Trump's Crusaders: Christian Nationalists Are Gaining a Solid Foothold in Washington
SOURCE:Spiegel International
U.S. President Donald Trump has opened the doors of power to far-right Christian nationalists. Their goal: an American theocracy. The separation of church and state in America is at risk.
God’s friendly army is up early on this Sunday morning in Washington. Long before services begin, around 150 people begin crowding into the first floor of a crimson-colored residential building on Pennsylvania Avenue, not even a 10-minute walk from the U.S. Capitol.
Christ Church D.C., the evangelical church being inaugurated on this very day, is extremely close to the centers of power. Which is why it’s not all that surprising when Pete Hegseth, his family and his secret service detail suddenly join the faithful.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 40/2025 (September 26th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.
Hegseth is the U.S. secretary of defense, and among the things he seeks to defend in that capacity is the true faith. His body is covered with crusader tattoos. And in his 2020 book "American Crusade,” he writes: "Our American crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”
On this day in July, he is the only cabinet member to attend services here. But he is just one of many in U.S. President Donald Trump’s inner circle who is deeply involved in the world of extremist Christians and shares a single goal: to bring America under biblical rule.
The Trump Bible is selling like hotcakes.
Foto: Ben Curtis / AP
Draining the Swamp
The attendees of this very first church service are mostly young, almost exclusively white and tend to have big families. They are also extremely polite, warmly greeting guests in their midst as long as they adhere to a couple of rules ("no photos, no recordings”), while generously ignoring the two demonstrators whose aspersions ("We curse you!”) can only barely be heard in this improvised, whitewashed prayer room with its two oversized American flags. And they nod devoutly when pastor Jared Longshore, dressed in a blue suitcoat and a blue-and-yellow tie, prophecies a kind of turning point.
His church, he intones, will do what is necessary to save Washington from those who prefer listening to themselves than to the all-powerful God. A pastor who spoke previously already avowed that they would attack feminism and homosexuality in this sinful city. Now, Longshore says: "We think that worship is warfare – and we mean that literally.” Washington has the choice, he says, "Christ or chaos.” The city, he insists, is a swamp, and Christ Church has come to drain it.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Foto: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
There is no shortage of churches in the U.S. capital city, with around 800 places of worship available to the just over 700,000 residents, seemingly one on almost every street corner, frequently hardly distinguishable from the surrounding houses. But Christ Church – the most recent addition and part of the global network known as the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – is a unique place in many respects.
Muslims Should Self-Deport
Its founder, a gray-bearded preacher named Douglas Wilson, has been regarded for decades as an extremist eccentric, even among staunchly conservative evangelicals. Wilson regularly rails against gender equality, writing in one of his numerous screeds: "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”
Wilson insists that America is being swamped by non-protestants, a development he sees as a sacrilege. He wants to see practicing Muslims banned from holding public office and believes that some should be encouraged "to voluntarily deport themselves,” as he recently said in a video. He has also posited that slavery was not universally bad and that it led to "a genuine affection between the races.” Wilson does not believe that the U.S. Civil War, which came to an end in 1865, has been entirely resolved.
From Idaho, Wilson occasionally films religious clips showing him with a cigar in his mouth and a flamethrower in his arms torching Disney characters and other things he sees as symbols of a decadent lifestyle. And he isn’t shy about proclaiming his ultimate goal: An "American theocracy” in which biblical law applies. To the exclusion of all else.
Christ Church founder Douglas Wilson in Idaho.
Foto: Geoff Crimmins / DER SPIEGEL
Even just a few years ago, such drivel was widely seen as the fever dream of a handful of Christian crazies, but there has been a notable tectonic shift in Trump’s America. Without having significantly modified even a single one of his views, Douglas Wilson has gone from being a fringe maverick to the idol of many Christian nationalists – a political and religious movement on the far right which believes that America was made exclusively by and for protestant Christians.
For the last year or so, Wilson has been a frequent star guest behind podiums, on podcasts and at conferences in the Trump cosmos. As such, the establishment of a Wilson church just around the corner from the Capitol is more than just an act of Christian devotion. It is a declaration of war – and one of many indications for just how far religious fundamentalists have advanced toward the centers of power in the U.S. under Donald Trump.
Odd Interpretations of the Bible
Though the 47th U.S. president isn’t exactly known for his devotion to God, he has brought a large number of his "wonderful Christians,” as he puts it, into the inner circles of power. They can be found holding ministerial portfolios, leading federal agencies, running embassies and wearing judicial robes – and they have in many instances watered down the Constitutionally enshrined principle of separation of church and state.
Yet Trump’s Christians are far from run-of-the mill believers. Just like Pentagon chief Hegseth, many of them profess a faith according to which the Bible and only the Bible should serve as the exclusive standard for all spiritual and worldly affairs. Christian nationalists, though, bend the Holy Scriptures to their liking, claiming that it justifies misogyny, homophobia, blatant racism and notions of white supremacy.
Praying for Trump in Savannah, Georgia, in September 2024.
Foto: Evan Vucci / AP
Many MAGA leaders have become possessed by the fundamentalist Christian spirit, including the influencer Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah in mid-September. Until his death, he had intoxicated countless young Americans with his right-wing religious and far-right views.
In his recent speech before around 90,000 people at Kirk’s memorial in Arizona, Trump said: "We want to bring God back into our beautiful USA like never before.” The gathering felt like an evangelical recruiting event, with members of Trump’s government announcing they would aggressively go after the "leftist extremists” they have decided were behind the murder. "We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil,” proclaimed his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
"A dangerous, authoritarian political theology has taken control of one of our two political parties,” warns religion scholar Robert Jones, founder of the NGO Public Religion Research Institute in Washington. Trump’s government, he says, is on a "militant mission” to transform the country into a "white, Christian America.” The question, he adds, is whether the president fully grasps the powers he has unleashed in his second term in the White House.
The idea of transforming the U.S. into a God-fearing nation is as old as the New World itself. Still today, Christian nationalists in the U.S. invoke a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493. The Christian religion, the order noted, was to be "everywhere increased and spread” and, in service of that mission, the pope called for "barbarous nations to be overthrown and brought to the faith.” Armed with the pope’s blessing, devout European settlers set out in God’s name, conquering terra incognita and slaughtering indigenous peoples.
Trump the Savior
But the dream of a continent under exclusive control of biblical law remained unattainable, particularly after the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, a document which expressly forbids the establishment of an official state religion.
There have likewise been no indications in recent history that a theocracy could ever become reality on American soil. Whereas 90 percent of U.S. citizens identified as Christians in the early 1990s, that number had dropped 30 years later to just over 60 percent.
Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute asked Americans in a survey whether the government should declare the U.S. as a purely Christian nation, that true Americans are Christians and that U.S. laws should be based on biblical values. Only 30 percent of respondents completely or largely agreed. Among Republicans, however, 53 percent agreed and among white protestants, it was 65 percent. And in no way has the latter group abandoned its Old Testament dreams. Indeed, they anointed as their messiah a man prone to adultery, avarice, deceit and envy and who regularly disregards half of the Ten Commandments: Donald Trump.
Fighting the "Demon-crats”
Trump is "God’s chaos candidate” wrote Texan televangelist Lance Wallnau, one of the country’s best-networked evangelicals, back in 2016 – a man anointed by the Almighty for a "special purpose.” Many Christian nationalists initially had their doubts, rooted in concerns about the overt worldliness of the cursing, self-aggrandizing real estate magnate from New York. But the alternative – the chimera of a uniformly "woke” world hostile to men and to whites – was apparently even more concerning. Ultimately, 77 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Eight years later, it was 81 percent.
Today, numerous Trump followers are convinced that he was sent to destroy "demon-crats” and their evil, liberal worldview.
“Our American crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
When the multi-billionaire began warming up for a second term, a number of think tanks began working in the background to develop specific plans for Trump 2.0, an effort to avoid the chaos that characterized his first term. Under the leadership of the nationalist Heritage Foundation, "Project 2025” emerged, a blueprint for an authoritarian redesign of the United States into an isolated, proto-American nation rooted in the Bible.
The Christian nationalists among the "Project 2025” authors – many in number – imagined a country full of evangelical Christian families led by a strong patriarch. A country where abortion and homosexuality are shunned. A country that deports adherents to other religions or at least treats them like second-class citizens. A country where public schools are replaced by Christian schools that no longer teach such misguided notions like climate change, racism, diversity or evolution. In short: a country where science is replaced by faith, as though the Enlightenment never took place.
Radicalism, Not Faith
"According to these ideas, all sectors of society are to be brought under God’s control,” says historian and book author Kristin Kobes Du Mez. That doesn’t just apply to religion, she notes, but also to politics, education, the economy, the family, media and the arts.
It sounds a lot more like radicalism than like faith. It is the attempt to turn the clock back by several decades, if not centuries – back to a time when men were still men and conflicts were solved with faith in God and a revolver. Jesus and Jesse James. The resuscitation of a quintessentially American myth. An overtly far-right response to left-wing identity politics seen as overly feminine and moralizing. And, ultimately, it is an attempt to dismantle the rule of law.
Trump claims that he has nothing to do with "Project 2025.” But following his election, he laid the groundwork for almost every single one of the ideas outlined in the project. When viewed through the lens of Christian fundamentalism, the slew of executive orders he signed early in his term, the raids on migrants, the attacks on schools and universities, the shifting of wealth to the already rich, the vengeance unleashed on his political opponents: None of that has been by chance. Rather, it serves the systematic creation of a God-fearing nation – or at least what the faithful believe such a nation to be.
God’s Enforcer
Does he himself even believe in what he is doing? Or is the role of religious leader just another mask in Donald Trump’s seemingly endless collection?
He likely never would have won the election without the votes of the Bible fanatics. Trump was almost forced to offer his services to them as God’s enforcer. In a speech to National Religious Broadcasters in February 2024, Trump said that Christianity was vital to the country and pledged that once in office, he would push "pro-God” policies.
Even long before MAGA, Trump found his way to a kind of faith in God. A quarter century ago, he met the televangelist Paula White, who is now his official "spiritual adviser.” She believes in the "prosperity gospel,” which holds that wealthy people like Trump are favored by God. She also occasionally speaks in tongues and prays for the miscarriage "of all Satanic pregnancies.” She is said to have a significant influence on Trump.
Celebrating the National Day of Prayer at the White House on May 1.
He has increasingly taken to posing on digital media as a sacred figure and the only one able to save America from ruin. And if it turns a profit, all the better: His "God Bless the USA” Bible - $60 per copy – is selling like hotcakes.
Ever since he was grazed, but not seriously injured, by an assassin’s bullet during a July 2024 campaign appearance in Pennsylvania, Trump seems convinced that he is a new messiah. His self-glorification came to a head during his inauguration speech in January: "My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Mere charade? Or megalomania? Perhaps both.
Faith at the Top
The speed with which Trump has since been perforating the wall between church and state is breathtaking. One of the very first executive orders the 47th president signed created the White House Faith Office, tasked with "combating anti-Semitic, anti-Christian bias.” Its leader: his spiritual adviser Paula White. When Trump hosted 60 business leaders and CEOs who donate to faith-based charities in the White House in July, White beamed: "President Trump is not only making America affordable, prosperous and strong again – he is making our country faith-centered again.”
During a National Prayer Breakfast in February, Trump announced that he would empower the Justice Department to prosecute "anti-Christian violence and vandalism” to the full extent of the law.
“My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again."
U.S. President Donald Trump
More recently, he has introduced new policies allowing prayer and even missionizing at federal agencies. Federal workers, according to the memorandum, "may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs.” Christianity is not explicitly mentioned in the memorandum, perhaps a nod to the Constitution. But it’s a safe bet that the move is not intended to boost Islam – particularly since Trump has long since installed zealous Christians wherever possible.
Including in the highest echelons of government. As in his first term, the president appointed Russell Vought to head up the White House Budget Office. Vought is one of the architects of "Project 2025” and a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist. Among his most urgent concerns is the ongoing oppression of Americans by "climate change extremists” and "woke militants.”
Crossover with Jewish Settlers
Trump sent another Christian nationalist, the former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, to Jerusalem as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Many evangelical Christians maintain financial and political ties to radical Jewish settlers in the West Bank – rooted in the belief that the second coming of Jesus Christ can only take place once all Jews have returned to the Holy Land.
![Mike Huckabee is Trump's ambassador to Israel. He once said "there's really no such thing as a Palestinian."](https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/7f208fde-8faf-40ee-82ff-bd0366d45527_w488_r1.5_fpx30_fpy55.01.jpg "Mike Huckabee is Trump's ambassador to Israel. He once said "there's really no such thing as a Palestinian."")
Mike Huckabee is Trump's ambassador to Israel. He once said "there's really no such thing as a Palestinian."
Foto: Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP
Huckabee has thus far not found it necessary to condemn Israel’s alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, he has energetically denied that there is a hunger crisis in Gaza. It is a position consistent with his claim many years ago that "there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
A friend of Huckabee’s – and of Trump’s – is the evangelical businessman Johnnie Moore, who identifies as a Christian Zionist. He runs a Christian advertising agency, which counts Ark Encounter in Kentucky among its clients, a fundamentalist Christian amusement park in the belly of a 155-meter-long Noah’s Ark – allegedly true to the original.
Since June, Moore has also been the head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The private U.S. organization, which works closely with the Israeli army, has been tasked with supplying Palestinians in the devastated region with the basics of survival. More than 850 people have since died near the GHF’s four distribution centers while waiting for food handouts, most of them killed by Israeli army gunfire, leading a top UN official to comment that the GHF’s distribution scheme is a "sadistic death trap.”
Defense Minister of Faith
One of the most zealous Christian fanatics in Trump’s orbit is "secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, who can pray with those of the same faith now that his church has opened up a new place of worship in Washington. Just recently, Hegseth shared a video on X in which his "mentor” Douglas Wilson, as Hegseth refers to him, calls for the abolishing of women’s right to vote. Hegseth once had his evangelical home pastor from Tennessee flown to Washington to conduct services at the Pentagon.
A former moderator for Fox News, Hegseth harbors a certain enthusiasm for "crusaders.” His chiseled body, which he used to frequently put on display, is decorated with tattoos of an AR-15 assault rifle, two crossed muskets, a Jerusalem Cross and the Latin saying "Deus vult,” (God wills it), which was used as a rallying cry for crusaders in the Middle Ages.
The rather odd mixture of Catholic symbolism with evangelical faith is not necessarily an accident. Given the shrinking number of Christians in the U.S., efforts have been afoot for decades to bridge the theological-ideological gaps between the two creeds. In 1994, for example, the ecumenical paper "Evangelicals and Catholics Together” attracted widespread attention. Scholars believe that the efforts have recently begun to bear fruit. "We are seeing more and more unity across the various Christian movements,” says Kobes Du Mez, the historian. "They are all gathering around a common cause.”
The Roll of JD Vance
One of the most interesting figures in this respect is Vice President JD Vance, a former atheist who discovered Catholicism in 2019 but who also maintains close ties with the ultra-nationalist protestant camp.
During the 2024 campaign, for example, one of the most popular movements within the Christian-nationalist camp – and not just in the U.S. – the New Apostolic Reformation, held so-called Courage Tours across the country, a kind of political-religious traveling circus of self-proclaimed prophets and apostles who encourage their audiences to join "God’s army” and "prepare for war.” In Monroeville, Pennsylvania, the evangelical initiators welcomed a special guest on the eve of the election: JD Vance.
JD Vance with his wife kneel in prayer at St. Peter's Basilica.
Not everyone on Trump’s team flirts so openly with Christian-nationalist ideology. But it is notable the degree to which other Republican leaders put their faith on display. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, for example, third in line to the presidency, says he draws his "worldview” from the Bible. He has also had himself photographed while kneeling in prayer with fellow Republicans in the Capitol.
In front of his office is a seemingly insignificant flag showing a green pine tree on a white background with the words: "AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN.” It initially appeared during the Revolutionary War, but it is now used as an emblem by Christian nationalists. Samuel Alito, the controversial Supreme Court justice who is opposed to abortion and marriage equality, flew the flag in front of his home in 2023.
In June, meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose job description includes ensuring the separation of church and state in the U.S., held the first session of the Religious Liberty Commission at the privately owned Museum of the Bible. According to the New York Times, the museum has become "a safe space for Christian nationalists.”
It was the same site where Trump announced the America Prays initiative in early September, calling on all of his compatriots to join in prayer so that the nation might be strong and prosperous for its 250th anniversary next year. At the same time, he promised to ensure a "right to pray” in public schools. Presumably all part of his oft-discussed plan for "getting to heaven.”
"Ministry of Repentance and Holiness"
Just how openly Trump’s Republican followers now move between the different world’s was on full display at the Washington Hilton in late June. For an entire week, the windowless conference rooms were packed with all manner of Jesus freaks, Trump acolytes, vendors, office holders, dignitaries and healers. Hats bearing the slogan "Jesus Is My Savior, Trump Is My President” proved extremely popular at one stand. Right next door, the self-proclaimed "Ministry of Repentance and Holiness” spoke of deaf people who could hear again and of women giving birth without a womb. One floor down, a pastor told his flock: "We aren’t Democrats, we are Biblecrats.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Foto: CNP / ADM / Capital Pictures / picture alliance
This bizarre carnival of credulity was hosted by the arch-conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition, which was founded in 2009 as a reaction to the purported Beelzebub Barack Obama and now serves as a bridge between far-right Republicans and evangelicals. The opening remarks noted soberly: "The devil works overtime to regain lost ground. Therefore, it is critical for us to … mobilize more Christians than ever before.”
Among those present at the event: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, Trump’s former press spokesman, representatives from the White House Faith Office and many others who have been holding the reins of power in Washington since January.
An Anti-Democratic Movement
The message that Christian nationalists are spreading with increasing self-assurance, says Robert Jones, the religion scholar, is "essentially incompatible with democracy.” Not just because the ideology glorifies white, heterosexual men as God-given rulers. Other convictions held by the Bible fanatics are also irreconcilable with a free society – including the marginalization of entire societal and religious groups and the denial of racism and homophobia.
Of particular concern to Jones is the fact that political conflicts in Trump’s America are no longer being carried out as a civilized competition of ideas, but "as an apocalyptic battle between good and evil.” That can lead to a desire to not just defeat one’s political rivals in the voting booth. "Instead, they should be jailed, exiled or even killed,” says Jones, whose book "White Too Long” about racism in Christian-nationalist circles was banned from the U.S. Naval Academy at the Pentagon’s behest.
And even if the right-wing-Christian soothsayers continually insist that their bellicose invoking of war and battles refers purely to a spiritual fight, Jones says: "Christian nationalists are twice as likely as other Americans to believe political violence may be justified in our current circumstances.”
The Christian Storming of the Capitol
Where that can lead became apparent to all on January 6, 2021, when a mob, driven by the conviction that Trump had been cheated out of his election victory, stormed the Capitol in Washington. The horde included a number of unrestrained individuals who kneeled down before the march to pray for God’s support before then, with flags flying – including the "Appeal to Heaven” flag – begin hunting down Trump’s opponents.
Christian Trump fans at the Capitol in January 2021.
Foto: Brent Stirton / Getty Images
In the delusional world of the apocalypticists, it was a kind of exorcism. In reality, however, it was the first transition of power in U.S. history that was accompanied by violence. It is astounding that, despite the significant amount of evidence indicating that the storming of the Capitol was greatly influenced and orchestrated by fanatic Christians, this aspect was largely ignored in the official investigation report. Earlier this year, Trump pardoned the vast majority of the participants.
Vance Luther B., a father of five, also apparently thought he was doing God’s will when he shot and killed a Democratic lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota in June. The attack had apparently been conceived as the first strike in a series of attacks. Investigators would later discover that the 57-year-old had a list including the names of dozens of possible victims.
As would later become clear, Vance Luther B. studied at a Bible college, the evangelical founder of which said that every Christian should say at least one "violent prayer” each day. Later, the man spent some time as a guest preacher in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he denounced abortion and homosexuality. Following the murders in Minnesota, he texted his children: "Dad went to war last night.”
The double-murder was treated as little more than a sidenote by Trump and his followers. There was no outcry, no speech. When he was asked why he didn’t order that flags at federal institutions be flown at half-staff, the U.S. president responded: "The who?” Three months later, by contrast, after right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk was gunned down in a similarly tragic manner, Trump was at the forefront of the movement effectively sanctifying the "martyr” who consistently used his pulpit to rail against foreigners, women and queers.
God wills it?
The memorial service for Charlie Kirk in Arizona.
Foto: John Locher / AP / dpa
It requires an extremely unconventional reading of the Bible to justify the demands – and actions – of the predominantly white Christian nationalists in Trump’s religiously inflamed America. Which is why some scholars have begun speaking of a "pseudo-Christianity” that is cloaking an extremist worldview with a veneer of faith.
Theocratic Laboratory
In Trump’s American, however, this form of exclusionary piety is on the rise. Even as less extremist denominations have been encountering difficulties when it comes to filling their churches on Sunday, many of the more nationalist places of worship do not have this problem. That can perhaps best be seen around 4,000 kilometers west of Washington, D.C., in the hinterlands of Idaho, where the flamethrowing preacher Douglas Wilson has already made great strides down the path of an American theocracy.
Moscow, Idaho, is an orderly, artsy town full of charming wood houses reminiscent of a setting for the cult series "The Waltons.” The 25,000-person college town lies on the edge of the Palouse, a vast region of gently rolling hills in northwestern U.S. that was once prairie but is now covered by wheat fields. It is punctuated only by Moscow Mountain, elevation 1,500 meters (4,900 feet), and a handful of tiny towns. In this region of Idaho, Moscow is the largest. The river flowing through the center of town is called Paradise Creek.
A farmer's market in Moscow, Idaho.
Foto: Geoff Crimmins / DER SPIEGEL
On a Sunday in July, the northeastern edge of town is buzzing with activity. Hundreds of people – many of them young families with three, four, five children, or even more – make their way across a vast parking lot toward a simple brick church. Though sizeable, the building cannot accommodate all the worshippers, which is why three services are scheduled for this morning. Right next to the church, among piles of sand, wooden pallets and bricks, are earth movers, cement mixers and the skeleton of a large building complete with a pillared gate. A sign explains that this is to become the heart of a huge new school campus complete with manicured grass and a fountain. A football field with bleachers is already finished. A stranger wandering around the site is asked by an extremely friendly security guard if he needs any assistance. The guard is drinking out of a travel mug decorated with a Trump sticker and the slogan "Best Dad Ever.”
From the Cradle to the Grave
This is the Logos construction site, an expansion of what some call "Doug Wilson’s Empire” – which is hardly an exaggeration. The former soldier has been busy in the 50 years he has been living here. The Christ Church leader has founded fully five churches in Moscow and the surrounding area, with three more in the planning phase. In total, the umbrella organization Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches operates around 160 places of worship in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia.
Here in Idaho, Wilson has also started a Christian school, a Christian college and a Christian publishing house, through which he has released countless theological treatises, children’s books and prayer collections. He also spreads his message through his own streaming service, his own podcast and his own YouTube channel. His Christ Church followers, he calls them "Kirkers,” own galleries, theaters, office buildings, pubs, restaurants and markets.
For those inclined to do so, it is possible in Moscow to remain in the Christ Church world from the cradle to the grave.
The Christ Church construction project on the outskirts of Moscow.
Foto: Geoff Crimmins / DER SPIEGEL
And many people do, says Wilson, sitting down for an interview in his downtown office after completing the trio of church services. Moscow is now home to 3,000 Kirkers, he says, many of them having "fled oppressive, tyrannical dictates” of U.S. states under Democratic leadership. To him, to Moscow, where "the essential elements of a genuine Christian community” are present. It is, he says, an "experiment,” currently undergoing beta testing in Idaho preparatory to perhaps replicating it later on a far larger scale. Wilson says he is happy with the results so far. "God is kind.”
Schools as "Munitions Factories”
The way he is sitting there in his jeans and denim shirt, in his tiny office packed full of books and a portrait of John Knox, the Scottish founder of the Presbyterian Church, on the wall alongside a Gary Larson cartoon calendar, Wilson looks nothing like the Bible freaks one knows from his videos. They are admittedly "polemic, and certainly combative,” says the 72-year-old almost shyly.
He seems amazed himself by the fact that he is suddenly the center of attention and that his ideas have begun receiving widespread acceptance. He knows who he has to thank for that development: "Trump’s presidency for me is like Christmas every morning.” Not, he hastens to add, that he likes everything that Trump does. Still, he adds: "He’s like chemotherapy. It’s toxic, but it kills the cancer before it kills you.”
If the trend continues, he says, then the one religion, secularism, really will be replaced by a better one – his. "Protestant Christianity is in our DNA,” Wilson says. Because of that, he insists, the U.S. must once again be largely populated by Protestants and perhaps "a handful of Catholics and a handful of Jews.” Just like it used to be, maybe. The rest, he believes, should convert or leave.
“Trump is like chemotherapy. It’s toxic, but it kills the cancer before it kills you.”
Douglas Wilson, Christ Church founder
Wilson has patience. And through the Association of Classical Christian Schools, of which he is a co-founder, he has access to over 500 teaching institutions across the country. He refers to them as "munitions factories.” They are his most promising bet for the future. In Moscow, more than every third child receives a Christian upbringing. Something is taking root. Violence, he insists, is unnecessary and he rejects it – except "defensively.”
A City Gripped by Fear
Listening to Wilson, it is almost possible to believe that everything is proceeding along a peaceful and – dare one say? – evolutionary path. If, that is, there weren’t people on the other side like Sarah Bader, who says: "Moscow has fallen. Wilson has crippled this city.” Bader was herself once a student in Christ Church’s "munitions factory” – until she was suspended at age 13 for criticizing its whitewashing of slavery. She subsequently broke with her parents and left Moscow, but she has since returned to warn against what she calls Wilson’s "extremist cult.”
![Pastor Douglas Wilson in his office: "Trump’s presidency for me is like Christmas every morning.”](https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/38964810-51ea-4849-b6d3-301bd50240b3_w488_r0.6666666666666666_fpx55.01_fpy70.jpg "Pastor Douglas Wilson in his office: "Trump’s presidency for me is like Christmas every morning.”")
Pastor Douglas Wilson in his office: "Trump’s presidency for me is like Christmas every morning.”
Foto: Geoff Crimmins / DER SPIEGEL
Bader has a lot to say over a cup of coffee about how Kirkers have gradually bought up much of the Moscow city center. About shop owners being kicked out after criticizing the church or for organizing a fundraising dinner for a food bank run by the queer community. About how most now prefer to remain silent in an effort to ward off a boycott by the Christian zealots. About how Moscow, this erstwhile bastion of tolerance – an island in conservative Idaho – is in the process of capitulating to the fundamentalists.
In her podcast "Sons of Patriarchy,” Bader has leveled serious accusations against the Christ Church, including multiple instances of mistreatment and abuse of women, which Wilson denies. Bader says she has received the occasional anonymous threat as a result. When she and others planned once to broadcast the podcast live in Moscow, the site cancelled their reservation shortly before the event, she says. "This city is afraid,” says Sarah Bader.
And it is indeed difficult to find someone in Moscow who is willing to speak openly. One shop owner only agreed to talk on the condition that her name not be used. Tears welling in her eyes, she says she is a married lesbian and that it breaks her heard to see the queer children of Kirkers in Moscow forced to deny their own identities. And yet, she says, "it is not a contradiction to be Christian and lesbian.” She, too, says she has been the target of intimidation.
On one occasion, she put up a page from a 1950s comic book on her window showing Superman surrounded by teenagers. The superhero says: "Remember boys and girls, just like your school, your country is also made up of Americans with different skin colors, religions and origins.” Moscow’s Kirkers were not impressed.
For the religious fanatics, the "S” on Superhero’s chest has likely stood for Satan ever since.
