Take a deep dive into the Wilsons and Christ Church featured on NPR’s ‘Extremely American’
Analysis by Nick Gier | FāVS News
*Editor’s Note: Nick Gier got to know Doug Wilson, pastor of Moscow’s Christ Church, when he showed up his University of Idaho philosophy classes in the late 1970s.
Fast-forward, and Gier is a guest on NPR/Boise State Public Radio’s “Extremely American” podcast. In it, he relates his experience into the Wilsons and Christ Church.
A sample of that research follows.
Evangelizing with a Crusader’s Sword
Sometime in the 1960s, Jim Wilson wrote a small book entitled “The Principles of War: A Handbook on Strategic Evangelism.” He writes: “Not all warfare is waged on a battlefield: every Christian is called to be a soldier.” With Christ as commander-in-chief, Christians will wage battle with Satan, who is the major obstacle that evangelists face in converting unbelievers.
Some years ago, I had lunch with Jim, and I asked him about the picture on the cover of his book. It was a Christian Crusader icon with an upraised sword. When I asked him if he regretted choosing such a provocative and militant image, he brushed the suggestion aside. I told him that the picture instilled fear not Christian love.
Doug Wilson succinctly explains this military model for evangelism: “New York City is strategic but not feasible. Bovill is feasible but not strategic. But small towns (such as) Moscow and Pullman with universities are both.” Jim Wilson targeted Moscow and moved his young family to our fair city.
Christian ‘Arsonists in the World’
As recently as 2021, in an article in “The Guardian” (Nov. 2), Doug Wilson was still pushing the military model: “We are not yet in a hot civil war, with shooting and all, but we are in a cold war/civil war.”
In a 2018 video, Wilson spoke in the same violent vein: “It’s not the job of the preacher to be a firefighter out in the world. We’re not supposed to be running around putting out other people’s fire. We are supposed to be arsonists in the world.”
Wilson’s College as a ‘Munitions Factory’
Wilson describes his college New St. Andrews as a “munitions factory” and, presumably, his graduates’ goal is to blow up secular society. In a 2010 brochure for the college a headline reads “Yo, Secularism, Why Don’t We Step into the Alley?”
The page describes the NSA faculty as “not timid in a rumble,” and they want to make the students “dangerous” so that they can “throw the lies of this age up against the wall, lifting wallets and the occasional gift card.” It ends with “an invitation to a brawl.”
Paleo-Confederates and Christian Nationalists
In the aftermath of the slavery booklet controversy, Doug Wilson rejected the description “neo-Confederate” in favor of “paleo-Confederate.” The former would mean the reestablishment of the Southern Confederacy under biblical law, but the latter would mean Christian rule by propertied males over the entire country.
On April 24, Wilson released a video in which he describes three options for establishing an American theocracy. First, the president could issue a proclamation that “Jesus rose from the dead”; the Supreme Court, contrary of course to the Founding Fathers, could rule that the U.S. is “a Christian nation”; or “the Apostle’s Creed could be incorporated into the Constitution.”
Neo-confederates and racism
Wilson also claims that his slavery book co-author Steve Wilkins was not a neo-Confederate, but the facts say otherwise. In 1994, Wilkins was the cofounder of the racist League of the South (LOS), which is described by a well-documented Wikipedia article “an American white nationalist, neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization.”
Wilson contends that Wilkins left the LOS not because it was racist, but because he had other priorities. LOS president Michael Hill was a regular visitor at Wilkins’ church in Monroe, La., and he once described Blacks as “a compliant and deadly underclass.”
Neo-confederates at Charlottesville
Just before the Charlottesville riot in 2017, Hill tweeted to his LOS members: “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on August 12.” The LOS is not only racist but antisemitic as well, making them a good match for the neo-Nazis marching there.
On Aug. 16, 2017, Wilson posted an article entitled “In Praise of Our President.” He commended Donald Trump for declaring that there were “fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville riot.
Aping Trump’s own outrageous rhetorical style, Wilson equates Black Lives Matter with the Klan. Did I miss something? I don’t think there were any lynchings during the largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.
Steven Sitler: Christ Church’s Serial Pedophile
Steven Sitler, whose mother was a follower of Doug Wilson, grew up in a conservative Presbyterian church in Colville, Washington. While in Colville, Sitler was accused of molesting a 2-year-old girl while visiting a church home. He later admitted to committing this crime on multiple occasions in Virginia, Washington, and then Idaho. The number of his victims, all below the age of ten, may have exceeded 20.
Sitler moved to Moscow in August 2003 to attend New St. Andrews College. NSA students are offered board and room in Christ Church family homes. As a boarder in one such home, Sitler started abusing the girls (and one boy) almost on a nightly basis, and he was found out only after a visiting girl reported her abuse to her father in March 2005.
The crimes were reported to the police, but Sitler was not arrested. He sought refuge at his Colville home, but he was excommunicated by his church there. Free to molest at will, he did not appear in court until Sept. 26, 2005. Christ Church elders were not apprised of the case until Nov. 11, 2005, and members of Christ Church did not learn these crimes until the story broke in the local paper in June 2006.
Sitler Violates Parole Three Times
In a plea agreement Sitler confessed to one count of lewd conduct with a minor under 16. The prosecuting attorney had contacted all the victims’ families, but they chose not to press any additional charges. Sitler was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Sitler served 20 months in prison, but he has violated his parole at least three times: he admitted to voyeurism, stalking a young woman in a bikini, and then, most egregious of all, being sexually stimulated by his infant son.
On Wilson’s suggestion and with the permission of the presiding judge, Sitler was married, after two approved dates, to an NSA student. The judge accepted Wilson’s argument that marriage would be good therapy for Sitler’s sexual deviance. Prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson disagreed: “Everybody would love for Mr. Sitler to become a normal person, but the fact is he is not. He is a serial child sexual abuser.”
Wilson: Child Rapists Should be Executed
Wilson’s handling of the Sitler case has been widely condemned in the conservative Christian community. This is Rod Dreher of The American Conservative: “How did anybody in Christ Church think it was a good idea to encourage and enable a young woman in their community to marry a convicted pedophile? I cannot comprehend the apparent unwillingness of the congregation to hold themselves and their pastor accountable for this catastrophe that has befallen the Sitler wife and child.”
Wilson’s plea for leniency in this case and his acceptance of Sitler in his church family stands in stark contrast with his own “crawling over cut glass” Calvinist theology: “When we are dealing with young children who are abused by adults (pederasty, child porn, etc.), the penalty for those guilty of the crime should be death” (Fidelity Canon Press, 1999, p. 85).
Natalie Greenfield seduced by Christ Church seminarian
Natalie Greenfield of Moscow tells a frighteningly similar story about her abuse by Jamin Wight, a seminary student at Christ Church’s Greyfriars. Wight was a boarder in Greenfield’s home, and when she was 13, he “groomed” her for a 2-year sexual relationship. She admits that she was smitten by this handsome 23-year-old man, and he started to control her behavior and her dress. Wight said that he could not help himself because she was so beautiful and flirtatious.
In 2005 Greenfield finally went to the police and filed charges. Many people in Christ Church wrote character witness letters for Wight, and he served only 4 months of a 2-year sentence. (He also did not have to register as a sex offender.) Wilson and Christ Church elders turn on Greenfield’s father saying that he had failed to protect his daughter.
Greenfield continued to attend church hoping that someone — the women surely — would offer their support. Instead, she was shunned and she decided to leave Christ Church. Wilson harassed her with three successive emails warning her that she had to meet with church elders for repentance. After she refused to meet with them, she was disfellowshipped.
Wilson: ‘A man penetrates; a woman receives‘
In his book “Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man,” Wilson writes: “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts” (p. 86). This premise led to Wilson’s concept of the “propriety of rape.” This principle has enraged even the most conservative Christian women and men.
Here is Wilson’s own words: “Women who genuinely insist on no masculine protection are really women who tacitly agree on the propriety of rape. Whenever someone sets himself to go against God’s design, horrible problems will always result.” Feminist women, Wilson continues, “helped create a world in which it is easier for unscrupulous men to get what they want than for honorable men to do what they ought.”
Addendum: Former Christ Church women speak out about their abuse in the church
Kristie:
Bekka:
Jade:
Emilie:
Further Reading
Presiding Ministers’ Report on the Sitler and Wight Sex Abuse Cases presented to Christ Church Moscow in Aug. 15, 2017 (from the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches)
Thanks, Nick, for bringing to light once again all the reasons we should oppose Wilson and his cult.