Don’t underestimate uber-Calvinist/Christian nationalist Doug Wilson. Recent Southern Baptist Convention history demonstrates how someone who seems far outside the mainstream eventually can wield exorbitant strength.
In other words, if Al Mohler can become the most powerful person in the SBC, Wilson could significantly influence American politics.
Wilson is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — or CREC — a collection of about 170 congregations whose extreme views out-Calvin 16th-century Christian Reformer John Calvin.
Wilson made his biggest national splash in mid-February, when he preached during the monthly worship service at the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was a member of a CREC congregation in Tennessee and attends a CREC church plant in Washington, invited Wilson to deliver the sermon. Wilson stressed the importance of trusting God for safety in battle and compared the Pentagon worship services — exclusively Christian — to Pentecost.
Wilson’s beliefs
Profiles about Wilson often call him a fringe extremist — so far to the right, even many right-wing evangelicals keep their distance.
For example, “Christian nationalist” seems too soft for the burly 71-year-old pastor with the misleading Santa Claus beard. He advocates America should be a Christian theocracy, dictated and directed by his ultra-conservative interpretation of the Bible’s laws.
That interpretation leads him to champion a panoply of far-right ideas and causes:
- Wilson has defended slavery, claiming other than the pre-Civil War South, there has “never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” He added, “We cannot overlook the benefits of slavery for both Blacks and whites.”
- Not surprisingly, Wilson advocates for patriarchy in the home and in society. He affirms a concept called “household voting,” in which the husband/man casts a single vote for the entire family, effectively disenfranchising women from the U.S. political system. He has blamed the women’s suffrage movement on “the lie of individualism” and said giving women the right to vote is a “travesty” that undermined the family.
- Consistent with his notion of the role of females, he has blamed women and girls for their own rapes and sexual abuse. Likewise, he has called for banning abortion, same-sex marriage and Pride parades.
- Wilson also has claimed the historic virtue of empathy can be a sin. Basically, his thinking goes, if people are kind, they will be soft on sin.
When it comes to the lexicon of Wilson’s theological malevolence, the list is long.
Despite — or perhaps because of — Wilson’s antipathy for people, causes and ideas progressive Christians hold sacred, many people are inclined to write him off. Not only is he theologically weird and outside the mainstream, he looks like a lumberjack, leads a church most folks never heard of, and lives and works in the middle of nowhere. To paraphrase the apostle Nathaniel, “Can anything significant come out of Moscow, Idaho?”
“Can anything significant come out of Moscow, Idaho?”
But if you’re thinking Wilson can’t be powerful, much less harmful, think again. And remember Al Mohler.
Mohler: From fringe to influencer
In the spring of 1993, the newly ascendant conservative trustees of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., elected Mohler as the school’s ninth president. He’s held the post 33 years — slightly more than half his lifetime — with no end in sight.
Mohler was a dark horse candidate then, just as Wilson is a seemingly fringe player now.
Billy Graham with Al Mohler on the day of Mohler’s inauguration as seminary president.
Convention observers considered Mohler, only 32 years old, extremely young to assume one of the SBC’s highest profiles. They also believed he was too inexperienced, coming from Georgia’s Christian Index newspaper, a historic but small organization. How could this guy, who only managed a tiny staff and a small budget, lead the second-largest seminary in the world?
Known as geeky and awkward, as well as pompous and verbose, even his friends expected him to flop. How could this guy, barely old enough and experienced enough to even teach at Southern Seminary, lead the SBC’s flagship school?
Oh, and he was/is a Reformed theologian — aka Calvinist — in a convention known far more for its passion for missions and evangelizing a lost world than for its facility to parse 400-year-old theological arguments. How could this guy, who embraced a theological position abandoned by the vast majority of Southern Baptists, hold on while the rising fundamentalist leaders decimated all who held contrary positions?
Now, more than three decades later, no one has influenced the SBC more than Mohler.
He’s far and away the SBC’s longest-serving current leader, and few people in the SBC’s 181-year history held onto such a prominent position anywhere near as long as he. Moreover, as the architects of the convention’s “conservative resurgence” passed into ignominy — Paul Pressler became associated with sexual abuse of teen boys and young men, and Paige Patterson got fired for discounting sexual abuse of women at the seminaries he led — Mohler assumed the mantle of movement leadership and became the face of the SBC.
He also reshaped the convention’s theology. By taking Southern Seminary back to its 19th-century Reformed roots, he trained and mentored hundreds of pastors, missionaries and denominational leaders, providing platforms, positions and passion to espouse Calvinist theology. Rather than surviving as a few footnotes in Baptist history, under Mohler’s leadership, Calvinism has become a robust, aggressive aspect of the Southern Baptist character.
The call of Calvinism
Wilson’s and Mohler’s shared passion for rigorous Reformed theology — sometimes dissed as crazy Calvinism — provides a reason for taking neither of them lightly. And given Mohler’s success within the SBC, it also indicates Wilson should not be considered a theological flake to be ignored.
One reason: Never write off a charismatic leader who has the ability to, in effect, clone himself. (Sorry; inclusive language doesn’t work here. They’re all men.) Just as Mohler turned Southern Seminary into a Reformed clergy factory, Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches sponsors ministry-training schools that produce Wilson apostle/acolytes.
Another reason: Although still small and rather embryonic, Wilson’s church-planting movement one-ups Mohler. He’s starting churches and putting his pastors in strategic locations. Do not think Hegseth’s attendance at a new CREC congregation in Washington is coincidental. The guy who talks to the pastor who preaches to the secretary defense (war) every week possesses powerful influence.
Reformed theology is well-suited for high-powered theological influencers because of its certitude.
A third reason: Reformed theology is well-suited for high-powered theological influencers because of its certitude. In a chaotic and confusing world, preachers who act like they know what they’re talking about exercise tremendous authority. Amidst cacophony, millions of people just want a “spiritual” leader to tell them what to think and do — how to navigate the morass.
A final reason: A strong appeal of Wilson’s and Mohler’s brand of Reformed theology is an extreme notion of the sovereignty of God. They preach God controls everything, or all is preordained. So, greenlighting the bombing of innocent Iranians is OK because it is divinely ordained. It could not happen if God did not will it to happen. And pretty much the same for everything you want to do and/or justify.
So, closer to home: Exercising absolute authority — in a church, across a denomination, over a country — is logical and practical if you believe you know the mind of God and can assert God causes everything to happen. What you will becomes God’s will. And then the ends justify the meanness.
Marv Knox retired as the founder of Fellowship Southwest (now FaithWorks), a role he took on after a storied career in Baptist journalism, including tenures as editor of the Kentucky Western Recorder and the Texas Baptist Standard. He was a founding board member of Associated Baptist Press, predecessor to BNG. He lives in Durham, N.C.