”

New Founding lists as a partner the Society for American Civic Renewal, a secretive fraternal order founded by Indiana shampoo baron Charles Haywood, who describes himself as an aspiring Christian “warlord.” According to founder Nate Fischer, New Founding wants to “form the backbone of a renewed American regime” and that its members “understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise.” But its main public-facing project appears to be turning tracts of land in Appalachia into Christian communities. Promotional materials describe a community of “unmatched seclusion” where “simple country faith” protects local culture from rainbow flags and crime. Potential buyers, he advises, should not delay. “Who’s going to grab the land? Is it going to be good, based people who want to build something inspiring, something authentic to the region’s history, or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?”

One eager customer is 38-year-old TheoBro Andrew Isker—the pastor who interned at Wilson’s church, studied divinity at New Saint Andrews, and co-wrote a book on Christian nationalism with Andrew Torba, the openly antisemitic CEO of the social media platform Gab. In July, Isker announced on X that he planned to move his family of seven to lead a church in a New Founding community in Tennessee. Life in his native Minnesota, he said, had become untenable because of permissive laws around trans rights and abortion, not to mention how hospitable the state has been to refugees. “Minnesota is one of the top destinations for resettling foreign people hostile to our way of life,” he said.

That month, Isker spoke at a Texas conference about the “war on white America” alongside Paul Gottfried, the mentor of prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer. The conference was hosted by the True Texas Project, a far-right group with ties to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Like many TheoBros, Isker sees much to like in Vance. In early July, before Trump announced his running mate, Isker referred to him as “Senator JD Vance (R-Heritage America).” In late July, he posted a video of Vance and told his 29,000 followers, “You need to double down on childless cat lady discourse. Kamala sees happy, large families and hates them. She wants them destroyed. She wants you to never be able to have this. She is a nasty, bitter harridan who hates all that is true, good, and beautiful.”

One problem is that there simply are not enough TheoBros to populate Christian communities like the one Isker plans to move to. Enter William Wolfe, the founder of the Center for Baptist Leadership, which aims to persuade members of the Southern Baptist Convention that it, the largest of all Protestant denominations in the United States, has fallen prey to the corrupting forces of liberalism. Baptists are only the beginning. Wolfe wants to win over the entire evangelical mainstream, which he and other TheoBros refer to as “Big Eva.” In August, he posted on X, “Once you realize that Big Eva thinks it’s a bigger sin to desire to preserve the customs, heritage, values, and cultural homogeneity of your own nation than to kill the unborn in the womb, you can better understand their moral framework.”

Wolfe served in the Trump administration both as the deputy assistant secretary of defense and as director of House affairs at the Department of State. He is also an alumnus of Heritage Action, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, the arch-conservative think tank behind Project 2025, whose chief architect, Russell Vought, posted on X that he was “proud to work with @William_E_Wolfe on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.” A few months later, the Bucks County Beacon uncovered a lengthy online manifesto on the goals of Christian nationalists. The document, which listed Wolfe and Joel Webbon as contributing editors and Oklahoma Sen. Dusty Deevers as a co-author, called for “civil magistrates” to usher in “the establishment of the Ten Commandments as the foundational law of the nation.”

The manifesto doesn’t specify exactly how Christian nationalists should achieve these goals. As Tabachnick, the extremism researcher, interprets it, the TheoBros are imagining a utopia where “they are going to be free to be entrepreneurs in all different senses, including the tech world that they’re mixing with so freely.” The key, she said, is that authoritarianism “is required to have the utopian vision.”

Last year, the extremism watchdog group Right Wing Watchposted a video of Wolfe quoting a scripture passage. There are times when “even the God of peace proclaims by his providence, ‘to arms!’” he says. “If we have ever lived in a point of time in American history since then that we could argue that now is a time ‘to arms’ again, I think we are getting close.”

William Wolfe’s Christian nationalism manifesto made the rounds on social media, but in mainstream conservative outlets, it was Stephen Wolfe who brought TheoBro ideas to the wider world. In his book, which was praised by editors at the Federalist and theAmerican Conservative, Wolfe paints America as a “gynocracy” whose government and culture have been feminized by unhappy women leaders. (Sound familiar?) He has stated on X that women should not have the right to vote, and that “interethnic” marriage can be “sinful.”

Wolfe grew up in Napa, California, and his father was an admirer of the right-wing pundit and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. After attending West Point and serving in the Army, Wolfe earned advanced degrees before leaving academia to “do the Wendell Berry thing” in North Carolina with his wife and four kids.

Over the summer, Wolfe, 41, agreed to speak with me on the condition that I refer to him as “Dr. Wolfe” and call him an “expert on Christian nationalism.” The Dr. Wolfe I spoke with was a more muted version of the firebrand I’d watched online. He said his ideal version of America would be led by a Caesar figure. Gay marriage would be strictly prohibited. Women would not be allowed to vote—instead, men would vote for their households.

When I brought up the bit from his book about heretics being killed, he grew annoyed. “I do think it’s permissible, in principle, for a state to suppress theological heresy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s prudent or proper, suitable in every circumstance or every tradition or way of life.” The Founding Fathers, he added, had encouraged religious liberty, so killing heretics would not be appropriate in the United States that we inhabit.

We turned to remarks he had made at a recent conference convened by Brian Sauvé: “I think we need to reflect on this idea of Judeo-Christianity, or Judeo-Christian worldview, or Judeo-Christian whatever, and really eradicate that from our thinking. Because if we say that America is a Judeo-Christian country, then it can’t be a Christian country, okay?” What role, I asked him, would Jews play? After a deep sigh, he told me that they would be allowed to “exercise their religion freely.”

“We need to reflect on this idea of Judeo-Christianity, or Judeo-Christian worldview, or Judeo-Christian whatever, and really eradicate that from our thinking. Because if we say that America is a Judeo-Christian country, then it can’t be a Christian country, okay?”

We spoke a week before Vance’s RNC speech, and Wolfe’s remarks helped me understand what the TheoBros heard in Vance’s phrase about America as a people. The founders, Wolfe noted, intended for their country to be “Anglo-Protestant with an American inflection.” America, he continued, is “a place of settlement and rootedness, but it’s an open ethnicity in which people can become one of us.” Which is to say that, like some others, Wolfe is not necessarily opposed to the idea of nonwhite people in America—as long as they agree to assimilate to the Anglo-Protestant dominant culture.

In this telling, America is not a pluralistic society at all, but rather one in which there exists an uneasy truce between Christians and those they reluctantly tolerate. Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wolfe what motivated him. “I want Christians to be more assertive and to recognize the Christian heritage of the American way of life, and to seek to restore that,” he said. “This is a Christian country, and we’ve got to work to restore it to what it once was.”

In his keynoteaddress at Sauvé’s conference, titled “Why Multicultural Pluralism Fails and What to Build Instead,” Wolfe called the concept of America as a melting pot “an early 20th-century idea cooked up by a Jew in New York who despised the confident Anglo-Protestant establishment.” WASPs were the “distinct ethnicity” of America, he insisted, and America should only welcome those who aspired to assimilate. As he put it, “This is our homeland, and we welcome you on the condition of conformity.” Or, in the words of JD Vance, America “is a group of people.”

*Correction, September 19: An earlier version of this article inaccurately described Chris Buskirk’s role at American Reformer.

Update, January 14: After this story was published, Nate Fischer, CEO of New Founding and co-founder of American Reformer, clarified toMother Jonesthat Buskirk’s listing in tax filings as the editor and publisher ofAmerican Reformerhad been a “clerical error (presumably copying his bio fromAmerican Greatness, where he was editor and publisher)” and that Buskirk was actually a board member ofAmerican Reformer. The sentence has been revised.*

{Read our full investigation into the rise of Christian nationalism.*}:

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RWW

10/06/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Last month, the White House issued two executive orders that direct federal law enforcement to start cracking down on the political opposition. One of the two memos prompted some confusion and mockery for its attempt to designate “antifa” a terrorist organization. But the second has gone largely unnoticed in the mainstream press.

Back in 2000, a Michigan entrepreneur named Ron DeHaas co-founded Covenant Eyes, an anti-porn internet accountability software program that has since grown to more than 2 million users. The idea, he said at the time, was to protect his teenage stepsons from sexual temptation online. Its effectiveness has been lauded by many, including Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson. But this past Aug. 13, one of those stepsons was arrested at a meeting spot in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he thought he would find a 14-year-old girl interested in having sex with him.

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump expanded his war on free speech, the left, and ordinary Americans. It’s going to get worse.

The White House aide equates opposition to Trump’s agenda with terrorism—and pushes for the use of state power to suppress it.

Douglas Wilson’s rising influence shows how the past is at the center of today’s culture wars.

The Supreme Court refused to hear the far-right commentator’s censorship case.

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How segments of Christianity overlap with the manosphere and what it means for women
The rise of the manosphere, with its call for a return to traditional gender roles, reflects a backlash to power-shifting cultural changes.

Marc Ramirez

USA TODAY

VID]

In Moscow, Idaho, conservative evangelical pastor Doug Wilson last year praised the nomination of now-U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his opposition to women in combat.

Then, in an interview broadcast last month, Wilsontold CNN that in his vision of a Christian America, women would hold few leadership positions beyond being "chief executive" of the home and raising children.

"Women are the kind of people that people come out of," he said. "It doesn't take any talent to simply reproduce biologically."

Meanwhile, at Covenant Bible Church, an evangelical church in suburban Austin, Texas, pastor Joel Webbon has echoed Wilson's view that in a Christian nation, women shouldn’t be able to vote.

The manosphere — a movement encompassing hypermasculinity, male supremacy, misogyny and traditional gender roles and driven by podcasters, bloggers and social media warriors — has become increasingly mainstream. And now, it is converging with a segment of conservative Christianity.

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“There’s a version of ‘men in charge, women in submission’ that goes back as far as I can think of” in conservative Christian circles, said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida. In other words, she said, most Sunday congregations would agree that while married couples more or less decide things together, the man has the ultimate say.

But over the last decade, Ingersoll said, this soft patriarchalism — sometimes called “complementarianism,” the idea that men and women have distinct but complementary roles — has yielded to more transgressive hierarchical versions. The shift, she and others say, is part of a backlash against power-shifting cultural developments and a reflection of how the emergence of the so-called manosphere overlaps with certain segments of Christianity.

“Complementarianism now is not like it was in the 1980s,” Ingersoll said. “It’s harsh.”

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“They all believe society has a natural order, that some people should be in charge and others are meant to be followers,” Ingersoll said. “That weaves in misogyny, because the people perceived to be appropriately at top are always men, so by definition women have a secondary position.”

Both Wilson and Webbon rely on strict interpretations of the Bible to back up their views that husbands rule over their wives and thus their households. Both pastors said the Bible and their churches provide safeguards to curb the toxicity found in some parts of the manosphere.

"The woman's role is a feminine and domestic role," Webbon told USA TODAY. "Her voice matters, but it is subject to her husband’s authority. Women should hold no positions of authority over men in the church, neither should they hold positions of authority over men in politics."

Wilson told USA TODAY that such views "are grounded in scripture, which we believe to be the word of God, and are important for that reason."

Cultural changes in recent decades have seen advancements for women and the LGBTQ+ community, eroding conservative Christian views of U.S. identity, said Matthew Taylor, an expert on religious extremism at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. The backlash has prompted calls for a return to traditional gender roles.

“If you think about what American culture was until the 1950s, it was overwhelmingly dominated by White Christian males,” Taylor said. “In the 1960s and 1970s, you had the Civil Rights Movement, women’s liberation, heightened immigration and Supreme Court jurisprudence that changed the balance of church and state. ... What we’re experiencing now is the backlash to that very rapid cultural change we’ve undergone.

“It’s also religious and often racial, and it’s often White men making this articulation,” Taylor said. “The trend lines are toward a cultural retrenchment of forces in American society that feel like they’re losing power.”

Where Christianity and the manosphere find commonality is in male entitlement, especially where Christian nationalism — the idea that Christian people and biblical law should govern American life — overlaps with evangelicalism, said Sheila Wray Gregoire, a former evangelical whose “Bare Marriage” podcast explores the marital and sexual satisfaction of evangelical women in the U.S. and Canada.

“It’s the idea that men are meant to have authority over women and women are supposed to serve, especially sexually,” she said. “There’s very little light between the two.”

Taylor said two major ascendant far right Christian movements in the U.S. heavily overlap with the manosphere, both of them highly patriarchal.

First, he said, are traditionalist Catholics. Second are reformed reconstructionist Christians, which he describes as a basically Calvinist, largely evangelical world of pastors and preachers, many of them young with well-groomed beards — the so-called TheoBros.

One preacher's rise illustrates the phenomenon

While the Christian manosphere is largely an evangelical phenomenon, it's also taken root in conservative Catholic and Presbyterian circles, smaller denominations and independent churches, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, a private Christian university in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The rise of Idaho pastor Wilson, now in his early 70s, illustrates how fringe evangelicalism has seeped into the mainstream over time, she said. By 1998, when Wilson co-founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, he was still an outlier who held benign views of American slavery and mocked evangelical megachurch leaders he would ultimately parody as spineless “Evangellyfish” in a novel of the same name.

“On the surface, he was not well connected,” said Du Mez, author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Christian Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” “He had set up his own outpost in Moscow (Idaho) and started a church, school and publishing house.”

Wilson’s rising profile, Du Mez said, was boosted by a podcast following of homeschooling families and impressionable young men, endorsements from old-school patriarchs like Protestant preacher John Piper and attention from commentatorTucker Carlson and the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Meanwhile, Canon Press, the publishing house he founded, published “The Case for Christian Nationalism” while Wilson himselfhas criticized women’s voting rights as harmful to male-headed families.

“He has emerged as one of the primary spokespeople for a rightwing, highly patriarchal, politically incorrect Christianity that aligns quite closely with the MAGA agenda,” Du Mez said.

Wilson’s bombastic and irreverent approach are also characteristic of the manosphere, she said.

“He gives his listeners permission to set aside proprieties and civility, to say it like it is,” Du Mez said. “He’s famously curmudgeon-ly and combative, and that tone and mood are having a moment. He’s kind of the grandfather of this in Christian spaces.”

Wilson and his Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — a network which Hegseth’s Nashville-area church has since joined — have since launched a church and school in Washington, D.C.

“They want a position from which to shape the Trump administration and exert their influence,” Du Mez said.

Are TheoBros really separate from the manosphere?

As notions of Christianity-supported gender equality gained acceptance in the 1970s and 1980s, Ingersoll said, Piper and other conservative evangelicals formed the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in response. That led to the 1991 publication of “Reclaiming Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,” an influential book of essays co-edited by Piper that advocated complementarianism.

The principle is popular among conservative denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, which in recent years has disfellowshipped prominent churches that have installed women pastors.

“Men who want to feel important are gravitating toward evangelical churches because they’re being told, this is what God wants for you and you don’t have to do anything except be a man,” said Gregoire, the podcaster and former evangelical. “…. This is the only place in society where they can find that.”

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Ingersoll said that while selective Bible verses are often used to justify patriarchy, “I don’t think people read the Bible and then conclude how they should be. I think people are a certain way and then read the Bible in a way that fits with how they are…. Their perspective on how the world should be comes first.”

That’s why, she said, the TechBros and TheoBros have much in common — because they start from the same hierarchical worldview.

Ingersoll points to Vice President JD Vance as an illustration of the overlap. Vance’s political rise was funded in part by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal whose views on women have come under scrutiny. But the vice president’s religious views, she said, align with Catholic Integralism, a political ideology that blurs the lines between church and state and frowns on religious pluralism.

“You can see all those things coming together in him in an amalgam,” she said. “I don’t see the Christian patriarchal TheoBro world as something separate from the manosphere; I see it as part of it. They really are the same group of people.”

Du Mez also cited Jordan Peterson, a secular figure with a YouTube following of more than 8 million, as someone instrumental in the rise of the Christian manosphere. Peterson’smessages about masculinity have found an audience among young men seeking direction and prompted soul-searching among Christian podcasting pastors.

“He was held up as an example to say, we should be in those spaces,” Du Mez said. “Like, ‘he’s not one of us, but he’s saying real truths.’ So the overlap has been around a while.”

Many of these podcasting pastors draw the line at radically misogynist figures like Andrew Tate, the former social media influencer now under investigation in Romania on accusations including of human trafficking and organized crime. Tate has denied the claims. But while they see Tate as overtly abusive, crass and profane, Du Mez said, “it doesn’t mean their listeners are drawing the same line.”

Wilson and Webbon told USA TODAY that scripture provides safeguards against toxic behavior. The Bible, Wilson said, "requires husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and this is a standard that we hold the men to. If a husband veered into the kind of toxicity that is on display in some of those quarters, he would be disciplined by our church."

Webbon agreed, saying "abuses must be prevented by using scripture as our guide."

"The manosphrere is correct in much of their diagnoses of feminism, but they offer no biblical solutions," he said.

Reversal of Roe v. Wade 'just the start'

Gregoire said her research has found higher divorce rates and lower marital satisfaction among married couples with ideals of male hierarchy. Meanwhile, Sons of Patriarchy is a podcast focused entirely on stories of intimate partner abuse in Doug Wilson-influenced churches nationally and globally.

“What happens when biblical patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and a theology of authority and submission become the pillars of a movement?” the podcast’s tagline asks.

But some see broader social dangers at work as such ideology creeps into national politics.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an Albuquerque-based group that supports religious freedom for U.S. military members, said the misogyny of Christian nationalism “wants to replace our democracy with this barbaric version of Christianity, and an essential part of that is male dominance… It’s right out of Handmaid’s Tale.”

Consigning women to the home has socioeconomic effects, Ingersoll added, limiting their ability to act should a marriage turn sour or harmful and cutting them off from retirement benefits that reward a paid career.

“It’s talked about as a complementary, equal contribution to the life of the family, but in monetary terms it’s not recognized as that,” she said. “So women are at a real disadvantage when they’re older and have less Social Security because they didn’t work outside the home.”

Ingersoll cited Hegseth’s testimony when he was grilled as a nominee about his views about women in the military.

“Did he say women shouldn’t be in the military?” she said. “Technically not; he said women shouldn’t be in combat. But if you think about it, the way you get promoted to the highest ranks, the way you get the training to go on to other jobs like being a pilot — if women can’t be in combat they won’t be able to get to those positions because that’s the mechanism by which they get there.”

The America envisioned by the Christian manosphere, Ingersoll said, is “incredibly dangerous to the gains that women have made in terms of equality over the last half-century. Roe v. Wade overturning was just the start. These people want women having as many children as possible. They want to ban birth control.... It’s putting a certain segment of society back in charge of everything and sidelining everyone else.”

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RWW

09/09/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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08/21/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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AN 8 25

Pastor Douglas Wilson, who heads Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, isn't as well-known in the white evangelical world as the Rev. Franklin Graham, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins or ex-Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. But Wilson, now 72, is expanding his influenced in the GOP — especially among MAGA Republicans.

Never Trump conservative David French, in his August 14 column for the New York Times, lays out some reasons why Wilson is so disturbing and the ways in which he mirrors President Donald Trump.

From his praise of the 19th Century to his views on women, French warns, Wilson's views are extreme.

READ MORE:'That's how this ends': George Conway reveals 'the only way' to stop Trump's 'gangsterism'

"To simply call him patriarchal is too mild," French argues. "The body of churches he co-founded, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, includes pastors who believe that the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, should be repealed and replaced by something called 'household voting,' where it's no longer one person, one vote, but one household, one vote."

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The conservative Times columnist continues, "And who is the head of the household? The husband — a man who might consult with his wife, but would absolutely have the authority to make the final decision."

Despite Wilson's extreme views, French laments, more Republicans are openly embracing him — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"To say that a pastor like Wilson exists no more condemns all of evangelical Christianity — indeed, Wilson faces vigorous opposition in the evangelical church — than to say that the existence of radical imams condemns all of Islam," French argues. "A better question is to ask whether a person this cruel and extreme has real stature and influence — and whether his influence is on the wane or on the rise. As for Wilson, the answer is clear: His influence is growing."

READ MORE: 'Disgusting': MAGA erupts at Democratic governor over 'classless' remark about Trump 'bro'

French adds, "Hegseth made that plain this month when he posted his support for Wilson after Wilson reiterated to CNN his support for Christian nationalism.

One of the "many reasons for Wilson's rise," according to French, is "squarely rooted in politics."

"When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he inherited a recent Republican tradition: The Republican president isn't just a political leader — he's a de facto religious leader as well," the Never Trumper explains. "Leaders inspire imitators, and all too many people are open to pastors exhibiting the same values as the president they admire so much…. It's not that men like Wilson had no audience before Trump; it's that there is a new demand for Wilson's message because it matches the Trumpist spirit of this evangelical age. Trump is a profane, authoritarian man who delights in attacking his critics. Wilson is also a profane, authoritarian man who similarly delights in personal attacks."

READ MORE:'Severe pushback': House Republicans fear constituent revolt over divisive new proposal

*David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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RWW

08/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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rww 8 25

08/08/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is promoting a CNN interview with Christian nationalist Douglas Wilson in which Wilson asserts that women should not have the right to vote. Hegseth boosted the interview on social media, adding “All of Christ for All of Life.”

Notorious for publishing a book downplaying the evils of slavery, Wilson publicly stakes out extreme Christian nationalist positions. As People For the American Way President Svante Myrick noted in a recent column for The Hill, in the kind of Christian nation Wilson wants the U.S. to be, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other non-Christians would not be allowed to hold public office — not even liberal Christians. There would be no public expressions of other faiths allowed, because “the public spaces would belong to Christ.” He would like sodomy to be a felony in all 50 states and have the Apostles’ Creed inserted into the U.S. Constitution.

Hegseth, who seems intent on purging women from the top ranks of the military, belongs to a Wilson-affiliated church in Tennessee, and he has attended the new church Wilson has planted in DC to boost his influence over the conservative Christians who work in the Trump administration.

The Idaho-based Wilson already exerts influence nationally through the Canon Press publishing house, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of “classical” Christian academies, and a cadre of far-right “theobros” like Joel Webbon who promote a similar patriarchal Christian nationalist ideology.

Hegseth has begun hosting monthly Christian prayer services during working hours at the Pentagon. Brooks Potteiger, the pastor of his Wilson-affiliated church in Tennessee, was the main speaker. Joshua Haymes, another pastor at the church, has claimed that the Founding Fathers had not envisioned “mosques being erected” and publicly asserted, "The First Amendment was designed to ensure that every American can be any kind of CHRISTIAN he wants. It was not designed to ensure every American has the right to publicly worship demons. False religion can and should be banned from public life."

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AN 6 25

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.

READ MORE: Outrage grows over a single paragraph buried deep in Republicans' 'Big Beautiful Bill'

“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.”

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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.

READ MORE:'It's time to sound the alarm': GOP cuts to food assistance would hit Trump country hard

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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rww 05/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Doug Wilson has built a theocratic regime in Moscow, Idaho, where men rule and biblical teachings guide everything. Now he’s taking the model national, with a receptive crowd in the GOP.

If it seems as if there have been a lot of new federal investigations into Democrats and their allies lately, it’s not your imagination.

The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

Yesterday, during a televised meeting, President Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a farcical presentation about a “genocide” of white South Africans. But while the claim of a “white genocide” in South Africa is a racist fiction, the white nationalists who spent years pushing it celebrated Trump’s remarks.

Because President Trump deeply values accuracy and integrity in public conduct, he will be mortified to learn that a photo he brandished during his recent Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa perpetrated a massive deception. The photo was supposed to display dead white South African farmers—a Trump obsession—but instead, it showed body bags from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is producing humanitarian horrors.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Fox News on Thursday that he doesn’t “drink out of a straw” because “that’s what the women in my house do.”

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Pastor Doug Wilson, who preaches at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, is controversial even on the Religious Right.

Wilson, now 71, was greatly influenced by the late Calvinist R.J. Rushdoony and what is known as "dominion theology" — a belief that the United States' federal government should be operated under a system of strict Christian fundamentalist law. The pastor favors a system of government comparable to Shariah law as it exists in some Middle Eastern countries, but with fundamentalist Christianity rather than fundamentalist Sunni or Shiite Islam.

In the past, Wilson was considered a fringe figure even by far-right evangelicals. But in an article published on May 23, Politico's Ian Ward describes the "inroads" Wilson is making with the MAGA movement in 2025.

READ MORE:'Standing up for our democracy': Experts cheer as judge blocks Trump’s 'chilling' Harvard order

"For the past 50 years," Ward explains, "Wilson has been trying to convince America that it has made the wrong choice — that it should choose 'Christ,' as he put it, instead of chaos. But Wilson isn't a conventional evangelist. He is, by his own description, an

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outspoken proponent of Christian theocracy — the idea that American society, including its government, should be governed by a conservative interpretation of Biblical law. Wilson's body of work — made up of over 40 books, thousands of blog posts and hundreds of hours of sermons and podcast appearances — amounts to a comprehensive blueprint for a spiritual and political 'reformation' that would transform America into a kind of Christian republic."

Wilson also has a history of defending the Confederacy even though he isn't from the South. And he believes it was harmful to the United States when women were given the right to vote. According to Ward, Christ Church favors an "explicitly patriarchal style of evangelicalism" and bars women "from holding leadership roles."

Back in the 1970s, Ward notes, Wilson built a "sprawling evangelical empire" — which, according to the Politico reporter, continues to grow in 2025.

"In recent years, Wilson has been making inroads into the Republican establishment, aided by a growing audience for his work among allies of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement," Ward reports. "Last year alone, Wilson appeared as a guest on Tucker Carlson's podcast, spoke at an event organized by the MAGA operative Charlie Kirk, delivered a speech on Capitol Hill at an event hosted by the MAGA-aligned talent pipeline American Moment and was given a prominent timeslot at the National Conservatism Conference, the premier annual get-together for the nationalist-populist right in Washington."

READ MORE:Author details link between 'Christian nationalism' and MAGA’s 'smashing of the administrative state'

Ward adds, "In January, Wilson received his most significant political boost to date when Pete Hegseth — who is a member of a CREC church in Tennessee and publicly praised Wilson’s work — was confirmed as Trump's secretary of Defense."

According to Ward, "Wilson and his allies" are "moving quickly to cement their burgeoning influence in Washington."

"Later this summer, Christ Church will open its first outpost in the capital, led by Wilson and a rotating group of pastors from the CREC," Ward notes. "The new church has earned the support of powerful players in the MAGA movement: Its inaugural prayer services, planned for mid-July, will be held at an event space operated by the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Trump-aligned think tank run by former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and ex-Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. "

READ MORE:[Apocalypse Now: Extreme interpretation of Christian nationalism now guides Pentagon policy]

*Read Ian Ward's full article for Politico at this link.

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Hegseth, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Defense, has close ties to an Idaho-based Christian nationalist church that aims to turn America into a theocracy.

Hegseth is a member of a Tennessee congregation affiliated with Christ Church, a controversial congregation in Moscow, Idaho, that has become a leader in the movement to get more Christianity in the public sphere.

In an appearance last year on the Christ Church-connected streaming show “Crosspolitic,” Hegseth talked about how building up fundamentalist Christian education systems is important in what he sees as a “spiritual battle” with the secular world. He sees Christian students as foot soldiers in that war and refers to Christian schools as “boot camp.”

“We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize and as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations – and obviously all of this is metaphorical and all that good stuff,” he said on the show.

Hegseth did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.

Hegseth has spoken positively about Christ Church Pastor Doug Wilson’s writings

Christ Church is led by Pastor Doug Wilson, who founded the Calvinist group of churches called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC. CREC has congregations in nearly all 50 states and several foreign countries. Hegseth’s church is a member of CREC, and Hegseth has spoken positively of Wilson’s writings.

Wilson and his allies have a rigid patriarchal belief system and don’t believe in the separation of church and state. They support taking away the right to vote from most women, barring non-Christians from holding office and criminalizing the LGBTQ+ community.

Recently, Wilson has increased his influence nationally as he’s built a religious, educational and media empire. His Association of Classical Christian Schools has hundreds of fundamentalist schools around the country, and his publishing outfit Canon Press churns out dozens of titles a year as well as popular streaming shows that highlight unyielding socially conservative ideals.

In the recently released podcast, “Extremely American” (created by this reporter), Wilson says one of his goals is to get like-minded people into positions of influence. In an emailed response for this story, he said he’s closer to that post-election and that he supports Hegseth’s nomination, though he downplayed any influence he has on him.

“I was grateful for Trump’s win, and believe that it is much more likely that Christians with views similar to mine will receive positions in the new administration,” he said.

Hegseth nomination could threaten cohesion, diversity of U.S. military, experts say

That’s what worries Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, who is the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Weinstein says Hegseth, if confirmed as secretary of Defense, would threaten the cohesion of a religiously and racially diverse U.S. military.

“Pete Hegseth is a poster child for literally everything that would be the opposite of what you would want to have for someone who’s controlling the technologically most lethal organization in history of this country,” he said.

Weinstein sees Hegseth’s nomination as an example of the dangers of Project 2025, a 900-page policy paper written by far-right political activists. It lays out a plan to gut the federal government and install Christian nationalist ideals.

“Christian nationalism is an absolute fatal cancer metastasizing at light speed (for) the national security of this country,” he said. “It is a Christian version of the Taliban.”

Matthew D. Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said Hegseth is “one of the most extreme far right figures ever nominated to a cabinet post, at least in modern memory.”

Taylor said he’s broadly concerned about Christian nationalists, who tend to take a dim view of democracy, potentially having a lot of sway in this administration.

“I think we should expect a profound degradation of our democratic norms of the rule of law, and I think we are edging closer to a de facto Anglo Protestant establishment, of the kind where Anglo Protestant Christianity as the de facto official religion in the United States,” he said.

Hegseth faces some headwinds in his nomination process due to multiple marital sex scandals and the recent revelation that hepaid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in exchange for her not speaking about it. He denies he assaulted her but admits he paid her. He’s also gotten criticism for tattoos that are symbols of the Crusades and wrote a book titled “American Crusade,” where he derides Muslims.

Before becoming a TV personality, Hegseth led the conservative veterans group Concerned Veterans for America, which advocated for increased privatization of veterans’ health care.

He has also said that women should not be allowed to serve in combat roles in the military, and has complained about what he terms “woke” policies in the military.

Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com. Follow Idaho Capital Sun on Facebook and X.

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Montana Congressional Candidate Greg Gianforte Has Close Ties with Extremist Pastor

 Brian Tashman | May 19, 2017 2:02 pm

Yesterday, The Missoulian reported on Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte’s ties with white nationalist activists. The article also mentions Gianforte’s relationship with Douglas Wilson, the founder of the Association of Classical & Christian Schools. Gianforte sat on the board of Wilson’s organization and his family foundation has given it over $30,000.

But as the Huffington Post noted back during Gianforte’s unsuccessful campaign for governor, Wilson is notorious for his remarks about racial minorities and women.

The Republican candidate for governor of Montana has ties to Douglas Wilson, an Idaho pastor who once wrote, “one could argue that the black family has never been stronger than it was under slavery,” and maintains that women are “created to be responsive and dependent to a man.”

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Wilson and a co-author rewrote slavery’s violent history in a 1996 pamphlet called “Southern Slavery, As It Was.” They cite narratives that they claim show Southern slavery was “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care,” and note that “one could argue that the black family has never been stronger than it was under slavery.”

In the same document, they claim “feminists, in rebellion against God, invert the order of the home established by God. They do so in a way that seeks to rob women of their beauty in submission.”

Casey Sanchez of the Southern Poverty Law Center found that Wilson, a self-described “paleo-confederate,” lauded slavery in the South as a “life of plenty.”

Defending the Confederacy as “right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war,” Wilson has distinguished himself from neo-Confederates in this way: “I would define a neo-Confederate as someone who thinks we are still fighting that war. Instead, I would say we’re fighting in a long war, and that [the Civil War] was one battle that we lost.”

He also declared his support for “execution for adultery” and the “exile” of “some homosexuals,” claiming that “sodomy is worse than slavery.”

On women and sexual violence, Wilson said that women who refuse to walk with a male escort are complicit in their own rapes: “One consequence of rejecting the protection of good men is that you are opening yourself up to the predations of bad men.”

He also wrote:

A final aspect of rape that should be briefly mentioned is perhaps closer to home. Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual “bondage and submission games,” along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the “soon to be made willing” heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.

True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not “no authority,” but an authority which devours.

Rather than reject a right-wing activist propagating such extreme views on slavery, women, and homosexuality, Gianforte seems content with praising and funding his endeavors.

Tags: Douglas WilsonGreg Gianforte

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