When a church tries to take over your town

The Christian Nationalist playbook

When I was pitching articles about a child sexual abuse scandal at Christian Fellowship Center in 2022, I described Pastor Rick Sinclair as a “Doug Wilson wannabe.” That didn’t land with journalists at secular news outlets.

“Who is Doug Wilson?” they would ask.

I doubt they’re asking that anymore. Wilson has enjoyed a spate of articles over the last few weeks. While most people are focused on Wilson’s DC invasion and his influence on the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, I’m interested in tiny Troy, Idaho.

In May, the Department of Justice sued Troy under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), saying that the community displayed “discriminatory animus” toward Christ Church.

I know the playbook for Troy because I saw it in Canton, NY, in 2019. Founded in 1974, my childhood church has expanded to several new locations in the last 15 years. In some cases, they’ve purchased existing church buildings or built new ones. With Canton, they decided to buy a restaurant building in a commercial zone and then sue the village under RLUIPA to change the zoning. Like Troy, Canton found itself opposed by Trump’s Department of Justice. If Canton’s story is any indication, Doug Wilson will emerge victorious against Troy.

This story isn’t unique—Christian Nationalists have a pretty predictable playbook for taking over towns. Christian Nationalists believe that they have a divine mandate to dominate the country; I suspect that we’ll see a lot more of this nonsense during the second Trump administration.

Are you worried that your town might face a hostile takeover from Christian Nationalists? Look for these common factors.

Small College Town

Do you live in a college town of less than 30,000? Christian Nationalist churches smell easy prey. You don’t need a significant number of church members to take over a small town; you just need access to vulnerable college students and some time to birth the next generation of weapons for the culture wars.

College students are easy targets for cults and high-control churches. Students’ lack of experience and their search for truth and meaning leave them open to coercion packaged as “out of the box thinking.” Their desire for new friends in an unfamiliar environment, combined with their separation from their families or other stable relationships, makes them vulnerable to love-bombing.

Multi-generational coups

Takeovers generally don’t happen overnight. Both Christian Fellowship Center (CFC) and Doug Wilson’s main church in Moscow, ID, have been around for about 50 years. Their strategy for gaining domination? A multi-generational coup. Or as my pastor’s wife described it, a 20-year process to change a cultural mindset.

Many first-generation men from CFC ran for local office, and their success rate was relatively low. But then you have the second generation—my generation. Those folks are winning elections. They’re infiltrating local industry and then hiring only church members. They’re quietly purchasing property. It’s a long game.

Parallel educational structures

Christian Nationalist churches often set up parallel educational structures to ensure that their children don’t defect. CFC encourages families to homeschool and uses Christian Fellowship Academy to market their services to local homeschooling families.

Doug Wilson’s empire includes Logos School, New Saint Andrews, and the Association of Classical Christian Schools. Families can rest assured that their children will avoid outside “contamination” from birth through college.

Boundary pushing

Zoning laws are boring, which is why they’re perfect for testing boundaries. People in your town might not care if a church asks for zoning changes. Just like abusers groom victims, toxic churches continually push limits as they groom communities. Look for Christian Nationalists to introduce ostensibly non-partisan local resolutions that push their agenda. For instance, proclaiming June as “Family Month” instead of “Pride Month.”

Erasing Evidence

You will know that a church is getting ready for a public attack when it starts scrubbing evidence from the internet. A few years ago, I realized that CFC had managed to do something I had never seen before: completely remove their website from the Internet Archive.

It’s a pain to get your website removed from the Internet Archive. You have to be really motivated to cover something up.

What should you do?

The best way to defend your town against this kind of church is to nip it in the bud early.

Proactively document Christian Nationalist churches. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and it’s harder for a group to argue that they’re just trying to “love the community” when you have documentation showing their private threats. There are multiple ways that you can save online content on the Wayback Machine. If the church has already excluded itself from the Wayback Machine, you’ll need to be more creative with a service like ChangeTower.

Understand the language of Christian Nationalist churches. People like Tia Levings and Jay Mallow expose what’s going on when churches talk about “religious freedom” and “parental rights.” Under that language, you’ll find abortion bans and anti-birth control policies, anti-LGBTQ policies (to the point of complete eradication of trans and gay people), and homeschooling and “parental rights.” In practice, these policies can look like defunding local CPS so they cannot adequately handle abuse cases, refusing trans minors gender affirming care, or asserting that religious freedom should protect clergy from being mandated reporters.

Don’t leave power vacuums; Christian Nationalists will fill them. Is there an open seat on the local county board? Don’t let a cult member take that seat. Run for it yourself, if needed. Is a church luring low-income people with a “mercy ministry”? Make sure that your local non-religious food pantries are well-stocked and filled with volunteers. Are businesses run by church members only willing to hire other congregants? Redouble your efforts to hire people who face discrimination from the church.

Be a safe place for church members to escape. While we can—and should—hold church leaders accountable, it’s better to focus on how the toxic theology and policies harm your community instead of telling individual congregants that they’re in a cult. In other words, yes, it’s a cult. No, that’s probably not the best angle of attack. Survivors are more likely to seek your help if they don’t think that you’re personally attacking them.