A recent NPR interview with controversial pastor Doug Wilson is highlighting the growing influence of Christian nationalism in American political and cultural life ― as well as alarming the experts and survivors who know this movement well. Wilson, who co-founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, spoke to journalist Leila Fadel about his vision for a Christian theocracy and doubled down on his view that women should not have the right to vote. Calling the repeal of the 19th Amendment “a good idea,” he argued in favor of a “household voting” system in which this right is effectively limited to male heads of household.The controversies don’t begin and end with women’s suffrage and role in society. Wilson has faced sustained criticism for his writings on slavery, his statements on homosexuality, his use of derogatory slurs and provocative metaphors, and his church’s handling of allegations of sexual abuse.Wilson is not a fringe figure. He has a documented relationship with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who even invited Wilson to give a sermon at the Pentagon. As his brand of Christian nationalism gains an unprecedented foothold in the halls of power, experts are warning about the harm of his ideology and its distance from the teachings of Christ. Cait West, author of “Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy,” grew up in a family and church greatly influenced by Wilson and the head-of-household framework he promotes.“He spoke at my church. We subscribed to his magazine. We read his books and listened to his sermons on tape,” she told HuffPost. “During congregational meetings when we would vote on electing church leaders, the ballot slips would be passed to the head of each household, typically the father. He could decide whether to fill out each slip or pass them to his family. During political elections, my father would tell my mother who to vote for.”She noted that leaders like Wilson like to point to head-of-household voting as if it is a common-sense policy.“But it effectively removes all power from women, which is exactly the point of Christian patriarchy,” West said. Theologian and writer Cara Meredith was familiar with the world of the CREC through friends who attended these churches. “To them, marriage was the highest office a man could achieve and a woman could complement,” she told HuffPost. “Under this biblical umbrella, God was the head, man fell under the head, and women fell under man.”To understand why Wilson’s views are so alarming, it helps to understand their ideological roots.“Wilson’s theonomy cherry-picks from the Old Testament and the letters of Paul. They skip Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount for the most part, and likewise skip any critical thought over applying ancient Levitical texts to modern American civic code, as well as the American distinction of separating church and state,” said Tia Levings, a former Christian fundamentalist and author of “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy.”“Wilson teaches a static, Calvinist, unchanging view of God that doesn’t allow for growth or expansion. His views are largely self-determined. He didn’t attend seminary,” she added.His ideology stems from a broader movement in U.S. Christianity. “Wilson’s views are rooted in and related to the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which derived from the ideas of a group of reformed evangelicals around a theologian named R.J. Rushdoony, who was around in the 1970s and 1980s,” said Matthew Bowman, a professor of history and religion at Claremont Graduate University. “Rushdoony in particular believed that various social organizations ― politics, entertainment, the economy ― should be organized according to explicitly Christian principles. Of course, by ‘Christian’ he meant his version of Christianity.”Is there even a biblical basis for any of this?Wilson and his supporters frame their views as “biblical,” but experts say that framing deserves scrutiny.“Many Christian denominations ― and particularly evangelicals like Wilson and Rushdoony ― will use the word ‘biblical’ or ‘Christian’ to refer simply to their interpretation of the Bible or Christianity,” Bowman said. “But the Bible is an extremely complicated and ambiguous text. ‘Christianity’ is an extremely complicated and old tradition.”Wilson has said he does not believe Roman Catholics or Mormons are Christian, but as Bowman pointed out, there is no “ultimate arbiter, no Supreme Court,” that can make a ruling about which interpretation of Christianity or the Bible is correct. “So when Wilson says it is ‘biblical’ or ‘Christian’ for men to hold headship over women, what he’s really saying is that Christian Reconstructionists like him believe in it,” Bowman said. “There are other Christians who would say that his interpretation of the Bible and his interpretation of Christianity are neither biblical nor Christian. In fact, there are many Christians who argue that the Bible and Christianity teach gender equality. The Bible and Christianity can be mobilized to serve many points of view.”Patriarchal assumptions are even reflected in the translation of Scripture ― the English Standard Version ― which many denominations with these beliefs use, West said. She noted that one of its translation committee members co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.NPR/Alex Wong / StaffDoug Wilson (left) has a documented relationship with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who even invited Wilson to give a sermon at the Pentagon.The churches that adhere to such views tend to emphasize the Old Testament, which features stories of theocracy, over the New Testament emphasis on a spiritual kingdom.“Patriarchal leaders like Doug Wilson pick and choose the parts of Scripture that fit their vision of a modern patriarchy and call it ‘biblical,’” West said.April Ajoy, author of “Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith,” similarly sees a highly selective reading of religious texts in these Christian nationalist movements. “Christian nationalism is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus, and I believe a quest for a theocracy is a grave misinterpretation of Scripture,” she said. “The verses they use to justify their misogynistic beliefs come from Ephesians 5:22-23, where it says ‘Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is himself the Savior of the church, his body.’ Using these verses to justify teaching a wife’s complete obedience to her husband ignores the verse right before it that says ‘Submit yourselves to one another.’”She added that this reading also overlooks cultural contexts of biblical passages and the many women who served as leaders in the early church, including Junia, Mary Magdalene, Deborah, Phoebe and Priscilla.What would Wilson’s vision actually mean for women?When Wilson talks about “household voting,” he frames it as a matter of family unity rather than gender. But those familiar with his movement say that framing is misleading.“Wilson may say that he doesn’t want men or women voting as a single household, that it’s about the combined power of the collective household vote, but Wilson isn’t lying when he jokes, ‘Because it’s a good idea,’” Meredith said. “To Doug Wilson, household voting is a good idea, not because it promotes a man and a woman who are married to each other being on the same page, but because it further silences the one he most wants to silence: women.”She believes Wilson views women as secondary, designed by God to be helpers to men and walk alongside them. “Removing the right to vote is only one piece to an overarching philosophy of men having power over women,” West said, recalling her years as an unmarried, child-free woman in the Christian patriarchal world. “As a stay-at-home daughter, I was not allowed to have a job outside the home, go to college, or make decisions about my relationships. I was supposed to vote for whoever my father told me to, and I had to submit to him in all things,” she added.She was careful to note that experiences vary within Wilson’s denomination, depending on individual circumstances and church policies, but that the underlying principle remains the same. “If someone doesn’t exist in his church, they won’t exist in his vision for government either.- Tia Levings“Patriarchy means ‘rule of the father,’ and the CREC and similar denominations take that literally, which is why experiences vary depending on who your father happens to be,” West continued.In his interview with NPR, Wilson stated that only about 7% of his congregants who cast votes in church elections are women.Deirdre Sugiuchi, an author who has written about her experience in the world of white evangelical Christian Nationalism, spoke to the deeper logic underlying the voting framework.“From an early age in this belief system, women are viewed as a stumbling block,” she said. “Women are taught to always be modest, that we cause men to stumble into sexual temptation by existing. Women are seen not as fully informed living beings, but as objects to be controlled.”“Women are the breeding labor force of patriarchy, and they bear the majority of the burden when patriarchal protection and provision fail,” Levings said, recalling her time in the world of Christian patriarchy and the abuses she experienced. “I know firsthand that when a woman loses her rights as an American citizen, she becomes part of a lower, second class without agency or protection.”Wilson was notably specific in the NPR interview about who would be excluded from his vision of a Christian America, invoking a “Christian Constitution” when asked directly about the role of single Muslim women.“One thing Wilson was honest about in the interview is that we can use his church polity as a model: If someone doesn’t exist in his church, they won’t exist in his vision for government either,” Levings said. “There is no place for someone who fits outside of his narrow worldview, including single women, Muslims, LGBTQ folks and, largely, people of color.”How mainstream is this — and how worried should we be?Perhaps the most urgent question the NPR interview raises is not what Wilson believes, but how much influence those beliefs now carry.“No longer is Doug Wilson a fringe believer of a small Christian movement,” Meredith said. “His beliefs are infiltrating Washington ― and the country ― at exceeding rates, growing in popularity amongst both men and women.”She pointed to the growth of Wilson’s own denomination. The CREC started with three churches in 1998, grew to nearly 130 congregations by 2020, and expanded another 150% following the pandemic.Ajoy, who grew up in the evangelical world, cautioned that it’s easy to underestimate how much political power this movement has already accumulated.“It’s hard to realize how influential and powerful Christian nationalists and conservative evangelicals have become if you did not grow up in this movement,” she said. “Trump would not have a first or second term without the white evangelical voting bloc. This group at large believed it was their God-ordained call to elect Donald Trump and that any vote against him was a vote for the devil himself.”She added that most people within this movement don’t think of themselves as Christian nationalists at all.“They believe they’re merely being good Christians, loving God, loving people ― exclusions apply ― and voting red,” Ajoy said. “It was ingrained in me from childhood that Republicans were the Christian party and Democrats were ruled by Satan. You become convinced that taking rights away from certain groups is a holy quest. Doug Wilson’s desire to repeal the 19th Amendment is extreme but falls into the same category.”Levings drew a direct line from Wilson’s rhetoric to the legislative campaigns already underway.“Changing laws is hard. Influencing cultural trends is easier,” she explained. “When someone like Wilson expresses his vision, he’s normalizing a conversation we once found intolerant. Suffrage is supposed to be a settled issue, protected by the Constitution. The playbook they’re using is the same one used to overturn Roe v. Wade, which was largely a cultural war before we had a conservative court and executive branch to change laws.” While it may feel tempting to dismiss Wilson’s extremism on voting, she believes it’s part of a very real big picture, which can extend to gerrymandering, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, and attempts to overturn the 17th and 19th amendments. At Turning Point USA’s recent Women’s Leadership Summit, conservative influencers and some attendees advocated for household voting as a way to improve marriages and align with traditional gender roles.“The fact that Doug Wilson is not more widely condemned by evangelicals is alarming.- April Ajoy“As someone who escaped the same brand of Christian patriarchy Wilson promotes, I’m horrified to watch as what were once fringe ideas in the ’90s become mainstream talking points,” Levings said. “These ideas aren’t new, but the access to platform and popularity is.” And although Wilson may have the ear of Hegseth, she added that many more Christian nationalists have influence in Trump’s administration. And the broader evangelical movement has largely failed to call out these extremist voices.“While Christians who want to repeal the 19th Amendment are still in the minority, many still make room for people like Doug Wilson in their churches,” Ajoy said. “The fact that Doug Wilson is not more widely condemned by evangelicals is alarming. The legitimacy they give to extremists like Wilson leads to the normalization of very oppressive theology.”Several of the experts HuffPost spoke with were emphatic that Wilson’s worldview is a betrayal of the faith’s core values and that Christian leaders have a responsibility to say so far more loudly.“Beyond the role of women, a Christian nationalist worldview falls completely apart when contrasted with the teachings of Christ,” Ajoy said. “Jesus famously gave himself over to authorities and told his disciples to lay down their weapons. He didn’t instruct his followers to storm Rome’s capital and demand his release. He didn’t teach his disciples how to gain power and money. Jesus taught everyone to love their neighbors and enemies alike.”West sees the concern as both real and immediate.“It is important for all of us to understand the risk of having men like Doug Wilson influencing our government,” she said. “That said, I will never try to cultivate fear about them. They are only human, and they only have the power that they are able to win over or that we hand over. But the risk is real, and the impact of patriarchy in our current administration is already being felt in states where abortion is illegal and where women are being prosecuted for miscarriages.”“Women are unsafe in a Christian theocracy,” she added. “Queer and trans people are unsafe. And people who are not white and the ‘right’ kind of Christian are unsafe.”Still, she refuses to give in to fatalism.“When I start to despair about the growth of Christian patriarchy, I look to past civil rights leaders and people who worked toward liberation,” West said. “They inspire me to keep going. We cannot give up now. We must not obey in advance. Each of us can channel our anger at the injustice toward practical work in our communities, work that helps the marginalized. It is easy to spit rage at the outrageous, outspoken leaders. It is much harder to look closer and see the people oppressed under their leadership and know how to help them.”