Ambitious faith

A security guard in a dark blazer and wraparound sunglasses nodded to smiling churchgoers as they walked past him and through the door of a red brick building a few blocks from Capitol Hill. The rented venue was not prepared to accommodate a congregation that swelled to over 200. Some people got seats, but many others were left standing.

Around 10 a.m., two people who were not smiling arrived. A young man and woman stationed themselves next to the door to protest. The woman held a homemade sign that read “Christ Church is not welcome.” The man blew a whistle and yelled things like “I curse you. You’re going to hell” at those arriving for church. A few churchgoers tried to engage them in conversation—without success.

That bright Sunday morning in July marked the inaugural service for this new church plant in Washington, D.C. Church plants rarely kick up such a commotion. But this one is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a denomination co-founded by Douglas Wilson in 1998. A few minutes before the service started, black SUVs rolled up, and the CREC’s most famous member, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, accompanied by his wife and daughter, climbed out.

Once considered a fringe denomi­nation, the CREC is moving into the mainstream. It grew rapidly during the pandemic, due to its staunch opposition to COVID-19 restrictions. The CREC and Wilson, who serves as lead pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, are known for a pugilistic style that appeals to some but repels others. Wilson in particular has been dogged by controversies stretching back decades. Despite those seeming impediments, the CREC is planting its flag in the political sphere. Wilson has become a kind of spokesman for Trump-voting Christians, at least in the eyes of the secular world.

Wilson himself stayed far away from the new church that weekend. The honor of leading the inaugural service fell to the Rev. Jared Longshore, an associate pastor at Christ Church in Moscow. He was the first in a rotation of pastors who will fill the pulpit until the church hires a permanent leader.

Wilson’s footprint extends beyond the CREC. He’s a prolific author and helped found a wide variety of organizations that spread his vision, including New Saint Andrews College, Canon Press, the K-12 Logos School, and the Association of Classical Christian Schools, all headquartered in Idaho. In 2021, Canon Press launched a subscription streaming service called Canon+, offering Christian instruction for adults and entertainment for children.

While Wilson has been known in Christian circles for decades, his profile rose significantly during the pandemic. Christ Church closed only briefly in early 2020 but soon reopened without requiring masks—in violation of local ordinances. In September 2020, Christ Church organized an outdoor psalm sing to protest mask mandates, which led to police arresting three members. Prosecutors eventually dropped all charges, and the city paid a settlement. Videos of the arrests were widely shared on social media, even by President Donald Trump. Some Christians were so impressed by the church’s bold stance, they moved to Moscow. Over the past five years, membership in the CREC’s churches in the area has doubled to 3,000.

And the growth wasn’t isolated to Moscow. According to Uriesou Brito, the CREC’s presiding minister and pastor of a CREC congregation in Florida, the denomination now has nearly 170 churches worldwide, with between 23,000 and 25,000 attendees. Brito estimates that between 2020 and 2023, the CREC’s attendance grew about 60%. Between 2023 to 2025, he says it grew another 55%.

STILL, THE CREC REMAINS a relatively small denomination. The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the largest evangelical Reformed denomination in the United States, has around 400,000 members. But the CREC punches above its weight.

The Washington church plant launched the CREC to new heights of fame—even in secular media. That’s largely due to Hegseth’s attendance. Major news outlets from CNN to The Wall Street Journal have interviewed Wilson in recent months.

Wilson denies starting the Washington church plant for publicity purposes. Rather, he says he and the denomination’s leaders identified a demand for a local church with two of the CREC’s distinctives. The first is paedocommunion—a theological distinctive that divides the denomination from almost all other evangelical Christians. Once babies are baptized in the CREC, they can start taking communion. Wilson noted that CREC members were moving to the capital to serve in the Trump administration and needed a local church where their children could take communion. Wilson acknowledged Washington has several faithful churches, but none of them practice paedocommunion.

Michael A. G. Haykin, a professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, notes the CREC is unique in this aspect of its theology. “I don’t know of any other denominational body where paedocommunion is the norm,” he said. In denominations that practice infant baptism, children gen­erally must be old enough to make a profession of faith before they can take communion.

Wilson also cited paedocommunion as the reason the CREC is planting a church in Hillsdale, Mich., home of Hillsdale College. Wilson said CREC members attend the college and need a church where their children can take communion. But Hillsdale also plays a prominent role in the conservative movement, educating many of its young leaders. I asked Wilson if his goal was to get young conservatives into the CREC in college and then funnel them into the Washington church plant.

“I’m sure that that will happen,” he said. “That’s not the primary goal.”

The second CREC distinctive that Wilson cited for planting the Washington church is “Moscow mood.” This term was coined by author and PCA Pastor Kevin DeYoung to capture Wilson and the CREC’s provocative and aggressive posture. DeYoung calls Moscow mood “incompatible with Christian virtue” and “inconsiderate of other Christians.” Wilson happily appropriated the term.

“It’s not everybody’s jam, but there are people in D.C. now who are attracted to that,” he told me.

It’s definitely not everyone’s jam at Hillsdale. The week the church plant there launched, Wilson picked a fight with Hillsdale President Larry Arnn, who disagreed with one of Wilson’s core beliefs: Christian nationalism. “A Christian nation is not possible because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world,” Arnn said on his podcast. Wilson attacked that statement on his blog, calling it “cut flower conservatism.” He argues America needs “Christian conservatism, conservatism with a root ball.”

Moscow mood is crystallized in the slick, humorous videos shared on social media by Wilson and his affiliated organizations, usually Canon Press. After Wilson’s interview on CNN, Russell Moore, an editor at Christianity Today, referred to CREC men as “losers.” Moore and Wilson frequently exchange barbs. Canon Press fired back at Moore with a video set to the song “Here’s to the Losers.” It featured images of Hegseth as well as Wilson laughing with famous people like Tucker Carlson, Tom Wolfe, and Charlie Kirk. It was published before Kirk’s assassination.

The video was tied to a sale at Canon Press. In fact, many “Moscow mood” videos on social media have a commercial component. Canon Press’ annual “No Quarter November” videos produced some of the most infamous images of Wilson. In one of them, he puffs on a big cigar and takes a flame thrower to images of Disney princesses.

R. Scott Clark, a professor of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California, notes Wilson knows how to capitalize on financial opportunities: “Doug is an entrepreneur, and he’s very good at it.”

Wilson’s blog features a lengthy page titled “Controversy Library.” Here he provides responses to a litany of issues, ranging from accusations that he plagiarized some of his books to the fact that he officiated the wedding of a convicted pedophile to the charge that he defended slavery.

He also addresses criticism of his occasional use of profane or vulgar words. “I deny that I use any language outside the clear parameters of Scripture, and further deny that my words are unnecessarily provocative,” he writes. In one well-known instance, he used a vulgar word to refer to women. He claims he was putting that word in the mouths of two feminists and not saying it himself. During our interview, I asked whether he anticipated his meaning would be twisted.

“I did it anyway because I think we got far more out of that for good,” he said. “It’s a cost-benefit thing.”

Wilson’s views on women and gender roles are a frequent source of controversy. Numerous media outlets have published interviews with women who say they were abused while attending CREC churches and that the church provided a framework for the abuse.

“The question is, is that framework within which people can be abusive, is that framework Biblical?” Wilson told me. “If you have a framework of: husbands are the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, wives are to be submissive to their husbands. That’s a framework that’s straight out of the Bible. And sinners abuse it.” Wilson said his church has helped women get out of abusive situations but also said he’d encountered situations in which the husband was the victim of abuse because the wife “was not behaving Scripturally.”

The CREC keeps growing despite the controversies. Clark thinks that’s because Wilson is “the Donald Trump of the conservative evangelical world.” As with the president, “the people who love him don’t care what he does because he fights.” Wilson will do anything and say anything, Clark adds. “He doesn’t care about the blowback and nothing ever seems to stick.”

ON A THURSDAY MORNING in September, hundreds of bleary-eyed people trickled into a massive basement hall in a Washington hotel. They clutched cups of coffee and cans of energy drinks. It was the third and final day of the National Conservatism Conference—often called NatCon.

Attendees had already endured a relentless schedule of speeches, panel discussions, and networking. But if anyone was up to the task of waking them, it was Wilson. He bounded onto the stage, having switched his trademark jeans for khakis. He even donned a tie.

Each year, the leading lights of the “America First” strain of the conservative movement gather at NatCon to flesh out their positions on a wide range of policy topics. This year’s speakers included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and political strategist Steve Bannon.

Wilson’s talk was titled “The American Founding and the Lessons of the Golden Calf.” He made his case that America was founded as a Christian nation and accused anyone suggesting otherwise of rewriting history. He drew a humorous parallel with the Book of Exodus when Moses climbed Mount Sinai and “various rapscallions got themselves elected to various school boards and started messing around with the history curriculum.” That led the Israelites to forget God and worship the golden calf. Something analogous is going on in America today, Wilson said.

This approach to politics is deeply influenced by Wilson’s postmillennial eschatology. Postmillennialism holds that Christ will win tangible victories on earth before His second coming. “We believe that we’re going to win, that the gospel is going to be victorious, the nations will be discipled,” Wilson said.

And he’s happy to refer to the political side of Christ winning those tangible victories as “Christian nationalism.” Many Christians eschew that controversial label, but Wilson has become its most prominent proponent.

Haykin of Southern Baptist Theolog­ical Seminary says postmillennialism has a long pedigree in church history. Many of the Puritans embraced it, as did the leaders of the early missionary movement like Andrew Fuller and William Carey. But he thinks Wilson’s postmillennialism has a more political focus. By contrast, the Puritans’ eschatology “had to do with the return of Christ, last judgment, death, heaven, hell.”

Many evangelical Christians believe either the rapture or the second coming of Christ could happen at any moment. Wilson’s postmillennialism is different. He told me the second coming is “not imminent” because the world isn’t nearly Christian enough. In fact, Wilson thinks Christians today are still part of the early church. “Five thousand years from now, school children will be agonizing over their church history test. ‘I can never remember: Did C.S. Lewis or Athanasius live first? I can’t keep those guys straight,” he said. I asked him if that means Christ will not return for at least 5,000 years. He said he believes that’s “likely.”

Clark of Westminster Seminary California says Wilson’s postmillennial vision of a “future earthly glory age” can be very attractive to some. “It offers a kind of parallel to the Marxist utopia.”

THE CREC WAS EVERYWHERE at NatCon. Several panels featured speakers who work at New Saint Andrews College (NSA). Each morning, the conference opened with prayer. The first morning featured a Jewish rabbi, the second a Roman Catholic priest. On the final day, the CREC’s Uriesou Brito took the stage. This marked his third time praying at the conference. “I’m sort of referred to as the Protestant chaplain of NatCon,” he told me.

When conference attendees walked the hallways between sessions, they passed a table set up by NSA—near tables for conservative heavyweights Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation. NSA’s table featured booklets trumpeting the fact that 81% of the college’s graduates are married—and only 2.3% divorced.

Conference attendees treated Wilson like a celebrity. His mostly young, male fans approached him between sessions to ask for selfies or for him to sign copies of his books.

For those wanting to hear even more from him, Wilson held his own conference on Sept. 6 in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. That event, co-led by Christ Church in Moscow Associate Pastor Joe Rigney, had a less pugilistic tone and focused on principles Christians tend to agree on, such as the importance of attending church every Sunday. But Wilson took plenty of jabs at Russell Moore, and during the Q&A, some of Wilson’s controversies came to the fore. Someone asked Wilson how to field concerns from family and friends who think the CREC is a cult. Wilson responded that cults invariably try to isolate people from their support networks. By contrast, the CREC encourages people “to treat … whoever it is that’s concerned, better than you ever have in your life.”

While the CREC may not resemble a cult in that regard, the idea that Wilson is building a cult of personality is harder to refute. So much of the marketing by the institutions he helped found centers around his persona. And Clark thinks it goes much deeper than that. “Wilson calls the shots, and everything is organically related to him,” he said. “It’s all part of Doug, Inc.”

On Sunday, Sept. 7, Wilson finally preached at the Washington church plant. He was met by women protesters wearing red Handmaid’s Tale costumes. Photos of Wilson greeting them with a friendly smile quickly circulated on social media, to the merriment of his fans.

Still, Wilson downplays his own importance.

“I’m probably the most well-known individual nationally associated with these institutions,” he said of the CREC and its affiliated organizations. “But they’re not dependent on my continued existence for their thriving health. … If I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, Logos School would continue on. New Saint Andrews would continue on.”

Even Clark—who often criticizes Wilson—acknowledges the CREC has hit its stride.

“These are the golden years right now,” he said. “I suppose eventually it’ll run out of gas, but it might go for a while.”