(RNS) — This past weekend, Idaho Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson went viral for saying that “women are the kind of people that people come out of” — his way of indicating that a woman’s place is primarily in the home. The rest of CNN’s interview highlighted Wilson’s misogyny as he wants to repeal the 19th Amendment, his racism in saying “mutual affection” existed between some masters and slaves, and his homophobia in seeking to repeal same-sex marriage rights, all while discussing his beliefs about Christian supremacy.
Wilson has pitched this same bundle of destructive teaching for decades, but — frighteningly — he seems to be gaining high-level traction as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted “All of Christ for All of Life,” Wilson’s media empire tagline, in reposting Wilson’s interview on X. Hegseth has elsewhere spoken favorably about Wilson’s teachings on masculinity and has attended churches in Tennessee and Washington, D.C., within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches denomination founded by Wilson.
Hegseth’s public support reveals that Wilson isn’t just overseeing a self-ordained fringe fundamentalist fiefdom anymore. It’s a concentrated movement that, in Wilson’s own words, has theocratic government in mind.
One significant way people get caught up in frameworks like Wilson’s is through evangelical parenting resources.
Parents may pick up a book looking for parenting tips or to learn about classical education, and end up walking away catechized into Christian nationalism. These ideas and resources circulate in homeschooling networks and through online streaming rabbit holes like Wilson’s global multimedia empire Canon Press. Families, lured in by mythical promises about generational legacies, sometimes relocate to Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson’s Christ Church is located, and find “like-minded” people. Or they might rally around Wilson’s virtual events, like “No Quarter November” and family-centered conferences.
In my research, I’ve read scores of popular Christian parenting books, including Wilson’s copious writings. In them, he encourages followers to employ corporal punishment from infancy, alongside “reigns of terror,” in which parents spank children without explanation for every infraction to establish first-time obedience.
This is the religious extremist version of FAFO parenting, and it’s not surprising to find Wilson gaining popularity as the parenting pendulum swings back to authoritarian methods. When dominance and compliance are the goal, anything children do can be perceived as a threat to parental authority.
For instance, Wilson’s wife, Nancy, describes spanking her 5-year-old daughter for being disappointed to leave a playdate. This subjective scale will inevitably escalate. The couple laughingly recount to a roomful of parents how they spanked their toddler 20 to 30 times so he would take a nap, in order to “win.” Doug Wilson explains how spankings like this should be administered without attracting the notice of child protective services — whether at home or in the “discipline rooms” found at Christ Church campuses — and followed up with “restored fellowship.”
These toxic ingredients are key to what New York Times bestselling author Tia Levings, who wrote a memoir detailing her escape from a community that embraced Wilson’s teachings, calls “church sanctioned domestic abuse.” Journalist Sarah Stankorb’s book, “Disobedient Women,” spotlights additional survivor stories of alleged abuse from within Wilson’s orbit, including experiences with alleged failures to report abuse and ways dangerous people were welcomed.
The theologies espoused by Wilson and company are not theoretical — they have a far-reaching, destructive impact. Evidence of community-enabled domestic violence reframes Wilson’s suggestion to CNN that he aims to supplant other religious beliefs by “peaceful means.” When people imagine they are mouthpieces and agents of God acting out of godlike disciplinary power and authority, they baptize violence as a means for extracting compliance. The ends — a godly society as defined by them — justify the means.
The long and bloody record of church history reveals that this path doesn’t lead to utopia but to domestic violence, spiritual abuse and, ultimately, wars of religion, inquisitions and Christians burning other Christians at the stake.
America’s founding leaders lived through the bloody aftermath of Europe’s wars of religion. They saw the dangers in political efforts to form a Christian theocracy, and so should we.
(Marissa Franks Burt is a novelist, editor, pastor’s wife, mother to six and co-author of the forthcoming book “The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families” (October 2025). Her website is marissaburt.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)