Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:2 (Summer 2024)
Article: Interview With Doug Wilson On Christian Nationalism
Author: Douglas Wilson

Interview With Doug Wilson On Christian Nationalism1

Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and the writer of numerous books, including Mere Christendom: The Case for Bringing Christianity Back into Modern Culture—Leading by Faith to Convert Secularism (Canon Press, 2023). He is married to his wife, Nancy, and they have three adult children.

David Schrock: Doug, to help us to ease into our conversation about Christian nationalism—talking about postmillennialism or theonomy— how much of that is one of the questions dividing those who would be for and against Christian nationalism? How much does eschatology play into this discussion?

Doug Wilson: I think eschatology plays into it by increasing the comfort level of the people who are proposing that we do something different than what we have done. If you’re a pessimistic premillennialist or if you’re a pessimistic amillennialist, you’re always asking, “What could go wrong?” And saying, “If we change anything, we’re almost certainly going to make it worse. Things are bad now, but don’t mess with it because we prefer the devil we know to the devil we don’t know.” But a postmillennial view is necessarily optimistic in the long run, but we’re talking about decades and centuries, not the next ten minutes necessarily.

I think every intelligent Christian should be asking what could go wrong because even if you’re a postmillennialist, the kingdom of God doesn’t take off like a space shuttle. It’s more like walking up a mountain range where you go up for a ways and then down into a canyon and then up and then down. So, it’s three steps forward, one step back, that kind of thing.

SBJT 28:2 (Summer 2024) 79

Eschatology does play a role, but I don’t think it’s the driving force. The driving force is the question: “Can human societies govern themselves without reference to the transcendent?” And I believe the returns on that question are clearly in: Secularism doesn’t work. It was possible, let’s say, back when Eisenhower was president, for the secularist to say to us, “Look, we can agree or disagree whether there’s a God or not. Even if there isn’t a God, we can all be decent Americans. We can all mow our lawn, we can all live peaceably together.” I think that argument would fail even back in Eisenhower’s time, but it had a surface plausibility. You looked up and down your street, and everybody was out there mowing their lawn and doing their citizen thing.

But now with sixty million children dead, with homosexual marriage imposed on the states, with the trans madness going on, drag shows for kids, riots—basically approved ...