"Trump is an atheist and a blasphemer, but he is also chemotherapy for America"

Walking down Main Street in Mosco, Idaho, a remote college town I've traveled a day and a half to in hopes of finding the spiritual headquarters of America's growing Christian nationalist movement, I begin to wonder if I've come to the wrong place.

In the city center, where Pastor Doug Wilson helped plant the seeds of an evangelical church decades ago that now counts Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsett and a string of Donald Trump appointees among its supporters, I see more than one transgender flag, an ad for what appears to be a local drag night, and a coffee shop with a “Black Lives Matter” sign in the window.

I mention this discrepancy to Wilson, a white-bearded man, as he settles into a bar stool in the gastropub he has chosen for our meeting. He smiles and shrugs, as if to say that the provocations these days come from further afield. The 72-year-old’s association with Hegseth has brought him national recognition and drawn condemnation from Christians across the political spectrum.

Sensing an opportunity for an ecumenical appearance, Wilson did not shy away from the public eye. In interviews over the past few months, he has defended his position that in an ideal society, married women should not vote - but rather vote through their husbands, as a household - called for the restoration of anti-sodomy laws, and affirmed that the Bible condones slavery, even though it supports its abolition.

He also did not diminish his newfound influence in the corridors of power.

Until recently, Wilson was, by his own description, “under embargo” in the mainstream evangelical world. Now a number of high-ranking U.S. officials are affiliated with his denomination, including Hegsett, who joined it in Tennessee. Trump associates attend services at Wilson’s new Washington outpost of Christ Church—its “Babylon Mission”—just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. American Moment, an organization that vets young conservatives for White House jobs, is run by a member of his congregation.

The Christian Nationalist infiltration of the administration “gave us a great opportunity to set the progressive agenda back half a century,” Wilson says. His role in this, he adds, is more pastoral than political. “I don’t like the word influencer, but that would be closer to who I am.”

Before I can start asking questions, a waitress comes over to take my order. Somewhat unexpectedly for a man who has devoted an entire book to denouncing “dietary Pharisees,” those who needlessly cut out gluten or fat, Wilson orders a Caesar salad with grilled chicken—and a small one at that. I opt for fish tacos and fries.

We meet just after noon, and Wilson surprises me again by choosing a Californian apple brandy from a chalkboard with a dozen draft options. Already nervous that a quick flick through the Bible in my hotel room might not have prepared me enough to survive a discussion of Scripture, and worried that alcohol might put me at an even greater disadvantage, I opt for a Diet Coke.

This war is acceptable to me if it ends in a few weeks. I don't think we have anything to gain from trying to build states in the Middle East.

Having listened to hours of Wilson podcasts and sermons on the drive to Moscow, I decide not to waste time asking him to defend his belief that the United States should be a theocracy, in which the government would accept the Apostles' Creed and punish adultery. This view, he claims, stems from his biblical absolutism, and I shy away from debates about biblical interpretation.

Instead, I wonder why he thinks his message has a wider resonance now - after half a century spent in Moscow, where he studied philosophy and classical literature, embraced Calvinism and built a small network of churches and schools, but ended up still "preaching to those who did not need to be persuaded".

“I’ve watched regression after regression my entire adult life,” says Wilson, who sees the sexual revolution and postwar “open secularism” as the drivers of the decline of modern America. “People say, ‘It can’t get much worse than this,’ … and then, lo and behold, it gets worse.”

The list of what, in Wilson’s view, counts as above is familiar to anyone who has spent time in the warmer waters of the American right: the Covid lockdowns, the Black Lives Matter protests, the Drag Queen Story Hour, the Supreme Court justice who said she couldn’t define the word woman because “she’s not a biologist.” These were the moments, he says, when a certain kind of “normal” American, who would once have considered him extreme, began to suspect that he might have been right when he argued that America’s Christian heritage was being squandered.

Our food arrives, my colorful tacos looking more tempting than the two-toned salad. Wilson politely asks if I mind saying a prayer before eating. I nod, listen, and mutter an unconvincing “amen.”

As we begin to eat, I feel encouraged to move on to the Trump question. I wonder how Wilson ended up endorsing a man no one would describe as a devout servant of God.

Wilson reveals that he was a latecomer to Trump. In 2016, he wrote the name of Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a Reformed evangelical, on his ballot. “I didn’t trust Trump at all, for all the obvious reasons. He was and is an ungodly man. A natural man, a carnal man, a blasphemous man.”

He voted for president in 2020 and 2024 only after he was pleasantly surprised by Trump's promise to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices.

“My whole adult life I’ve listened to respectable, spotlessly clean Republicans promise me towers and cities and then fail to deliver. And he’s the first damn Republican president to keep a promise.”

Just days before our lunch, Trump had provoked Christians again by posting a picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick. Wilson’s response was to suggest that the image be printed on black velvet “so it could be both blasphemous and kitschy.” He was not “satisfied” by the president’s explanation that he thought the now-deleted post depicted him as a doctor.

But none of that has dampened Wilson's enthusiastic support for this administration and its aggressive policies. "I look at Trump as chemotherapy," he explains. "America has cancer. Trump is toxic, and I think he's killing the cancer faster than it's killing the rest of us."

I decide I'm going to need a beer after all, so I order a Back Country Scotch Ale.

One of the other encouraging aspects of the Trump administration, Wilson continues, is that “we’re seeing hundreds of believers being appointed to key positions… and that’s going to have an impact for 40 years.” Wilson would like to see the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, which recognized same-sex marriage rights, overturned, as well as no-fault divorce, which he called a “disaster” for the sanctity of the family.

Although he happily embraces the mantle of Christian nationalist - "It's a lot better than the other things I've been called," he often jokes - Wilson is keen to stress that he believes this utopian state can be achieved through slow persuasion, not forced conversion.

He waves away the idea of ​​a “Handmaid’s Tale”-style takeover. “I really believe in freedom of conscience, I really believe in religion without coercion,” he says. Followers of other religions, or no religion at all, he tells me, could live quite freely in his ideal America. They would just have to agree “not to kill babies.” Mosques would be allowed. Minarets would not. St. Patrick’s Day parades would be fine, but Catholic processions in honor of the Virgin Mary would also be banned. Public space, Wilson says, “belongs to Jesus.”

It's an ideology that has already been embraced by parts of the current US government. The Department of Homeland Security frequently quotes Bible verses - including Proverbs 28:1, "The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion" - to support its tough immigration policies, which Wilson wholeheartedly supports.

Hegseth hosts monthly worship services for Pentagon employees, and Wilson preached at one in February. At the March service, Hegseth used Bible passages to present current conflicts, praying that God would “break the teeth” of “godless” enemies “who do not deserve mercy,” while holding a Bible embossed with “Deus vult,” a Crusader battle cry.

Wilson, who once served in the Navy, is happy to defend all of this. “When Hegseth speaks as a professed Christian ... he is certainly talking about Old Testament warfare, but not holy war.” Has Wilson discussed this with his student, who advocates the abolition of “excessive” rules of engagement and emphasizes “maximum lethality”? “No, it’s pretty clear to me ... when he prays that our boys shoot accurately, what he is really praying for is that we don’t bomb a girls’ school. He is asking us to fight combatants, not noncombatants.”

I wonder why Wilson, a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, supports this conflict at all. “I’m fine with this war if it’s over in a few weeks,” he says, referring to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “I don’t think we have any business trying to build states in the Middle East.”

Hegseth and the administration are on the same page, Wilson insists. “I trust him and I trust them to be against endless wars... I don’t think he wants bloodshed for bloodshed’s sake. I think what he wants is to fight effectively, efficiently, minimize American casualties, get the job done, and get out.”

I ask him if, if he felt that Hegseth was deviating from that, he would use his influence on him.

“I wouldn’t communicate with him privately about how long the war is going on, because I don’t have intelligence briefings… I don’t have the expertise,” he says. “But I’m a public commentator and I would feel free to write on my blog about how long the war is going on, and I would be surprised if it didn’t reach Hegset.”

All this talk of war makes me wonder about Wilson’s tactics. His father, a Naval Academy graduate, Korean War veteran, and “a very gifted evangelist,” was inspired by the principles of warfare to seek targets that were “both strategic and feasible.” He chose Moscow—home to the University of Idaho, a few miles from Washington State University—because it was full of receptive minds.

It puzzles me why Wilson often seems to work to alienate the very people he is trying to win over. He is comfortable using profanity in the service of Christ, cheerfully using derogatory terms for feminists, gays, and trans people. He readily acknowledges that he would like to see the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which guarantees that voting rights cannot be denied on the basis of sex, even though the issue is “257th” on his list of priorities. Wilson has even suggested that it would be better to have been born a black slave in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 19th century than to be an aborted black baby in a 21st century city.

“You have to say things that are considered disrespectful and outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, because that’s the only way you can gain traction and push the boundaries of what’s permissible,” Wilson says. He’s spent decades practicing what he calls “bait”—statements designed to be provocative enough to spark a debate he’s confident he can win.

“It’s intentionally provocative. But it’s also an argument, so I’m starting a fight,” he says of the Charleston line. “The people who are going to be most outraged by it are going to be lukewarm evangelical Christians… if I talk to anyone who even identifies as a Christian, I can win that argument in less than two minutes.”

I don’t want to take the bait, so I take a big bite of beer-battered cod with coleslaw instead. But I now understand how such provocations made Wilson an attractive opponent for Christopher Hitchens, one of the “four horsemen” of the new atheism movement. The two men had a series of high-profile debates in the late 2000s, during which they struck up an unlikely friendship offstage over their shared love of PG Wodehouse. “I know where I stand with him,” Hitchens said of the pastor at the time, even as he harshly criticized his church’s “immoral” teachings.

Again, I'm trying to understand Wilson's pastoral stance. Why not focus on Christian teaching that has a much broader appeal, like the Beatitudes, in which Jesus blesses the poor, the meek, and the persecuted?

“I know what it looks like,” he says. “When people see me on the national news, I’m probably standing next to Pete Hegsett… but I’ve written 20 books on marriage and family, I’ve built a Christian school association, about 400 or so across the country, I founded a college. So when it comes to love and good works that don’t involve a crusade for political action, I’m up to my neck in it, it just doesn’t show.”

I offer Wilson another brandy, but he declines. I then ask him if there is a danger that his movement will be associated with belligerence rather than compassion. Would he advise his followers in Washington to tone down some of the divisive rhetoric?

“I agree that you don't have to say everything every time,” Wilson replies. “I don't say everything, I hold back.” I find it hard to believe that I've met a market-tested version of a pastor, and I can't even begin to imagine what his hidden views might be.

“I can’t tell that to a journalist!” he says, with a disarming laugh. I ask him if what he’s not saying can be found in the Bible. “Yes.” So, stoning disobedient children and things like that? “Yes, a verse that Jesus wasn’t ashamed of,” Wilson says casually.

There are positions from which Wilson wants to clearly distance himself. He regularly criticizes those on the “dark right,” including Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, for their racism and anti-Semitism, though he admits that they “act in a way that makes me seem like a moderate.” The moment such people become the acceptable face of Christian nationalism, he says, “I’m out of it.”

Our plates are cleared away. I barely touched the fries, and Wilson refuses dessert. I ask for the bill and, as the Scotch hits my head, I seek one last reassurance.

He likes to quote GK Chesterton's maxim that one should never remove a fence until one understands why it was put up. So, I ask him, does he understand why the fences of liberal democracy have been erected? "Yes, and that's exactly why I want to dismantle them the way I do," he says. "Reactionaries are impatient. Revolutionaries are impatient. Reformers are patient."

Even in Moscow, the “beta version” of Wilson’s ideal Christian republic, he still has a lot of work to do. But he doesn’t see it as a failure. His movement’s work so far must be followed “by 200 years of articulating a vision, establishing Christian schools, establishing churches” to have any chance of success, he says.

"If I were president - and what a glorious three days that would be - I could never impose my ideal program on America as it is now," he says. "There would be immediate violence, and that's not the way we should do it."

Three centuries passed between the arrival of the Apostle Paul in Rome and the banning of gladiatorial games, he points out. "He played the long game, and I play the long game too."

The text is taken from the Financial Times.

Translation: NB