Why a ‘Paleo-Confederate' Pastor Is on the Rise

New York Times

3 days ago

I'm going to share with you two remarkable quotes, both from the same evangelical pastor. First, here is a reflection from 2009 on the Civil War and the Confederate States of America:
You're not going to scare me away from the word Confederate like you just said 'Boo!' I would define a neo-Confederate as someone who thinks we are still fighting that war. Instead, I would say we're fighting in a long war, and that was one battle that we lost.
And lest you think this pastor has only a passing interest in the Confederacy, consider these words, from a 2005 book called 'Angels in the Architecture'
When the Confederate States of America surrendered at Appomattox, the last nation of the older order fell. So, because historians like to have set dates on which to hang their hats, we may say the first Christendom died there, in 1865. The American South was the last nation of the first Christendom.
These words were written by Douglas Wilson, whose home church is based in Moscow, Idaho. He has described himself as a 'paleo-Confederate' — he believes that Southern slavery was wrong, but that the Confederacy was otherwise 'right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war.'
He's the founder of a church, a denomination and a publishing house. He's influential in both the Christian home-schooling and the Christian classical school movements.
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, belongs to his denomination, and Wilson's words above are no aberration. They are but small drops in an ocean of ignorant, malicious and unchristian commentary.
He has referred to women he doesn't like as 'small-breasted biddies' and 'lumberjack dykes.' He has said: 'The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.'
To simply call him patriarchal is too mild. The body of churches he co-founded, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, includes pastors who believe that the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, should be repealed and replaced by something called 'household voting,' where it's no longer one person, one vote, but one household, one vote.
And who is the head of the household? The husband — a man who might consult with his wife, but would absolutely have the authority to make the final decision.
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