AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The National Conservatism Conference convened here in Washington, bringing together an influential group of conservative political and religious leaders. This past week, speakers included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, several U.S. senators and senior Trump administration officials. But one of the most anticipated speakers at NatCon was a pastor from Idaho named Doug Wilson. Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service was at the conference all week, and he's here now to tell us more about it. Hi, Jack.
JACK JENKINS: Hey.
RASCOE: So who is Pastor Doug Wilson? And why were people so eager to hear from him at this conservatism conference featuring all these big-name political speakers?
JENKINS: So Wilson is based out of Moscow, Idaho, where he leads Christ Church. He's been around for decades, and during that time, he slowly built his own Christian empire of sorts. But it's really over the past five years that he's become a national figure, in part because of his open embrace of Christian nationalism. He's very publicly called for a Christian America where women can't vote, and non-Christians and even liberal Christians are barred from holding office. And he's won some political allies. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends worship at two of the churches in Wilson's denomination.
RASCOE: So what did Wilson have to say?
JENKINS: Well, this was Wilson's second time speaking at NatCon, and he's a popular figure there. You could see him getting mobbed in the hallways by fans in the conference. And during his talk, he laid out his argument for why the U.S. should be a nation led by and for Christians, while also expressing his views on immigration.
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DOUG WILSON: It is simply a historical fact that America was deeply Christian and Protestant at the founding.
JENKINS: And he also said...
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WILSON: In the meantime, it is not xenophobic to object to the immigration policies of those who want to turn the Michigan-Ohio border into something that resembles the India-Pakistan border. That kind of nonsense from our utopian social engineers is actually the root of our current set of practical dilemmas.
RASCOE: And he's not limiting himself to this one annual conference.
JENKINS: That's right. So back in July, he established a sort of outpost of his Idaho church that meets just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. It's currently housed in a space rented from a right-wing think tank, and in the first sermon delivered there, one of Wilson's pastors declared, worship is warfare. He later praised the Department of Government Efficiency and described the U.S. as a fallen and lapsed nation that has drifted from its Christian roots.
And I was there for that first service, and it was packed. And not only that, Secretary Hegseth was sitting right near the front, and he's been there multiple times since, and folks expect him to be back in the pews again this Sunday when Wilson himself is expected to preach.
RASCOE: Back to the National Conservatism Conference, what else did you hear there?
JENKINS: There was a lot of opposition to immigration and a clear preference for white Americans with long family histories in the U.S. Other speakers and panelists criticized feminism and same-sex marriage. And there was also an interesting amount of animus directed at AI and big tech.
But if there was a recurring theme, it was that many speakers made a point to denigrate Islam and Muslims. One speaker told me he believes Muslim immigration should be zero, and others insisted that Islam, as a religion, is just incompatible with American values. Still, others mentioned the New York City mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim-American. And Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer who was recently invited to travel with Hegseth on an international trip, had this to say.
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JACK POSOBIEC: As I stand here today, we are less than 10 years away from one of America's great cities being run by a Mohammed.
JENKINS: That was pretty typical rhetoric from this conference. And as I watched many sessions over the course of the week, there was a clear desire to move past points of friction in this conference over Israel and other topics and instead to disparage a common enemy. And much of that ended up directed at Mamdani and Muslims in general.
RASCOE: That's Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service. Thank you for joining us.
JENKINS: Thanks so much for having me.
RASCOE: This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Religion News Service. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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