Pastor Doug Wilson warns 'no political solution' to America's ills, defends Christian nationalism
Pastor Doug Wilson said during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson that there are no political solutions to America's problems, and that the Gospel is the only hope for the U.S. and any other nation.
Wilson, who pastors Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, also maintained that many of America's current rulers have satanic ambitions to be like God, and that prominent Evangelicals like Russell Moore and David French are serving as tools of the radical Left because they care too much about placating the cultural elite.
Pastor Doug Wilson is the Christian nationalist they warned you about. pic.twitter.com/E92V7OMLTS
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 15, 2024 Get Our Latest News for FREE
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During a one-hour conversation that aired Monday on Carlson's online platform, the two opened their discussion by addressing the cultural firestorm over so-called "Christian nationalism," which the former Fox News host asked him to define.
Wilson observed how progressive secularists are broadening the definition of Christian nationalism to encompass even those who simply believe their rights come from God, which he noted is a label that would apply to Thomas Jefferson. He remembered that Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla defined the term earlier this year as anyone who believes "that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don't come from any earthly authority."
Wilson, who recently penned Mere Christendom: The Case for Bringing Christianity Back into Modern Culture, traced the uproar over Christian nationalism to the same attitude that has prevailed since the days when Christians in Rome were thrown to the lions for affirming the exclusive claims of Christ by refusing to confess Caesar as Lord.
America's current rulers "don't believe in God," they believe in the devil, Wilson claimed, adding that they exhibit Satan's same ambition to assume God-like power, which was the temptation he offered in the Garden of Eden.
"If there is no God above the state, the state is god. The state becomes god, and it assumes the prerogatives of deity," Wilson explained, noting how government authorities increasingly surveil their own citizens in an apparent desire to assert total control.
"They want to control absolutely everything, every keystroke," he continued. "They want to control everything because they're aspiring to deity. The reason they're aspiring to deity is because they don't recognize any god above them."
For Wilson, a Christian nationalist is someone who, like the Christians in Rome, is unafraid to answer the question of whose god in the pantheon is supreme.
"The Christian nationalist is the one who's willing to answer that question, and speaking into the microphone: the true God, the living God, the one who exists," he said.
Wilson also characterized a Christian nationalist as someone who rejects both tribalism and globalism, and believes that a nation's structure and laws — which are, by definition, "imposed morality" — should "conform to the things that God wants and not the things that man wants."
As the Christian beliefs that once dominated American culture break down under secularism and the influx of immigrants with varied religious assumptions, Wilson warned that the long-standing American system, which was sustainable under "a shared moral consensus," threatens to devolve into "anarchy and disruption."
He also discerned there is no political road to restoring a system based on Christian presuppositions in a nation that is no longer Christian, and that because America is suffering from a disease that is both "radical" and "spiritual," there can only be a spiritual remedy.
"Basically, we're in such a mess that there is no political solution, alright? We're beyond hope. There is no political solution. The next election, however happy it might make us for 10 minutes, is not going to fix everything," he continued.
Returning America to a Christian worldview is a responsibility that falls on preachers "who will stop being ashamed of the name of Jesus, and preach the Gospel as though it's supposed to spread out into the streets after the service," he said.
Wilson said America must repent of the arrogance that manifests as "the radical disease of secularism," the central sin of which he claimed is the idea "that we can establish agnosticism or atheism as the official faith of the country and govern ourselves decently without reference to God."
"That is radically false," he said.
As for America's "grand secular experiment," Wilson noted that it has failed so utterly that it has reached "a point where they don't know what a girl is."
While acknowledging his belief that there "is no political hope," the pastor said "that doesn't mean that there's no hope." He pointed to other dark periods in history when the Gospel turned the tide, such as the Protestant Reformation or the revival that transformed 18th century England with the preaching of George Whitefield and the Wesleys.
Wilson said he is hopeful that increasing numbers of Christians have been "awakened" to the serious state of things in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many pastors "flaked" when faced with government edicts shutting their churches down.
Wilson's own church made national headlines when three parishioners were arrested during an outdoor psalm sing protest outside Moscow City Hall in September 2020. They were cuffed and taken to county jail for allegedly not adequately distancing themselves on the small yellow dots authorities placed on the ground for them as guidance. The three sued the city and received a $300,000 settlement last summer.
Carlson later brought up Russell Moore and David French, noting that they seemingly "go out of their way" to attack Wilson, to which he replied by claiming that they and Christians like them are allowing themselves to be used by their secularist enemies.
"What they want to do is they want to operate in the secular republic, and they want a place at the table; they want to be treated with respect," he said. "And in return, they say, 'We will treat all opposing views with respect, and what we ask is you treat us with respect, and we would like a place at the table, please.'"
"I don't have any illusions about this. When we're all rounded up and taken off in cattle cars to the camps, David French and Russell Moore are going to be in the next car over there," Wilson said, to which Carlson added, "I think they'll be guarding you."
Wilson concluded the interview by explaining the optimism he draws from his postmillennial eschatology, which he said teaches Christ's ultimate triumph over the kingdom of this world.
Acknowledging how many individual Christians grow discouraged, observing with their limited perspective what appears to be a losing battle, he likened them to a soldier on D-Day who feels hopelessly trapped in a sand dune under heavy enemy fire, unaware of the larger victory taking place around him.
"He could be mightily discouraged because of his position, while at the same moment, General Eisenhower is looking at the map with satisfaction," Wilson said.
"So we have great hope that the Gospel in its potency is going to be proclaimed and is going to take root and flourish," Wilson added. "So, we might lose our lives. You know, you can lose your life in a winning battle, right? A soldier on the winning side can lose in his little segment. But that's all right, because Christ is Lord."
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
