Douglas Wilson (theologian)

Last updated
Douglas Wilson
Doug Wilson.jpg
Born
Douglas James Wilson

(1953-06-18) June 18, 1953 (age 72)
Alma mater University of Idaho
Occupations
  • Theologian
  • pastor
  • author
SpouseNancy Wilson
Children N. D. Wilson, Rachel Jankovic, Rebekah Merkle
Ordination CREC
Theological work
EraLate 20th and early 21st centuries
Tradition or movement Reformed (Presbyterianism)
Main interests
Notable ideas Federal Vision

Douglas James Wilson (born June 18, 1953) is an American conservative Reformed and evangelical theologian, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, [1] [2] faculty member at New Saint Andrews College, and author and speaker. Wilson is known for his writings on classical Christian education and Reformed theology as well as his general cultural commentaries. He is a public proponent of postmillennialism, Christian nationalism, and covenant theology. He is also featured in the documentary film Collision documenting his debates with New Atheist author Christopher Hitchens on their promotional tour for the book Is Christianity Good for the World?

Contents

Biography

Douglas Wilson was born in 1953. In 1958 his family moved to Annapolis, Maryland, where he spent most of his childhood. [3] His father, Jim Wilson, was a full-time evangelist who worked with the Officers' Christian Union. His father had become a Christian in the Naval Academy and worked in Christian literature ministry both in Annapolis and later in Idaho. [4] His father moved to the Moscow, Idaho, area after retiring from the Navy to start a Christian bookstore on the Washington State University campus. [5]

Wilson notes that upon high school graduation, he enlisted into the submarine service, serving on the USS Tusk and the USS Ray. [6] He graduated from the University of Idaho, [7] where he met his wife to be, Nancy, whom he married in 1975.[ citation needed ]

Wilson is pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. [7] He helped to establish the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. [5]

Wilson cofounded the Reformed cultural and theological journal Credenda/Agenda . [8] He serves as an instructor at Greyfriars Hall. [9] Wilson helped found Logos School and New Saint Andrews College. [10] He is a member of the faculty at New Saint Andrews. [11] He has authored books on culture and theology as well as children's books and poetry collections. He writes regularly on his blog, Blog and Mablog, and frequently appears on Canon Press's Youtube channel. He also operates a personal podcast, The Plodcast. In the past he has contributed to Tabletalk, a magazine published by R. C. Sproul's Ligonier Ministries, and to the Gospel Coalition. He also regularly features as a guest speaker at conferences and other podcasts.

Classical Christian education

Wilson has been an advocate for classical Christian education, laying out his vision in several books and pamphlets, including Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning and The Case for Classical Christian Education. He has also critiqued the American public school system by urging Christian parents to seek other educational options in Excused Absence: Should Christian Kids Leave Public Schools?. He argues that American public schools are failing to educate students and proposes a Christian approach to education based on the medieval trivium, a philosophy of education with origins in classical antiquity that emphasizes grammar, logic, and rhetoric and advocates wide exposure to the liberal arts, including classical Western languages such as Latin and Greek. The model has been adopted by a number of Christian private schools. [12] and homeschoolers. [13] Wilson founded the Logos School in Moscow in 1981 to fulfill his vision. [14] He helped found the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) in 1993. [15] [16] Their website lists 475 member schools (as of 2023). [17]

Wilson received the inaugural Boniface Award from the ACCS in 2019. The award is given to recognize "a public figure who has stood faithfully for Christian truth, beauty, and goodness with grace." [18]

Theology

Wilson has written on numerous theological subjects and produced several biblical commentaries. He advocates Van Tillian presuppositional apologetics. [19] He has written extensively in defense of covenant theology, infant baptism, and Calvinism in works such as The Covenant Household, Knowledge, Foreknowledge, and the Gospel, and To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism.

Wilson has engaged in extensive critique and debate with prominent New Atheists. In May 2007, Wilson debated Christopher Hitchens in a six-part series published first in Christianity Today , [20] and subsequently as a book entitled Is Christianity Good for the World? with a foreword by Jonah Goldberg. His book Letter from a Christian Citizen was Wilson's response to atheist Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation , and his book The Deluded Atheist was his response to Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion .

Wilson holds to a view of Christian eschatology known as postmillennialism. [21] He has set forth his position in Heaven Misplaced: Christ's Kingdom on Earth, in his commentary on Revelation, When the Man Comes Around, and his commentary on First and Second Thessalonians, Mines of Difficulty. He has spoken and written in defense of the view, participating in a dialogue about eschatology with other evangelical ministers John Piper, Sam Storms, and Jim Hamilton as the representative of the postmillennial position. [22]

Wilson's views on covenant theology have caused controversy as part of the Federal Vision theology, partly because of its perceived similarity to the New Perspective on Paul, which Wilson does not fully endorse, though he has praised some of its tenets. [23] The Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States's Covenant Presbytery declared his views on the subject to have "the effect of destroying the Reformed Faith" and found his teachings to be heretical. [24] [25]

Wilson is an adherent of biblical patriarchy. He believes that wives should submit to their husbands and that leadership roles in the church should be restricted to men. [26] In his 1999 book, Federal Husband, Wilson argued that a husband as "federal head" assumes responsibility for his wife's spiritual condition.

In a 2025 CNN interview, Wilson said he has embraced the term Christian nationalist because "it's better than the other names he gets called", stating, "I'm not a White nationalist. I'm not a fascist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a misogynist, and those are the names that usually get thrown at me... and then when someone says, well, that's Christian nationalism, I can — well, I can work with that." [26]

Slavery controversy

Wilson's most controversial work is considered to be his pamphlet Southern Slavery, As It Was, which he cowrote with Christian minister J. Steven Wilkins. In it, Wilkins wrote that "slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since." [27] Louis Markos notes that "though the pamphlet condemned racism and said the practice of Southern slavery was unbiblical, critics were troubled that it argued U.S. slavery was more benign than is usually presented in history texts." [28] Some historians, such as Peter H. Wood, Clayborne Carson, and Ira Berlin, condemned the pamphlet's arguments, with Wood calling them "as spurious as Holocaust denial". [29]

Wilson held a conference at the University of Idaho in 2004 for those who supported his ideas. The university published a disclaimer distancing itself from the event, and numerous anticonference protests took place. Wilson described critical attacks as "abolitionist propaganda". [29] He also has repeatedly denied any racist leanings. He has said his "long war" is not on behalf of white supremacy; rather, Wilson claims to seek restoration of a prior era, during which he says faith and reason seemed at one and when family, church, and community were more powerful than the state. [30]

The Southern Poverty Law Center connects Wilson's views to the neo-Confederate and Christian Reconstruction movements influenced by R. J. Rushdoony, concluding, "Wilson's theology is in most ways indistinguishable from basic tenets of [Christian] Reconstruction." [31] Though categorized by some as a "neo-Confederate", [32] he rejects that term and calls himself a "paleo-confederate" instead. [33]

Canon Press ceased publication of Southern Slavery, As It Was when it became aware of serious citation errors in 24 passages authored by Wilkins, wherein quotations, some of them lengthy, from the 1974 book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman were not cited. [34] Robert McKenzie, the history professor who first noticed the citation problems, described the authors as being "sloppy" rather than "malevolent" while also pointing out that he had reached out to Wilson several years earlier. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "He described the lifted passages as simply reflecting a citation problem, and attributed the latest uproar to 'some of our local Banshees [who] have got wind of all this and raised the cry of plagiarism (between intermittent sobs of outrage).'" [35] Wilson reworked and redacted the arguments and published (without Wilkins) a new set of essays under the name Black & Tan [36] after consulting with historian Eugene Genovese. [37]

Concerns about Wilson's personal safety due to his comments on slavery, as well as criticisms from both liberals and conservatives, led to the Visão Nacional para a Consciência Cristã's rescinding his invitation to speak at a large Reformed theological gathering in Brazil in February 2024. [38]

In a 2025 interview with CNN, Wilson stated "Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings, and there were horrendous abuses and there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn’t mistreat them. I think that system of chattel slavery was an unbiblical system, and I’m grateful it's gone." [26]

Personal life

Wilson and his wife, Nancy, married on New Year's Eve in 1975 and have three children and many grandchildren. [39]

In 2018, Wilson announced on his blog that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his jaw. [40] He wrote in response to the news:

Scripture teaches us that we are to give thanks in everything (1 Thess. 5:18), and for everything (Eph. 5:20). God really is sovereign in every detail of every life. So we have thanked the Lord for this cancer, and we intend to continue to thank Him for it. We don't know what good purpose God has for it, but we are assured that the One who counts both hairs and sparrows is also the One who controls the behavior of every cancer cell.

Later that year, Wilson had a successful operation removing the tumor, followed by a successful recovery. [41]

His son Nathan Wilson is a writer of young adult literature. [42]

Published work

Author

Contributor

References

Footnotes

  1. "Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump's DC, the New Right Is Listening". POLITICO. 2025-05-23. Retrieved 2025-07-13.
  2. "Theocrats on the Doorstep of Power : Up First from NPR". NPR. 2025-01-12. Retrieved 2025-07-13.
  3. Wilson, Douglas (April 6, 2005). "The Kindness of God". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  4. Wilson, Douglas (June 16, 2022). "Memorial Service for Jim Wilson Scheduled". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  5. 1 2 Smietana, Bob (2019-11-05). "Douglas Wilson's 'spiritual takeover' plan roils Idaho college town". RNS. Retrieved 2025-08-10.
  6. Wilson, Douglas (25 February 2025). "Letters to Date". Blog & Mablog. Retrieved 25 February 2025.
  7. 1 2 Latah County Historical Society 2015, p. 49.
  8. Gribben 2021, p. 49.
  9. "Douglas Wilson Bio", Greyfriars Hall, Greyfriars Hall.
  10. Latah County Historical Society 2015, p. 27.
  11. Gribben 2021, p. xi.
  12. History, Association of Classical and Christian Schools History, archived from the original on April 5, 2010
  13. Introduction to Classical Christian Education, Classical Christian Homeschooling
  14. Meadowcroft, Micah (Fall 2023). "Classical Education's Aristocracy of Anyone". National Affairs . 53. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  15. Miller, Rachel (2 May 2016). "Classical Christian Education and Doug Wilson". theaquilareport.com. The Aquila Report. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  16. Wright, Josey (6 October 2022). "CLASSICAL CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND CLASSICS: WHAT'S IN A NAME?". antigonejournal.com. Antigone. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
  17. "Press & Media Kit". Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS). Retrieved 2020-04-19.
  18. "The Boniface Award". Association of Classical Christian Schools . Retrieved 23 September 2024.
  19. Gribben 2021, p. 74.
  20. "Is Christianity Good for the World?". Christianity Today . 8 May 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2009.
  21. Gribben 2021, p. 54.
  22. "An Evening of Eschatology". Desiring God . 8 May 2007. Retrieved 15 April 2024.
  23. Wilson, Douglas. "A Pauline Take on the New Perspective". Credenda/Agenda . 15 (5). Archived from the original on 2004-02-05.
  24. "A Call to Repentance" (PDF). Covenant Presbytery, Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States. 22 June 2002. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2009.
  25. Wilson 2002, pp. 7–9, 'Forward'.
  26. 1 2 3 Dubnow, Pamela Brown, Jeremy Herb, Shoshana (2025-08-07). "Evangelical movement: Inside one Idaho pastor's crusade for Christian domination in the age of Trump". CNN. Retrieved 2025-08-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  27. Wilson & Wilkins 1996.
  28. Markos, Louis (19 August 2019). "The Rise of the Bible-Teaching, Plato-Loving, Homeschool Elitists". Christianity Today . Retrieved 11 January 2020.
  29. 1 2 Ramsey, William L (December 20, 2004). "The Late Unpleasantness in Idaho: Southern Slavery and the Culture Wars". Washington, District of Columbia: History News Network . Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  30. Worthen, Molly (April 17, 2009). "The Controversialist". Christianity Today.
  31. "Doug Wilson's Religious Empire Expanding in the Northwest". Intelligence report. SPL center. Spring 2004.
  32. Clarkson, Frederick. "Rumblings of Theocratic Violence". Public Eye. No. Summer 2014. Political Research Associates. Retrieved 22 June 2024.
  33. Chamberlain, Dale (11 April 2023). "Joe Rigney To Join Faculty of Douglas Wilson's New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho". ChurchLeaders.com. Retrieved 22 June 2024.
  34. Luker, Ralph E (May 2, 2005), "Plagiarizing Slavery...", Cliopatria (blog), History News Network
  35. "Plagiarism As It Is: Neo-Confederates". Southern Poverty Law Center: Intelligence Report. 2004. Archived from the original on March 3, 2015.
  36. Wilson 2005.
  37. Ramsey, William L (March 27, 2006). "Horowitz, Genovese, and the Varieties of Culture War: Comments on the Continuing Unpleasantness in Idaho". Washington, District of Columbia: History News Network . Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  38. Neves, Erica (February 7, 2024). "Brazil's Doug Wilson Debacle Revives Debate Over Cancel Culture". Christianity Today. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
  39. Wilson, Douglas (December 31, 2018). "Heavy Horses, Heavy Blessings". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  40. Wilson, Douglas (April 16, 2018). "The Obedience of Cancer". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  41. Wilson, Douglas (May 8, 2018). "Gratitude & Update". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  42. Wilson, Douglas (May 8, 2017). "Mere Gratitude". Blog and Mablog. Moscow, ID. Retrieved April 15, 2024.

Sources