Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, led by controversial Pastor Doug Wilson, is planting a church in Washington, D.C., that is set to launch July 13. Wilson announced the church plant in a May 12 blog post titled, “A Mission to Babylon.”
“So why are we doing this just now? The first reason is that we are reading providence in a particular way,” Wilson said. “With the change in administration, we believe that there will be many strategic opportunities with numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration.”
“These believers are obviously culturally engaged already, but we happen to believe that every form of cultural engagement needs to have a solid theological foundation and support, and we want to help to provide it,” Wilson continued. “Without a theological foundation, cultural engagement tends to morph into something that resembles wind surfing on the various breezes of doctrine that tend to blow through evangelicalism. We don’t want anything like that.”
Doug Wilson’s Christ Church Expands to DC
Doug Wilson is the senior minister of Christ Church, which is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a denomination Wilson helped form.
He is a controversial figure for reasons including his views on race, his church’s desire to make Moscow a “Christian town,” his identification as a Christian nationlist, and his expression of complementarianism. Other reasons include how his church has handled allegations of sexual abuse and that Wilson officiated the wedding of a convicted pedophile, who married one of the church members.
Some have also criticized the pastor for his use of vulgar language. In a blog post in 2019, Wilson referred to progressive Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber as a c***.
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In November 2023, Pastor Kevin DeYoung critiqued what he called the “Moscow mood.” Wilson responded to that critique, defending himself and doubling down on his decision to write “the famous piece where I used the c-word.”
In his blog about the church plant, titled “A Mission to Babylon,” Wilson compared the church’s mission to Nehemiah’s task of rebuilding the wall and to the idea of bringing “Babylon into the New Jerusalem.”
“We do grant that we have landed upon an unusual method for church planting,” said Wilson. “Part of our prep work for this consisted of raising sufficient funds to able to fly different ministers in each week. This will consequently be a team effort.”
