Walking down the main drag in Moscow, Idaho, the remote college town to which I have travelled for a day and a half in the hope of encountering the spiritual home of America’s ascending Christian nationalist movement, I begin to wonder if I’ve come to the wrong place.
In the downtown area where Pastor Doug Wilson decades ago helped seed an evangelical church that now counts defence secretary Pete Hegseth and a host of officials appointed by Donald Trump among its adherents, I spot more than one trans pride flag, an advertisement for what looks like a local drag night, and a café with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window.
I mention this incongruence to the white-bearded Wilson, as he settles on to a barstool at the slogan-free gastropub he has chosen to meet. He smiles and shrugs, as if to suggest the provocations are coming from further afield these days. The 72-year-old’s link to Hegseth has given him a national profile and attracted opprobrium from co-religionists across the political spectrum.