A standing-room only crowd gathered on a Sunday morning last month above a former bar three blocks from the US Capitol to formally open a new church.
The inaugural service of Christ Church Washington DC, an extension of an Idaho-based Evangelical movement, took place in a building owned by the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a think tank co-led by President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Exposed brick and pipes adorned the ceiling. An American flag hung above the pastor on the makeshift stage.
Minutes before the service began, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth walked in with his wife and children.
Though he wasn’t in Washington, the opening marked a major achievement for Douglas Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist pastor who, since the 1970s, has built his Evangelical church in Moscow, Idaho, into what’s now an international network of more than 150 churches, as well as Christian schools, a college and a publishing company.
In dozens of books and years of blog posts, Wilson advocates for the idea that America should adopt a Christian theocracy and adhere to a biblical interpretation of society. The new church in Washington is part of that mission, he says.
