What kind of society do you want?
Since the days of the 18th-century Enlightenment, and in particular since the rise of Marxism-infused progressivism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America’s political, social, and cultural gatekeepers have assumed that a secular, liberal, democratic society constitutes the only acceptable answer.
One marvels, therefore, at the boldness with which Doug Wilson, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, defended Christian nationalism and Biblical Christianity during a recent interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, who discovered — no doubt to her chagrin — that the tried-and-true establishment media tactic of feigning offense at everything traditional so as to shame a Christian into abandoning God’s Word for the sake of appeasing a modern audience had no effect on Wilson.
Moreover, one cannot know for certain, but one senses that hostile motives might have dictated how CNN edited the interview.
For instance, approximately two-and-a-half minutes into the video, which CNN posted to YouTube on Friday, Brown characterized Wilson’s objective as “a patriarchal society.”
“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson said, seemingly out of nowhere.
Of course, CNN did not show the line of questioning or conversation that preceded that statement. Perhaps Brown asked Wilson to define a woman. Or perhaps he made that statement in a different context. Either way, by making it appear to have come out of left field, CNN’s editors created the impression of a Christian theologian hyper-focused on women as mere birthing vessels.
Meanwhile, Brown accentuated the caricature by adopting a tone of indignation.
“So you just think they’re meant to have babies?” she asked.
But Wilson did not bite.
“The wife and mother, who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or four or five eternal souls,” he replied.
Brown then personalized the interview by using herself as an example.
“I’m here as a working journalist, and I’m a mom of three,” she said. “Is that an issue for you?”
“No,” he replied. “It’s not automatically an issue.”
From there, unfortunately, the segment abruptly shifted away from Wilson.
What did the pastor mean by “not automatically an issue”? The response cried out for elaboration. Perhaps he gave one. Indeed, perhaps he explained it in such a way that, had they heard his answer, the young liberal women in CNN’s minuscule audience might have had occasion to think about the emptiness of a purely secular life, and CNN could not allow that.
Alas, the establishment network had a hostile agenda.
“And now Wilson’s controversial views as a Christian nationalist are gaining sway in the nation’s center of power,” Brown said earlier in the video, “with the recent opening of his new church, and high-profile parishioners like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”
In other words, the purpose of the interview was not to introduce CNN’s viewers to Wilson’s ideas but rather to conjure the bogeyman of Christian nationalism and then connect it, through Hegseth, to President Donald Trump’s administration.
Readers may watch the entire interview in the YouTube video below. The segment on creating a “patriarchal society” began around the 2:30 mark.
CNN’s efforts notwithstanding, Wilson came across as principled and reasonable.
If you believe, for instance, that human beings live forever, then Wilson’s remarks on motherhood and salvation make perfect sense. No one, after all, could deny that mothers serve as special trustees of “three or four or five eternal souls.”
Proponents of purely secular, liberal, democratic societies, however, want you to believe that the truth about existence lies elsewhere. Thus, they insist that you fill your days with tasks, always staying focused on earthly rather than spiritual rewards.
Of course, Christian nationalists and true secular liberals could find common cause in many areas. The desire for good health care, for instance, and the value of the Bill of Rights leap to mind.
But the difference in their beliefs about the nature of existence will invariably give rise to different priorities. Christians, for instance, who say “let us build a society in which every individual soul may choose to remain focused on God at all times” will always clash with secularists who say, in return, “let us encourage individuals to worship human institutions or (worse yet) themselves rather than conceding that the eternal has any claims on them besides those they choose to acknowledge.”
The reasonableness with which Wilson defended Christian nationalism suggests that those who prefer the first kind of society will no longer truckle to those who insist that only the second kind will do.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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