A group of Christian nationalist fanboys gathered in an Idaho university church recently to fantasize about building a new American theocratic world order, which includes no LGBTQ+ rights, no divorce, and no voting rights for married women in an inevitably white Christian ethno-state.
Among those conjuring the all-Christian USA, run exclusively by men (save for chaste widows and victims of adultery): so-called Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s minister and mentor, Doug Wilson.
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Wilson was joined by Toby Sumpter, a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson leads the congregation, and Pastor Jared Longshore, dean at New Saint Andrews College, a school run by Christ Church. They laid out their vision for America’s future at a town hall on the University of Idaho campus, Religion News Service reports.
Hegseth is a member of Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a Calvinist denomination founded by the Christian nationalist. The former Fox News host has championed Wilson’s writings and teachings, even imposing those views on servicemembers shortly after taking over the Defense Department, when he invited Wilson to proselytize at the Pentagon.
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Wilson is a staunch proponent of biblical patriarchy, in which wives submit to their husbands, parents inflict painful discipline on children, and boys are taught the “theology of fist fighting.” He is not opposed to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Wilson wants “to take over the world for Christ,” Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, told The Guardian.
At the poorly attended Idaho event, Wilson talked about how his Moscow church is a laboratory for his vision to bring The Handmaid’s Tale to life, and where there’s no such thing as Obergefell v. Hodges. He and his congregants are building a “working prototype,” he said.
It’s been done before, the three men agreed, pointing out that some of the original 13 colonies established state churches at their founding. The men overlooked the fact that the U.S. Constitution prevents governments from creating an official church or favoring one religion over another.
Privacy, including a woman’s right to an abortion and sexual freedoms, would disappear as a legal concept in Wilson’s new world order. What Biblical law defines as sinful behavior, the pastors said, would be subject to public punishment.
Along with marriage equality, the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote would be overturned. Adultery would carry legal penalties.
“We’re living in the nuclear fallout of the destruction of the American family,” Wilson’s colleague Toby Sumpter said.
Wilson’s influence can be seen in his mentee’s overtly religious pronouncements as Hegseth prosecutes the war in Iran, in which he has repeatedly invoked “God’s almighty providence” and prayed for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday,” Hegseth said of the pilot rescued by Special Operations Forces over Easter weekend. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
It was another prayer on March 25 at the Pentagon that would cause Pope Leo to break his silence on the administration’s invocation of Christ in their unprovoked war on Iran: Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
On Palm Sunday, Leo reminded his flock that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.
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