Once Fringe, Now Mainstream: The Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism

When CNN asked me to weigh in on Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, I knew it was a chance to sound the alarm. His extreme views aren’t just rhetoric—they’re shaping U.S. policy & spreading globally.

This summer, CNN interviewed me for a segment on Doug Wilson—a Christian nationalist pastor based in Moscow, Idaho, whose influence reaches far beyond his small town. Through a network of churches and schools, Wilson has built a national infrastructure. The shocking interview went viral, because what was once dismissed as “fringe” is now becoming mainstream.

In the interview, I warned:

“They literally want to take over towns and cities, and they’re building a grassroots infrastructure to do it. And they have access to this administration.”

I added:

“If you are Jewish, Muslim, a woman, or LGBTQ—this movement is working to push you out of society.”

Wilson’s own words made clear just how extreme this vision is. He openly longs for a return to the days when homosexuality was a crime in all 50 states. He has called the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, “a mistake.” And when asked by CNN if he still believes his earlier claim that “there’s a mutual affection between master and slave,” Wilson doubled down: “Yes… it depends on which master and which slave.”

Mainstreaming Extremism

Wilson is no outlier. His church’s motto—“All of Christ for All of Life”—was retweeted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a member of Wilson’s denomination. Meanwhile, Russell Vought, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, proudly calls himself a Christian nationalist. And Project 2025—already being implemented despite Trump’s disavowals—is steeped in their ideology.

CNN’s Pamela Brown was right to press Wilson on his views. But the deeper story is that his once-fringe views are not only shaping national policy— they are going global.

A Globalized Movement

I first saw this coming in 2000 at a United Nations meeting on women’s rights. Christian right activists flooded the conference, using their U.S. political connections to block progress. That experience led me to write Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized (2006), the first book to document how the Christian right was learning to act transnationally.

The roots go back further. Alan Carlson, one of the movement’s architects, whom I interviewed for my book, envisioned a “Heritage Homestead” economy modeled on Amish agrarian life—where women stayed home, children were homeschooled, and markets were locally controlled. He told me how, in 1995, he had connected with Russian Orthodox leaders and intellectuals, and the seeds were planted for the alignment we now see between U.S. evangelicals and Putin’s Russia. I confess that while I did not underestimate their potential strength, this particular vision seemed utterly unrealistic. I even asked him how his goals squared with the corporate sectors of the New Right at the core of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. He admitted that on this aspect, they were at odds.

Fast forward to today: the Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025, has floated a new “Manhattan Project” for U.S. family policy, pushing government incentives to increase births among heterosexual married couples. This marks a dramatic pivot away from the free-market conservatism the think tank once championed. The dream of Carlson—and now Wilson—is gaining ground.

What Can We Do?

Silence is complicity. Too often, mainstream conservatives who know better stay quiet. As Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, recently wrote:

“Conservatives who know better have stayed silent…. Whether they realize it or not, they have been bullied into silence.”

Breaking that silence is essential—across traditions and across the political spectrum.

We need complementarian men fighting this.

We need progressive women fighting this.

We need all of us who see the harm to say something and do something.

Kristen Kobes Dumez, author, Jesus and John Wayne

Breaking the silence is essential, and as Kobes Dumez points out, it’s dangerous—especially for conservatives. It’s easier for me as a liberal mainline protestant to speak out. But the real heroes are the conservatives who step forward. I may disagree with them on a lot, but I am in awe of those who break ranks, and I will quietly support those who do. We all need to help one another regardless of our differences in theology or politics. The broader our coalition for dignity, compassion and democracy, the better.

For my part, I’ve spent decades organizing in the U.S. and globally, lifting up feminist, womanist, and liberationist theologies. I’ve seen that when faith is reclaimed as a force for human dignity and equality, it becomes one of the most powerful tools we have against authoritarianism.

This is why I recently founded Faith in Democracy, which is working globally to build a network of faith-based democracy defenders.

The truth must be preached: women are leaders throughout Scripture. All people are made in the image of God. Faith can liberate rather than oppress.

Because if we fail to speak out now, we risk losing the hard-won freedoms of women, racial minorities, and religious minorities alike.

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